Narco Queen

Narco Queen
Author: Michael S. Vigil
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2018-11-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1532061498

Narco Queen is a fast-paced thriller about a poor, innocent young girl who, by fate, is pulled into the murky and violent world of illicit drug trafficking. Soon, she is consumed by power and greed. Through blind ambition and murder, she rises to become the first narco queen and the head of a Mexican cartel.

Pure Narco

Pure Narco
Author: Jesse Fink
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2021-11-11
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1538155583

For a quarter century, Luis Antonio Navia worked as a high-level cocaine transporter for all of the major Colombian and Mexican drug cartels, including Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel, and flooded the United States and Europe with cocaine before his dramatic arrest in Venezuela in 2000 during the 12-nation Operation Journey. The story of Navia’s rise, fall, takedown, imprisonment, and redemption is expertly researched and told by acclaimed biographer Jesse Fink, who has gathered interviews with Navia, Navia’s family, and a dozen law-enforcement agents in the United States and Great Britain from agencies such as the DEA, ICE and Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise (now Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs). Told in vivid detail, this true crime story will captivate the reader from start to finish.

Griselda Blanco

Griselda Blanco
Author: Henri Dauber
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2017-08-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781974467778

GRISELDA BLANCO grows up in the suburbs of Medellin, surrendered in the prostitution which she was prey at the age of 12. At the age of 18, she met her first husband, Carlos Trujillo, who made her three children before throwing out her. She returned on the sidewalk before knowing the man who would change her life, Alberto Bravo. Together, they emigrate to New York. In the American metropolis, they dashed into the traffic of cocaine. Griselda and Alberto imported several kilos of white powder every week which they sold to a kingpin of mafia. John Gotti, the mafia Godfather, contacted Griselda so that supplies him the goods. The spouses Bravo organized the delivery of these goods based on their Medellin childhood friends. Their business became so important. But the demand kept growing. They had set up a high-tech industry to supply their customers. Other friends of Medellin came into play, including the notorious Pablo Escobar Gaviria, given the manufacturing and delivery to United States. The business worked perfectly until the day where the intervention of the DEA agents who failed to arrest Alberto, putting an end to the traffic of the Bravo couple. Griselda and Alberto had to leave the North American territory. She never forgave him this error. Because American authorities had been warned by the Colombian police which noticed the excessive lifestyle of Alberto Bravo and put him under surveillance. Annoyed by the excesses of her husband, who spent more time to sniff cocaine and romp in the bed with the mules which he used to spend drugs, she decided to kill him. Griselda Blanco became them the leader of a new network, settling in Miami to sell his white powder. It was the beginning of the time of Miami Vice. From this moment, the war between gangs for the sale of cocaine became the daily lives of the inhabitants of Miami. Until the day when Griselda Blanco escaped an arrest and a murder attempted. She took refuge at her mother's, Ana Lucia, in Los Angeles. She had quiet moments with her mother and her son, Michael Corleone. But Robert Palombo, a DEA agent, found her trail and arrested her in the bungalow where she lived. She was incarcerated in the prison for woman of San Francisco. Over there, she met a boy who had her great admiration, Charles Cosby. Became lovers, she made him her representative outside of the prison. But her right-hand man of Miami, Jorge Riverito Ayala, was arrested by the police. And to escape from the prison, he began to speak. The American authorities had their information. Griselda Blanco was extradited towards Florida, where she was judged for murder. But during the trial, Charles Cosby revealed to the judge having had sexual relations with a secretary of the Prosecutor. The judgment, which had to be a mere formality, turned in a fiasco. Therefore, the judge negotiated with lawyers of Griselda to put an end to this trial. Griselda Blanco was extradited to her country of origin, Colombia. Griselda settled down in Medellin in the chic area of El Poblado where she had bought a villa in a secure subdivision. She lived there for several years before being shot to death on September 3, 2012 by two men who put two bullets in the head. Griselda Blanco was almost 70 years old.

Kings of Cocaine

Kings of Cocaine
Author: Guy Gugliotta
Publisher: Garrett County Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2011-07-16
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1891053345

This is the story of the most successful cocaine dealers in the world: Pablo Escobar Gaviria, Jorge Luis Ochoa Vasquez, Carlos Lehder Rivas and Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. In the 1980s they controlled more than fifty percent of the cocaine flowing into the United States. The cocaine trade is capitalism on overdrive -- supply meeting demand on exponential levels. Here you'll find the story of how the modern cocaine business started and how it turned a rag tag group of hippies and sociopaths into regal kings as they stumbled from small-time suitcase smuggling to levels of unimaginable sophistication and daring. The $2 billion dollar system eventually became so complex that it required the manipulation of world leaders, corruption of revolutionary movements and the worst kind of violence to protect.

