An up-to-date examination of Mexico's version of the "War on Drugs" that exposes the evolution of major cartels and their corruption of politicians, law-enforcement agencies, and the Army. What can President Enrique Pena Nieto do to curb the narcotics-induced mayhem in Mexico, and what would be the consequences to the United States if he fails? This book analyzes Mexico's transition from a relatively peaceful kleptocracy controlled by the Tammany-Hall style Institutional Revolutionary Party/PRI (1929-2000) to a country plagued by rural and urban enclaves of grotesque violence. The author examines the major drug cartels and their success in infiltrating American and Mexican businesses; details the response from the Obama administration; assesses the threat that the continuing bloodshed represents for the United States; and emphasizes the constraints on America's ability to solve Mexico's crisis, despite U.S. contributions of intelligence, military equipment, training, and diplomatic support. Documents the origins of Mexico's drug industry to explain today's situation involving a graft-ridden Army, suborned police, ruthless capos, unethical office-holders, and U.S. security forces Emphasizes the threat that the widespread criminality represents to the United States, as well as the constraints on Washington's ability to solve its neighbor's crisis Exposes the linkages between elected officials, particularly governors, and the underworld Illustrates the challenges that will remain, even if the cartels were shattered, by the presence of a human infrastructure of 500,000 men, women, and children skilled in kidnapping, extortion, torture, murder for hire, human smuggling, and dozens of other crimes

Los Zetas represent a new generation of ruthless, sadistic pragmatists in Mexico and Central America who are impelling a tectonic shift among drug trafficking organizations in the Americas. Mexico's marines have taken down the cartel's top leaders; nevertheless, these capos and their desperados have forever altered how criminal business is conducted in the Western Hemisphere. This narrative brings an unprecedented level of detail in describing how Los Zetas became Mexico's most diabolical criminal organization before suffering severe losses.

In their heyday, Los Zetas controlled networks of American police, politicians, judges, and businessmen. The Mexican government is losing its "war on drugs," despite the military, technical, and intelligence resources provided by its northern neighbor. Subcontracted street gangs operate in hundreds of US cities, purchasing weapons, delivering product, executing targeted foes, and bribing the US Border Patrol. Despite crippling losses Los Zetas still dominate Nuevo Laredo, the major portal for legal and illegal bilateral commerce. They also work hand-in-glove with the underworld in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as with gangs like the Maras Salvatruchas.

A new generation of ruthless pragmatists carves a parallel state across Mexico and Central America. Most powerful among them is Los Zetas, ruled over by Heriberto Lazcano, known as The Executioner. Lazcano and his men have forced a tectonic shift among drug trafficking organizations in the Americas, forever altering how criminal business is conducted in the Western Hemisphere. This narrative brings an unprecedented level of detail in describing how Los Zetas became Mexico's most diabolical criminal organization.

Criminals control networks of police, politician, and businessmen spanning the American continent. The Mexican government is losing its "war on drugs," despite the military, technical, and intelligence resources provided by its northern neighbor. Subcontracted street gangs operate in hundreds of US cities, purchasing weapons, delivering product, executing targeted foes, and bribing the US Border Patrol.

Despite suffering severe losses that would cripple any major corporation, Los Zetas continues to operate internationally in criminal markets. Many of the poor and destitute across the region cooperate with Los Zetas, sometimes for money, often because of coercion.

La Familia Michoacana burst onto the national stage on September 6, 2006, when ruffians crashed into the seedy Sol y Sombra nightclub in Uruapan, Michoacan, and fired shots into the air. They screamed at the revelers to lie down, ripped open a plastic bag, and lobbed five human heads onto the beer-stained black and white dance floor. The day before these macabre pyrotechnics, the killers seized their prey from a mechanic's shop and hacked off their heads with bowie knives while the men writhed in pain. "You don't do something like that unless you want to send a big message," said a U.S. law-enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity about an act of human depravity that would "cast a pall over the darkest nooks of hell." The desperados left behind a note hailing their act as "divine justice," adding that: "The Family doesn't kill for money; it doesn't kill women; it doesn't kill innocent people; only those who deserve to die, die. Everyone should know . . . this is divine justice." While claiming to do the "Lord's work," the ruthless leaders of this syndicate have emerged as the dominant exporter of methamphetamines to the United States, even as they control scores of municipalities in Michoacan and neighboring states.

On November 23, 2004, citizens in the impoverished Mexico City neighborhood of Tlahuac attacked three men who were ensconced in an unmarked car outside of the Popol Vuh primary school. Fearful that the strangers were seeking to molest the youngsters, a mob that quickly grew to 2,000 people dragged them from the vehicle, bound them, and began to beat them. Although badly injured, one of the presumed predators escaped. The other two were splashed with gasoline and set ablaze, killing them.

