NOTES

1 Molly Molloy, “Massacre at CIAD #8 in Juárez,” Narco News Bulletin, August 18, 2008, http://www.narconews.com/Issue54/article3181.html. In 2009 there were more massacres at rehab centers that killed up to twenty people in single attacks. Also, in 2010, there were attacks on parties in private homes in Juárez that resulted in up to sixteen people being killed in multiple separate incidents.

2 Charles Bowden, Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 183. According to Bowden, this estimate of drug money in El Paso banks came from conversations with local DEA officials in the mid-1990s. See also “U.S. Investigates Money Laundering in El Paso,” Frontera Norte Sur, October 1996, http://www.nmsu.edu/~frontera/old_1996/oct96/1096laun.html. Frontera Norte Sur cites articles from the El Paso Times and Diario de Juárez.

3 Karin Brulliard, “In Tale of Millionaire Drug Suspect, Mexicans Judge Government Guilty,” Washington Post, July 29, 2007.

4 For a snapshot of the Mexican drug trade and government corruption in the mid- to late 1990s, see U.S. House of Representatives Government Reform and Oversight Committee, National Security, International Affairs, and Criminal Justice Subcommittee, statement by Thomas A. Constantine, Administrator, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Department of Justice, in DEA congressional testimony before the hearing regarding cooperation with Mexico, February 25, 1997,http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/cngrtest/ct970225.htm#Effect%20of%20Mexican%20Organized%20Crime%20on%20United%20States. See also Terrence E. Poppa, Druglord: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin, 3rd ed. (El Paso, Texas: Cinco Puntos, 2010) for a singular account of Pablo Acosta’s control of the plaza in the city of Ojinaga, Chihuahua, in the 1980s—the period preceding the rise of Amado Carrillo and the Juárez cartel.

5 Robert Draper, “Carrillo’s Crossing,” Texas Monthly 23, no. 12, December 1995.

6 Phil Gunson, “End of the Line: This Is the Face of Amado Carrillo Fuentes—and It May Have Cost Him His Life,” The Guardian (London), July 17, 1997, p. T2.

7 Carlos Fazio, “Mexico: The Narco General Case,” Transnational Institute, December 1997, http://www.tni.org/article/mexico-narco-general-case. Another Wikileaks cable surfaced in the Mexican and international press in February 2011 with the title: “Mexican Army Major Arrested for Assisting Drug Trafficking Organizations.” The cable was written by U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza and is dated January 20, 2009. It mentions the arrest in December 2008 of Mexican Army Major Arturo Gonzalez Rodriguez, a member of President Calderon’s protective service, for his links to drug traffickers. The cable also indicates that narco-trafficking organizations obtained access to President Calderon’s medical records. Seehttp://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2011/02/21/en-manos-de-carteles-del-narco-datos-confidenciales-de-felipe-calderon and http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=387742&CategoryId=14091. The full text of the cable is available here:http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/01/09MEXICO133.html.

8 “Outsmarted by Sinaloa,” The Economist 394, no. 8664, January 9, 2010, 40–41.

9 John Burnett, Marisa Peñalosa, and Robert Benincasa, “Mexico Seems to Favor Sinaloa Cartel in Drug War,” National Public Radio, May 19, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126906809. This NPR report quotes Mexican officials, academics, journalists, and U.S. law enforcement personnel—on and off the record—all of whom cite examples of the Sinaloa cartel’s relationships with the military and high government officials and its relatively advantageous position during the years of the Calderón administration.

10 Bruce Livesey, “Drug War or Drug Deal? Mexico’s Biggest Cartel Banks on Powerful Friends,” Montreal Gazette, May 22, 2010.

11 José de Córdoba and David Luhnow, “In Mexico, Death Toll in Drug War Hits Record,” Wall Street Journal, January 13, 2011; Jorge Ramos Perez, “La Lucha anticrimen deja 34 mil muertes en 4 años [Anti-crime struggle leaves 34,000 deaths in 4 years],” El Universal, January 13, 2011. These are the numbers of drugrelated homicides reported nationally for each period of Calderón’s term:

12 Johanna Tuckman, “Mexico Drugs War Murder Data Mapped,” The Guardian, January 14, 2011.

13 See, for example, Denise Maerker, “Cifra homicidios en guerra a narco, equivocada: Aguilar Camín [Aguilar Camin reports: Number of homicides in war against narco is wrong],” January 6, 2011, http://www.radioformula.com.mx/notas.asp?Idn=149717.

14 The July 2010 estimate from the CIA World Factbook is available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mx.html.

15 Juárez murders continue to climb, and an accurate count of the victims remains elusive. On March 14, 2011, the Chihuahua State attorney general issued new statistics indicating that there had actually been 3,951 murders in Juárez in 2010, an increase of 840 over the 3,111 widely reported in the media at the end of 2010 and upping the average to nearly 11 murders per day. (“Once homidicios diarios en 2010 en Juárez: Fiscalía [Eleven homicides daily in 2010 in Juárez: Attorney General],” El Universal, March 14, 2011, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/751635.html.) It is highly unlikely that a Mexican government entity would inflate such crime statistics, so this higher number is probably the more accurate one. At an estimated population of 1.2 million, the murder rate in Juárez is 329 per 100,000. To compare, Caracas, Venezuela (population 4 million), has a murder rate of 200 per 100,000 and is often cited as the most violent large city in the Americas; New York City’s murder rate is 6; Detroit, known for high crime and poverty, has a murder rate of 46. El Paso’s murder rate is about 2; it is reported to be the safest city in the United States with a population over 500,000.