Drug Cartels Do Not Exist

Drug Cartels Do Not Exist
Author: Oswaldo Zavala
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2022-05-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 082650468X

Through political and cultural analysis of representations of the so-called war on drugs, Oswaldo Zavala makes the case that the very terms we use to describe drug traffickers are a constructed subterfuge for the real narcos: politicians, corporations, and the military. Though Donald Trump's incendiary comments and monstrous policies on the border revealed the character of a deeply depraved leader, state violence on both sides of the border is nothing new. Immigration has endured as a prevailing news topic, but it is a fixture of modern society in the neoliberal era; the future will be one of exile brought on by state violence and the plundering of our natural resources to sate capitalist greed. Yet the realities of violence in Mexico and along the border are obscured by the books, films, and TV series we consume. In truth, works like Sicario, The Queen of the South, and Narcos hide Mexico's political realities. Alongside these examples, Zavala discusses Charles Bowden, 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, and other important Latin American writers as examples of those who do capture the realities of the drug war. Translated into English by William Savinar, Drug Cartels Do Not Exist will be useful for journalists, political scientists, philosophers, and writers of any kind who wish to break down the constructed barriers—physical and mental—created by those in power around the reality of the Mexican drug trade.

When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots
Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2013-11-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520957180

When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the "war on drugs": despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige. In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the "patron saint" of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry.

Queen of the South

Queen of the South
Author: Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2005-05-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780452286542

The international bestseller that inspired the must-watch drama on USA Network starring Alice Braga as Teresa Mendoza. From “master of the intellectual thriller” Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a remarkable tale, spanning decades and continents—from the dusty streets of Mexico to the sparkling waters off the coast of Morocco, to the Strait of Gibraltar and Spain—in a story encompassing sensuality and cruelty, love and betrayal, and life and death. Teresa Mendoza's boyfriend is a drug smuggler who the narcos of Sinaloa, Mexico, call "the king of the short runway," because he can get a plane full of coke off the ground in three hundred yards. But in a ruthless business, life can be short, and Teresa even has a special cell phone that Guero gave her along with a dark warning. If that phone rings, it means he's dead, and she'd better run, because they're coming for her next. Then the call comes. In order to survive, she will have to say goodbye to the old Teresa, an innocent girl who once entrusted her life to a pinche narco smuggler. She will have to find inside herself a woman who is tough enough to inhabit a world as ugly and dangerous as that of the narcos-a woman she never before knew existed. Indeed, the woman who emerges will surprise even those who know her legend, that of the Queen of the South.

Endless Enemies

Endless Enemies
Author: Raymond W. Holcomb
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2011-06-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1597973610

FBI operative Raymond W. Holcomb's assignments took him across America, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa, and involved espionage, counter narcotics, Mafia takedowns, national security, Special Weapons and Tactics, and much more. He and his men captured the terrorists behind the 1993 assault on the World Trade Center, investigated the bombings of U.S. embassies, and pursued the killers of the seventeen American sailors who died in the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole. After 9/11, he assisted in interrogating Yemeni prisoners who had information about the attack, which led to identifying al Qaeda and some of the hijackers. After the capture of one of 9/11's most lethal masterminds, he went on a secret followup mission to Afghanistan. Holcomb's memoir provides detailed information about the FBI that only a longtime bureau insider can reveal, such as prison conditions and interrogation techniques in Guantánamo and Afghanistan. He describes hunting down and grilling criminals of every ilk around the world, and then creating and leading the FBI's elite cadre of counterterrorism agents who were at the helm of every major post-9/11 investigation, including the infiltration of homegrown conspiracies. Holcomb's absorbing account gives anyone interested in the training and activities of the FBI's elite tactical units a window into these highly effective organizations within the bureau.

Snatched

Snatched
Author: Bruce Porter
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2016-04-19
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1250031788

Snatched is the electric tale, by the New York Times bestselling author of Blow, Bruce Porter, that tells the true story of a woman caught between two worlds, with her life dangling in the balance. Raised an aristocrat in Colombia and educated in European schools, Pilar transfixes everyone with her charm and her guile. She also falls for dangerous men and finds herself drawn into the highest levels of the cocaine trade. After two failed marriages and a harrowing escape from the drug life, she settles down to a quiet existence in Florida with her children--until her second husband tries to cut short his prison term by giving her name over to members of a new task force being formed by the DEA. They induce Pilar, now a middle-aged woman, to infiltrate the Cali cartel as the head of a vast money laundering sting. Named "Operation Princess," the scheme leads to the seizure of tens of millions of dollars, along with some $500 million worth of cocaine and the exposure of hundreds of high-level traffickers, becoming one of the most daring and successful stings in DEA history. But Pilar plays her part too well. Her success as a money launderer gets her kidnapped and then ransomed by a band of guerrillas in South America--and the US government refuses to negotiate. It's left to her low-level handlers in the DEA to get her back, before it's too late and her kidnappers discover they have a federal agent in their clutches.

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog
Author: Don Winslow
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Total Pages: 562
Release: 2006-05-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1400096936

From the New York Times bestselling author, here is the first novel in the explosive Power of the Dog series—an action-filled look at the drug trade that takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Book One of the Power of the Dog Series Set about ten years prior to The Cartel, this gritty novel introduces a brilliant cast of characters. Art Keller is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker. Father Parada is a powerful and incorruptible Catholic priest. Callan is an Irish kid from Hell’s kitchen who grows up to be a merciless hit man. And they are all trapped in the world of the Mexican drug Federación. From the streets of New York City to Mexico City and Tijuana to the jungles of Central America, this is the war on drugs like you’ve never seen it.