La Familia Michoacana or as it is also known, La Familia, has emerged as one of Mexico's strangest and most grotesque drug cartels. Its leaders-Nazario "El Chayo" Moreno Gonzalez and Jose de Jesus "El Chango" Mendez Vargas-insist they are doing the Lord's work when they discipline teenagers for wearing long hair or spraying graffiti on colonial buildings in the Michoacan state capital of Morelia. However, this syndicate is not content with trying to civilize young people. It captures enemies, who may belong to Los Zetas or another competing cartel, and tortures, dismembers, and decapitates them-often leaving heads in public venues as a warning. Despite their pious opposition to drug consumption by michoacanos, "El Chayo" and "El Chango" have amassed a fortune by importing precursor drugs from Asia and Europe through the Michoacan Pacific Coast port of Lazaro Cardenas. They have constructed scores of sophisticated laboratories to convert these chemicals into methamphetamines for sale in an expanding U.S. market. La Familia also acquires resources by selling protection to merchants, street vendors, loggers, hotel owners, local gangs, and small-scale drug sellers. Rather than speak in terms of extortion, the shadowy organization insists that it "protects" its clients. La Familia has recruited members from the ranks of the dispossessed. The North American Free Trade Agreement and the 2008-10 economic recession have left thousands of young people, mostly males, wandering the streets of Lazaro Cardenas, Morelia, and many of the state's other 111 municipalities. Uprooted from their families, unemployed, poorly educated, and homeless, many of these individuals had turned to drugs, alcohol, prostitution, and petty crime to cope with their dreary lives. Along come La Familia's recruiters with a message of hope. They say, in effect: "Enter a rehabilitation center, clean up your life, and we will provide meaningful opportunities." Only after a person has shed their addiction are they invited to enter a 2-month program based on periods of silence, intensive Bible study, and exposure to Evangelical-style speakers. If they complete this training-which is unabashed brainwashing-they receive a job, a salary, and integration into a social group. Meanwhile, they contribute to La Familia's ability to move drugs, especially methamphetamines, through Baja California and Sonora onto the streets of the United States. La Familia's strength has grown because it has aligned with the Gulf and Sinaloa Cartels against Los Zetas in Tamaulipas and other areas south of the border with Texas. If the three groups enjoy success, they will gain access to Nuevo Laredo, which is the largest portal for the bilateral flow of people, money, vehicles, arms, contraband, and drugs. Dr. George W. Grayson provides an extremely astute analysis of La Familia, emphasizing its origins, evolution, ideology, leaders, and goals.

This monograph examines the profound changes sweeping Michoacan in recent years that have facilitated the rise and power of drug traffickers; the origins and evolution of La Familia, its leadership and organization, its ideology and recruitment practices, its impressive resources, its brutal conflict with Los Zetas, its skill in establishing dual sovereignty in various municipalities, if not the entire state; and its long-term goals and their significance for the United States. The conclusion addresses steps that could be taken to curb this extraordinarily wealthy and dangerous criminal organization.

The emergence of Latin American firebrands who champion the cause of the impoverished and rail against the evils of neoliberalism and Yankee imperialism--Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico--has changed the landscape of the Americas in dramatic ways. This is the first biography to appear in English about one of these charismatic figures, who is known in his country by his adopted nickname of "Little Ray of Hope."

The book follows Lopez Obrador's life from his early years in the flyspecked state of Tabasco, his university studies, and the years that he lived among the impoverished Chontal Indians. Even as he showed an increasingly messianic elan to uplift the downtrodden, he confronted the muscular Institutional Revolutionary Party in running twice for governor of his home state and helping found the leftist-nationalist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). As the PRD's national president, he escalated his political and ideological warfare against his former president, Carlos Salinas, and other "conspirators" determined to link Mexico to the global economy at the expense of the poor. His strident advocacy of the "have-nots" lifted Lopez Obrador to the mayorship of Mexico City, which he rechristened the "City of Hope." Its ubiquitous crime, traffic, pollution, and housing problems have made the capital a tomb for most politicians. Not for Lopez Obrador. Through splashy public works, monthly stipends to senior citizens, huge marches, and a dawn-to-dusk work schedule, he converted the position into a trampoline to the presidency. Although he lost the official count by an eyelash, the hard-charging Tabascan cried fraud, took the oath as the nation's "legitimate president," and barnstormed the country, excoriating the "fascist" policies of President Felipe Calderon and preparing to redeem the destitute in the 2012 presidential contest.

Grayson views Lopez Obrador as quite different from populists like Chavez, Morales, and Kirchner and argues that he is a "secular messiah, who lives humbly, honors prophets, gathers apostles, declares himself indestructible, relishes playing the role of victim, and preaches a doctrine of salvation by returning to the values of the 1917 Constitution-- fairness for workers, Indians' rights, fervent nationalism, and anti-imperialism."

The emergence of Latin American firebrands who champion the cause of the impoverished and rail against the evils of neoliberalism and Yankee imperialism--Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico--has changed the landscape of the Americas in dramatic ways. This is the first biography to appear in English about one of these charismatic figures, who is known in his country by his adopted nickname of "Little Ray of Hope."

The book follows Lopez Obrador's life from his early years in the flyspecked state of Tabasco, his university studies, and the years that he lived among the impoverished Chontal Indians. Even as he showed an increasingly messianic elan to uplift the downtrodden, he confronted the muscular Institutional Revolutionary Party in running twice for governor of his home state and helping found the leftist-nationalist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). As the PRD's national president, he escalated his political and ideological warfare against his former president, Carlos Salinas, and other "conspirators" determined to link Mexico to the global economy at the expense of the poor. His strident advocacy of the "have-nots" lifted Lopez Obrador to the mayorship of Mexico City, which he rechristened the "City of Hope." Its ubiquitous crime, traffic, pollution, and housing problems have made the capital a tomb for most politicians. Not for Lopez Obrador. Through splashy public works, monthly stipends to senior citizens, huge marches, and a dawn-to-dusk work schedule, he converted the position into a trampoline to the presidency. Although he lost the official count by an eyelash, the hard-charging Tabascan cried fraud, took the oath as the nation's "legitimate president," and barnstormed the country, excoriating the "fascist" policies of President Felipe Calderon and preparing to redeem the destitute in the 2012 presidential contest.

Grayson views Lopez Obrador as quite different from populists like Chavez, Morales, and Kirchner and argues that he is a "secular messiah, who lives humbly, honors prophets, gathers apostles, declares himself indestructible, relishes playing the role of victim, and preaches a doctrine of salvation by returning to the values of the 1917 Constitution-- fairness for workers, Indians' rights, fervent nationalism, and anti-imperialism."