16 “A total of 191 soldiers have been killed fighting drug gangs between December 2006 and Aug. 1, 2010, according to a list of names on a wall of a Defense Department anti-narcotics museum. Reporters saw the list Wednesday during a tour of the museum—the first time the government has made the number public. Forty-three of the soldiers killed were officers. Last week, the government said 2,076 police have been killed since December 2006.” See Associated Press, “Mexican Mayor Found Dead 3 Days After Kidnapping,” USA Today, August 18, 2010, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-08-18-drug-war-mexico_N.htm.

17 CNN–The Situation Room, “Interview with Mexican President Felipe Calderón; Analysis of Special Election Results” (transcript), aired May 19, 2010, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1005/19/sitroom.01.html; Silvia Otero, “No investigan 95% de muertes en ‘guerra’ [95% of ‘war’ deaths not investigated],” El Universal, June 21, 2010, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/689120.html. “Las autoridades están rebasadas por los hechos, dicen especialistas; el Presidente ha asegurado que 90% de los decesos por lucha antinarco es de la mafia [The authorities are overcome by events, say specialists; the President has assured that 90% of the deaths in the antinarco struggle are mafia].”

18 Julie Watson and Alexandra Olson, “AP Impact: Mexico Justice Means Catch and Release,” El Paso Times, July 27, 2010; “Llegan a juzgados pocos homicidios [Few homicide cases reach a court],” El Diario de Juárez, November 7, 2009; “El 99% de los delitos en Mexico quedan impunes y todavia estan pendientes 400,000 ordenes de arresto [99% of crimes in Mexico go unpunished and there are 400,000 arrest orders pending],” Europa Press, [n.d.], http://www.lukor.com/not-mun/america/portada/08121541.htm.

19 Ignacio Alvarado, “Ven ‘limpia social,’ no narcoguerra [‘Social cleansing,’ not a drug war],” El Universal, October 18, 2010. An English translation was posted to the Frontera-List: http://groups.google.com/group/frontera-list/browse_thread/thread/6baa726b30751b45/8cea4028513aaa5e.

20 “Free Press, Free People” (editorial), Globe and Mail (Canada), March 17, 1997, p. A10.

21 “Termina uno de los años mas violentos en la historia de Juárez; denunciados mas de 22 mil delitos; de 134 asesinatos ocurridos, 40 aclarados [One of the most violent years in Juárez comes to an end; More than 22,000 crimes reported; of 134 murders, 40 are clarified],” Norte de Ciudad Juárez, January 2, 1992.

22 El Cora was a narco-boss working in the 1990s. The sicario tells us a little more about him in this book. There are many cartel operatives who never become known in the press. A video of a narco-corrido on YouTube may be about the same man, though it is impossible to be sure; see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ud1xPovofuQ. I did find one mention in the Mexican press of a man with the nickname “El Cora de Sinaloa,” but we do not know if this is the same man the sicario knew; see Juan Veledíaz, “Hostil recibimiento en tierra de nadie [Hostile reception in no man’s land],” El Universal, December 14, 2006, http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/146547.html.

23 “Two More Journalists Shot Dead in Continuing Media Bloodshed,” Reporters Without Borders, July 12, 2010, http://en.rsf.org/mexico-two-more-journalists-shot-dead-in-12-07-2010,37925.html.

24 Bowden, Down by the River, pp. 288–291; “Murder, Money, and Mexico: The Rise and Fall of the Salinas Brothers,” PBS Frontline documentary, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mexico/. See also “Family Tree: General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo,” PBS Frontline, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mexico/family/genrebollo.html; and Fazio, “Mexico: The Narco General Case.”

25 Susan E. Reed, “Certifiable: Mexico’s Corruption, Washington’s Indifference,” The New Republic, 1997, reprinted at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/mexico/readings/newrepublic.html; DEA Congressional Testimony, Statement by Donnie Marshall, Drug Enforcement Administration, United States Department of Justice, Before the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, Regarding International Narcotics Control, March 18, 1998,http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/cngrtest/ct980318.htm.

26 See Internet Movie Database, “Traffic,” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181865/synopsis.

27 Adam Thomson, “Mexico Crime Fighters Die in Air Crash,” Financial Times, November 5, 2008. See also the following obituaries: Jo Tuckman, “Obituary: Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos: Mexican Anti-Drugs Prosecutor Whose Life Was Often Threatened,” The Guardian, November 17, 2008, p. 34; “Juan Camilo Mouriño,” The Times (London), November 24, 2008, p. 52.

28 William Booth and Nick Miroff, “Mexican Drug Cartel Forces Lawyer’s Video Confessions,” Washington Post, October 30, 2010; Tracy Wilkinson, “Kidnapped Chihuahua Attorney Found Dead,” Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2010.

29 “Soldados metidos en un broncón [Soldiers involved in a real mess],” La Polaka , December 2, 2010, http://lapolaka.com/2010/12/02/soldados-metidos-en-un-broncon/.

30 The sicario used a word in Spanish that I had never heard before, “embarrar.” It means to daub with mud or clay or plaster. It can be used in the sense of “slinging mud,” but it can also mean to involve a person in something, to bring someone into an affair, or to complicate a situation. The word can also be used to describe the behavior of birds who gather together in trees to hide when they are being pursued.