Malcolm Beith. The Last Narco.

The startlingly number of reports of cartel violence in Mexico is frightening – not to mention the brutality mentioned in the reports. Decapitation, dismemberment, castration, the list goes on. The violence is not only between cartels, but with the Mexican police and military, and even US operatives of the DEA. The cartels hold the advantage in the war with seemingly unlimited funds. They are able to recruit from within the military, the police force, and even within the Mexican government. The country has become a pit of vipers with no clear path to safety.

 It is this warzone that Malcolm Beith tries to make sense of in his book The Last Narco.

Beith’s book is in one sense a biography of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and in another way a look at the current state of Mexico. As a biography, it’s pretty light. Most of the details are conjecture, hearsay, and sometimes even myth. But that is way of things in Mexico’s violent landscape. Investigative journalism is almost non-existent with imminent threat of cartel violence – Beith notes that at least 45 journalists have been murdered in the past few years. Newspapers often print contradictory stories due to cartel and even government influence. The shadow of survival makes truth almost impossible to discern.

Beith’s book is more interesting when he takes the reader into the trenches of the Drug War. Despite the wealth of information, the book is rather artless. There is a flurry of information that can’t help but feel rushed, as he jumps from one non-sequitur to the next. This becomes his greatest enemy as it often undercuts the more tragic moments.

Despite all this, the wealth of information – not to mention the actual physical danger he put himself in – makes the book worth it, at least as an introduction into the Drug War in Mexico. There are a few more books I would like to check out for an even better grasp of this violent picture. Otherwise, I recommend the Discovery Channel special Extreme Drug Smuggling, which demonstrates how clever (and disturbed) the cartels are and HBO’s serial drama The Wire, which studies the effect of the drug trade at all levels within a city.