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Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance
A riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico, pursuing her own brand of justice to avenge the kidnapping and murder of her daughter— from a global investigative correspondent for The New York Times
“Azam Ahmed has written a page-turning mystery but also a stunning, color-saturated portrait of the collapse of formal justice in one Mexican town.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Directorate S
Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorized and controlled what was once Miriam’s quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the U.S. border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own version of justice.
Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic, and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she decided that “fear is just a word,” and began a crusade to track down Karen’s killers and to help other victimized families in their search for justice.
What do people do when their country and the peaceful town where they have grown up become unrecognizable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed takes us into the grieving of a country and a family to tell the mesmerizing story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear Is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town, and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces leave people to seek justice on their own.
“Azam Ahmed has written a page-turning mystery but also a stunning, color-saturated portrait of the collapse of formal justice in one Mexican town.”—Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Directorate S
Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorized and controlled what was once Miriam’s quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the U.S. border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own version of justice.
Woven into this deeply researched, moving account is the story of how cartels built their power in Mexico, escalated the use of violence, and kidnapped and murdered tens of thousands. Karen was just one of the many people who disappeared, and Miriam, a brilliant, strategic, and fearless woman, begged for help from the authorities and paid ransom money she could not afford in hopes of saving her daughter. When that failed, she decided that “fear is just a word,” and began a crusade to track down Karen’s killers and to help other victimized families in their search for justice.
What do people do when their country and the peaceful town where they have grown up become unrecognizable, suddenly places of violence and fear? Azam Ahmed takes us into the grieving of a country and a family to tell the mesmerizing story of a brave and brilliant woman determined to find out what happened to her daughter, and to see that the criminals who murdered her were punished. Fear Is Just a Word is an unforgettable and moving portrait of a woman, a town, and a country, and of what can happen when violent forces leave people to seek justice on their own.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published September 26, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
December 4, 2023
An intense story slowly told. I was interested in this book but wish it dug deeper into the cartels or was shorter. It was a lot of rehashing.
August 24, 2024
This was an excellent read based on exhaustive research of a mother's quest for revenge against the Zetaz cartel.
Although this is a well told story about a woman and her family, be aware that there is a lot of death in this book. I learned more about the Mexican drug cartels than any other book I've read.
4.5 stars
Although this is a well told story about a woman and her family, be aware that there is a lot of death in this book. I learned more about the Mexican drug cartels than any other book I've read.
4.5 stars
January 6, 2024
Actually, I finished this book right around December 27th or so but we're still in the thrall of home renovation and I continue to be behind in everything else. No surprise there.
full post (no spoilers) here:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...
I came across this book after seeing it written up in The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" section back towards the end of November, and was so taken with that brief mention that I knew I had to have it. Before the book even arrived, I found myself doing a bit of research on Miriam Rodríguez, the woman at the center of it all, and came across a post on X (aka the old Twitter) that linked to another post by author Gary Shteyngart, who described the book to a perfect T. He called it a work
"about a personal tragedy set against the canvas of a societal one,"
and after finishing Fear Is Just a Word, I can't think of a better, more eloquent phrase to sum up this book.
On January 4th, 2014, Miriam received a 4 a.m. phone call that would quite literally dictate the direction of the rest of her life. She wasn't at her home at the time in the small town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state of Mexico, but rather in McAllen Texas, where she had gone to put some distance between herself and her troubled relationship with her husband Luis. Two hours later she was in Reynosa, just across the Rio Grande, catching a bus to take her back to San Fernando, where she was picked up by her other daughter, Azalea. The news was the worst any mother could hear -- Miriam's twenty-one year old daughter Karen had been kidnapped, and her captors, members of the Zetas cartel, had demanded a ransom. Luis had taken out a loan from the bank to pay off the kidnappers, made the money drop, and was told to be in the cemetery twenty minutes later. The day passed, no Karen. Another day passed, same thing. Sunday another call came, demanding more money; a week went by, no word. Finally, after an agonizing two weeks, another call came in, saying that after Miriam paid "a small payment" in exchange for her daughter, her release was, according to the caller, now ready to happen. After a month, Miriam realized that "they are not going to bring her back to me," vowing that she would "find the people who did this" to her daughter and "make them pay." In Fear is Just a Word author and New York Times investigative journalist/bureau chief Azam Ahmed follows Miriam's "quest for vengeance" and in doing so, examines the wider "societal" tragedy, exploring how Mexico became a country where the rule of law is so dysfunctional that it ceases to function, leaving families of the disappeared with neither recourse nor justice from a government that is supposedly there to help and protect them.
