Since 2006, when President Felipe Calderón declared war on Mexico’s drug cartels, 45,000 Mexicans across the republic have been disappeared, murdered, or mass-executed. Victims of this violence include journalists, over two thousand public officials, and bystanders. While drug-related activity was previously relegated to only a few Mexican states, the dramatic spread of violence – and its severity – is attributable to governmental policy north and south of the border. Ioan Grillo is a British journalist based in Mexico who’s been investigating Mexico’s drug war for ten years. His new book is called “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency.”
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