As Miriam had said years earlier during a violent assault by the Zetas on her town in 2010,
"How can they just let something like this happen? ... What is the government doing? Why aren't they stopping this?"
The author takes on those very same questions, and he also explores how things in Mexico have come to the point where the country has become, for lack of a better word, broken.
A must read, for sure. It is beyond timely and relevant especially right now, and it is clear that the author must have put in years of research in putting this book together. Fear is Just Another Word is an outstanding example of great investigative journalism that puts a very human face on tragedy, revealing exactly what people are capable of in the face of the worst situations of indifference and hopelessness. It is one of the very best books I read in 2023, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
full post (no spoilers) here:
http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...
I came across this book after seeing it written up in The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" section back towards the end of November, and was so taken with that brief mention that I knew I had to have it. Before the book even arrived, I found myself doing a bit of research on Miriam Rodríguez, the woman at the center of it all, and came across a post on X (aka the old Twitter) that linked to another post by author Gary Shteyngart, who described the book to a perfect T. He called it a work
"about a personal tragedy set against the canvas of a societal one,"
and after finishing Fear Is Just a Word, I can't think of a better, more eloquent phrase to sum up this book.
On January 4th, 2014, Miriam received a 4 a.m. phone call that would quite literally dictate the direction of the rest of her life. She wasn't at her home at the time in the small town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state of Mexico, but rather in McAllen Texas, where she had gone to put some distance between herself and her troubled relationship with her husband Luis. Two hours later she was in Reynosa, just across the Rio Grande, catching a bus to take her back to San Fernando, where she was picked up by her other daughter, Azalea. The news was the worst any mother could hear -- Miriam's twenty-one year old daughter Karen had been kidnapped, and her captors, members of the Zetas cartel, had demanded a ransom. Luis had taken out a loan from the bank to pay off the kidnappers, made the money drop, and was told to be in the cemetery twenty minutes later. The day passed, no Karen. Another day passed, same thing. Sunday another call came, demanding more money; a week went by, no word. Finally, after an agonizing two weeks, another call came in, saying that after Miriam paid "a small payment" in exchange for her daughter, her release was, according to the caller, now ready to happen. After a month, Miriam realized that "they are not going to bring her back to me," vowing that she would "find the people who did this" to her daughter and "make them pay." In Fear is Just a Word author and New York Times investigative journalist/bureau chief Azam Ahmed follows Miriam's "quest for vengeance" and in doing so, examines the wider "societal" tragedy, exploring how Mexico became a country where the rule of law is so dysfunctional that it ceases to function, leaving families of the disappeared with neither recourse nor justice from a government that is supposedly there to help and protect them.
As Miriam had said years earlier during a violent assault by the Zetas on her town in 2010,
"How can they just let something like this happen? ... What is the government doing? Why aren't they stopping this?"
The author takes on those very same questions, and he also explores how things in Mexico have come to the point where the country has become, for lack of a better word, broken.
A must read, for sure. It is beyond timely and relevant especially right now, and it is clear that the author must have put in years of research in putting this book together. Fear is Just Another Word is an outstanding example of great investigative journalism that puts a very human face on tragedy, revealing exactly what people are capable of in the face of the worst situations of indifference and hopelessness. It is one of the very best books I read in 2023, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
September 24, 2023
Fear is Just a Word is a heart-wrenching, vital account of the trail of pain and desolation that drug-cartel violence has left throughout our wounded nation.
A monumental effort and journalistic feat of collecting the painful pieces of Miriam and her family’s story of loss and struggle, and by doing it with compassion, Azam has done justice to their humanity. While the scope and depth of the consequences relentless violence has had on countless families remains unfathomable, Azam’s book serves as a torch in the dark… a little guide of light. As a Mexican myself, I am more than anything else, thankful for it.
A monumental effort and journalistic feat of collecting the painful pieces of Miriam and her family’s story of loss and struggle, and by doing it with compassion, Azam has done justice to their humanity. While the scope and depth of the consequences relentless violence has had on countless families remains unfathomable, Azam’s book serves as a torch in the dark… a little guide of light. As a Mexican myself, I am more than anything else, thankful for it.
September 24, 2023
This is one of the most profound books I’ve read in recent history. It’s that special breed of nonfiction book that reads like a gripping novel, with a strong narrative tone and intensity. Azam Ahmed brings me me into an immersive world of a small town in Mexico and a mother gripped by her loss — and her burning need to discover the truth of her missing daughter.
In the midst of this emotional and beautifully rendered story, we have woven narratives of the genesis and metamorphosis of drug cartels in Mexico. It is with a deft touch and always tethered to our hero’s journey. This is that rare nonfiction book that educates me sneakily, always at the service of character and emotion.
I couldn’t put the book down and read it practically in one sitting. I challenge anyone to try to read this casually. It’s an incisive and roller coaster story and belongs in the pantheon of ALL great books. I look forward to seeing this book win awards and become a modern classic.
In the midst of this emotional and beautifully rendered story, we have woven narratives of the genesis and metamorphosis of drug cartels in Mexico. It is with a deft touch and always tethered to our hero’s journey. This is that rare nonfiction book that educates me sneakily, always at the service of character and emotion.
I couldn’t put the book down and read it practically in one sitting. I challenge anyone to try to read this casually. It’s an incisive and roller coaster story and belongs in the pantheon of ALL great books. I look forward to seeing this book win awards and become a modern classic.
September 2, 2023
There are very few things to be sure of in this world. One thing I am sure of is that Miriam Rodriguez is not someone you should ever mess with.
Fear is Just a Word by Azam Ahmed follows the actions of Miriam as she tracks down the people who kidnapped and murdered her daughter, Karen. Does this sound like the plot of a revenge fantasy film? Yes. Is it 100% true? Also yes. Miriam is a perfect case study in a mother who will never take no for an answer. Even if she walks away, she will be coming back. Ahmed highlights that Miriam's actions are in even more stark when you consider that her story takes place in Mexico where the drug trade has destroyed the country. I can't overstate this enough. Miriam Rodriguez is a certified bad***.
Ahmed does a good job with the story. It is a bit distracting when he does not tell the story in a linear timeline. Often, it leads to repeating facts and names as well as confusing the reader about where we are in time. Ahmed is a seasoned reporter so these quibbles don't sink the story. Miriam made that impossible.
(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Random House.)
Fear is Just a Word by Azam Ahmed follows the actions of Miriam as she tracks down the people who kidnapped and murdered her daughter, Karen. Does this sound like the plot of a revenge fantasy film? Yes. Is it 100% true? Also yes. Miriam is a perfect case study in a mother who will never take no for an answer. Even if she walks away, she will be coming back. Ahmed highlights that Miriam's actions are in even more stark when you consider that her story takes place in Mexico where the drug trade has destroyed the country. I can't overstate this enough. Miriam Rodriguez is a certified bad***.
Ahmed does a good job with the story. It is a bit distracting when he does not tell the story in a linear timeline. Often, it leads to repeating facts and names as well as confusing the reader about where we are in time. Ahmed is a seasoned reporter so these quibbles don't sink the story. Miriam made that impossible.
(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Random House.)
April 3, 2024
"...Miriam was stalking one of the killers of her daughter Karen. Known as the Florist, he was a member of the Zeta drug cartel, which U.S. authorities considered to be the most violent group in all of Mexico..."
Fear Is Just a Word is an incredible real-life saga, but the telling of it here was just not up to snuff. More below. The author drops the quote above in the book's intro.
Author Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for The New York Times. He is the former New York Times bureau chief in Mexico, and previously was the New York Times bureau chief in Afghanistan.
Azam Ahmed:
Ahmed opens the book with an intro that was longer than it should have been. He outlines the topic of the book: A mother's quest to avenge the kidnapping and death of her daughter, who was taken by a group of violent narco-trafficers called Los Zetas.
The quote from the start of this review continues:
As mentioned briefly above, despite fielding such incredibly rich source material, the overall telling of the story here was lackluster at best. The author includes way too much backstory in the first part of the book. There were almost 5 hours of backstory about the characters; including long descriptions of irrelevant details about their early life and day-to-day trivialities.
I also found the book to be too long, in general. The audio version I have clocks in at over 11 hours. This made me frustrated, and I was close to putting the book down a few times.
As well; the overall narrative style didn't really pass muster for me either. The author writes in a simple, plain and rather deadpan fashion that leaves the reader detached from the overall story and its characters. I found my attention wandering many times while reading this one.
********************
It's too bad that the writing in Fear Is Just a Word was not a bit better. It is an incredible real-life saga. I've read quite a few books in this genre, and many of them can be real page-turners. Sadly, this one was not (at least for me).
My reviews are always very heavily weighted towards how readable the book is, and sadly it missed the mark towards that end...
2 stars.
Fear Is Just a Word is an incredible real-life saga, but the telling of it here was just not up to snuff. More below. The author drops the quote above in the book's intro.
Author Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for The New York Times. He is the former New York Times bureau chief in Mexico, and previously was the New York Times bureau chief in Afghanistan.
Azam Ahmed:
Ahmed opens the book with an intro that was longer than it should have been. He outlines the topic of the book: A mother's quest to avenge the kidnapping and death of her daughter, who was taken by a group of violent narco-trafficers called Los Zetas.
The quote from the start of this review continues:
"...In their campaign to dominate the nation’s criminal economy, the Zetas had blazed a trail of violence through more than a dozen Mexican states, trafficking drugs, smuggling migrants, and kidnapping for ransom.
Two years earlier, in January 2014, the Zeta cell that the Florist belonged to had kidnapped Karen. Miriam had begged, pleaded, and paid ransoms she could not afford, following the Zetas’ every instruction. She got nothing in return, not even knowledge of what had happened to Karen.
Government authorities had dismissed her, ignoring her entreaties or meeting them with a practiced formality that barely masked their apathy. In that void, her grief gave way to acceptance, and then to resolve: to seek revenge and pursue justice herself, for Karen, and for the other families of the disappeared."
As mentioned briefly above, despite fielding such incredibly rich source material, the overall telling of the story here was lackluster at best. The author includes way too much backstory in the first part of the book. There were almost 5 hours of backstory about the characters; including long descriptions of irrelevant details about their early life and day-to-day trivialities.
I also found the book to be too long, in general. The audio version I have clocks in at over 11 hours. This made me frustrated, and I was close to putting the book down a few times.
As well; the overall narrative style didn't really pass muster for me either. The author writes in a simple, plain and rather deadpan fashion that leaves the reader detached from the overall story and its characters. I found my attention wandering many times while reading this one.
********************
It's too bad that the writing in Fear Is Just a Word was not a bit better. It is an incredible real-life saga. I've read quite a few books in this genre, and many of them can be real page-turners. Sadly, this one was not (at least for me).
My reviews are always very heavily weighted towards how readable the book is, and sadly it missed the mark towards that end...
2 stars.
February 18, 2024
after reading anand gopal’s no good men among the living last year, my standard for investigation journalism had been upgraded. this book, by all means, is a great book with an amazing story, but i feel it just fell short a little bit to gopal’s in comparison. if only the beginning of the book were more gripping, i would give five stars. having said that, after a while, the book gets more and more engaging and transforming into an excellent page turner. i havent watched narcos, but this book made me want to start checking it out.
and, there is nothing stronger than a mother’s love to her kids. not even mexican drug cartel.
and, there is nothing stronger than a mother’s love to her kids. not even mexican drug cartel.
February 8, 2024
[audiobook] 2.5 stars. Thought I would really like this book. It is a fascinating story, told in a long roundabout way and read by a truly terrible narrator. It’s hard to imagine a single person listened to / reviewed this audiobook before it was published. Mispronunciation of simple every day words was omnipresent.
January 30, 2024
A thoughtful and informative account of not only one particularly tragic crime but also the social, political, and historical context in which that crime occurred. In other words, the very best of what true crime can hope to offer
March 26, 2024
Remarkable piece of journalism about an unforgettable woman who will stop at nothing to avenge her daughter’s death at the hands of the gangs that terrorize Mexico. Couldn’t stop thinking about this when I wasn’t reading it. Absolutely gripping — and truly terrifying. I thought I knew plenty about narcoterrorism but this book reveals how ingrained their horror is/was in everyday life.
March 21, 2024
Very well written journalistic story of the history of violence cartels in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico., considered a border town (located 2 hours from Texas) . The author blends history and the story of Mariam Rodriguez's quest to find the kidnappers and killers of her daughter Karen. I highly recommend this book if you are seeking to understand the power the cartels have to cause fear and devastation among Mexican citizens.
June 16, 2024
This was a harrowing story of the Mexican cartels in the Mexican states closest to the U.S. and their crimes of murder, kidnapping for ransom and random brutality. Miriam Rodriquez is a mother whose daughter is kidnapped and ultimately killed by one of the cartels. The bravery (and vengeance) she showed in trying to find her daughter's killers despite the incompetence and corruption of the police makes it a compelling read. Over 100,000 people were "disappeared" due to the cartels. Although the book is non-fiction and was very well researched, it reads at times like fiction in the way he brings Miriam to life in the book. She was definitely a force to be reckoned with. It is at times a tough read due to the brutality.The book drags at times, editing would have helped. But it provided an incredibly clear picture of the cartels' brutality and what it was like for the people living in fear at all times.
January 1, 2024
Interested in how narcoterrorism has affected Northern Mexico over the last 15 years? You can watch Narcos Mexico on Netflix for a slick, dramatized overview, or read this book for insight into the actual life on the streets of San Fernando, Tamaulipas. I would recommend the latter, as the story told is true, and revealing. This book is well written (the author is an accomplished journalist), and covers the problems of the region, the history of the cartels and their plazas, and the challenges facing all the different agencies of the Mexican goverment (political and military) engaged in the "war on drugs."
August 26, 2024
Fantastic book - the formatting of the chapters, the incredible information about Mexico's cartels and the history leading up to the kidnapping was intriguing. Miriam's story is heart-wrenching, and the author wrote every detail with precision, making it feel like Miriam wrote it herself.
November 30, 2023
oh my god ???????????????????
January 20, 2024
I would give this book a 3.5. The first 50 pages or so were difficult to read, in my opinion. The back and forth from one time period to another was often confusing. It would have been a better read had the dates of incidents gone in sequential order. (Side note: I read a lot of books where a writer goes back in time to retell events. I have always enjoyed them. This one felt pieced together in the wrong order.)
January 8, 2024
Bold and with a nice balance of personal and historical. Meticulously researched in a country where people disappearing without a trace is part of a horrifying government normal.
Highlights:
Back then, the criminal group that would come to be known as the Gulf Cartel dominated the state of Tamaulipas, and as a result had always had some sort of presence in town. But things had been relatively peaceful. The criminals never bothered regular working people, and in fact relied on their support to conduct business. In those days, Miriam would see them around, driving luxury trucks, throwing parties, eating opulent meals in the town's restaurants and then paying the tabs of diners to curry favor with the population. The locals had learned to coexist with the group's operators in San Fernando, and Miriam, like others, came to accept the symbiosis between them— each left the other to their own devices.
And then, all of a sudden, 2010 had happened and everything she thought she knew about San Fernando and her life there changed. A vicious breakup of the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas, a key smuggling route into the United States, led to the area being carved up by two main cartels, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.
The criminal organization that became the Gulf Cartel had run things in Tamaulipas for more than seventy years, first by smuggling alcohol, home goods, and electronics into the United States and then, in the 1990s, by trafficking massive quantities of cocaine, a move that took their earnings into the billions of dollars. As competition from rival traffickers stiffened, the leader of the cartel decided in 1998 to form a paramilitary wing within his organization to protect his inter-ests. That group, originally made up of Mexican Army Special Forces deserters, was known as the Zetas.
For more than a decade, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas worked together, side by side like the fingers of a glove, smuggling cocaine into the United States and warring with rival cartels across the coun-try. But in 2010, as disagreements between the two groups mounted, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas split, and the Zetas decided to go into business for themselves. The fight that ensued between the Gulf and the Zetas for control of the drug trade changed the way cartels operated in Mexico.
The Zetas, given their military background, were more studied in violence than their onetime Gulf bosses, and far more adept at logistics and planning. They began in 2010 to wage a war for territory and smuggling routes that staggered even the most hardened cartel killers.
The Zetas' bloodlust made the already grim violence that marked the government's War on Drugs seem quaint by comparison. The Zetas beheaded their victims or dissolved them in vats of acid; they forced captives to fight to the death for their own amusement, like a medieval death rite; and they killed innocents by the hundreds.
Then, the Zetas' brand of dehumanization caught on—and spread.
For all its exceptions, the drug economy often follows the laws of markets. It demands adaptation, flexibility. Once the Gulf had militarized by adding the Zetas to their ranks, other cartels in Mexico did, too. Competition between criminal groups got a lot deadlier after that. In 2011, the year after the Gulf and the Zetas split, Mexico registered nearly 28,000 murders, more than any other year since the government began collecting homicide data two decades before.
*****
As homicides skyrocketed and a fifth of the population abandoned San Fernando, Miriam held out. Sure, there were kidnappings, but only of the rich. Sure, people disappeared, but most were probably involved in organized crime somehow. The grisly murders? That was just the two warring cartels fighting it out. Denial allowed one to survive under the most abject circumstances, to avoid reckoning with the horrors of daily life and persevere in the face of them. The alternative was admitting that the life she had built for her family was gone; the alternative was fleeing or, in Miriam's case, fighting.
*****
Starting in the 1920s, after the United States outlawed the sale of alcohol, a group of contrabandists had managed to seize on the immense opportunity to grow rich by sneaking tequila and other liquors across the Rio Grande into Texas. But the smugglers flourished even after the Volstead Act was repealed. Having established a network, they began fencing anything they could find a market for, and on either side of the border— car parts, home electronics, tires, even cigarettes.
The organization, which would be retroactively named the Gulf Cartel by the government and media many decades later, was founded in the 193os by a former police officer named Juan Nepomuceno Guerra. Under Guerra, the roots of organized crime were only just beginning to sink themselves into the nation's foundation. Guerras network of smugglers was aided by his network of political connections, which assured the free and steady flow of merchandise. The government became partners in the smuggling enterprise, laying the groundwork for the integrated corruption and complicity to come and the patterns of crime and violence that would emerge in the following decades.
The United States would become a bold, unwitting partner in the growth of organized crime in Mexico, especially in Tamaulipas, first by banning alcohol, which helped lead Juan N. Guerra and his acolytes to create the organization, and later by banning narcotics, which prompted Guerras successor, Juan García Ábrego, to expand into smuggling cocaine. The expansion into drug smuggling would grow the revenue of the Gulf Cartel and other criminal organizations by billions of dollars, and would come at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives across Mexico.
*****
In the years after the revolution, Mexico remained an authoritarian state - a centralized structure that answered to the president, who wielded enormous power. For most of the twentieth century, Mexico was ruled by one political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose seemingly contradictory name in fact summed up its greatest asset—that it could be both institutional and revolutionary at once, all things to all people, an amorphous ideology whose sole principle was political dominance.
A single party proved a remarkable way to control the politics of a nation. The party worked with business and union leaders, workers and capitalists, criminals and cops. With every leader at every level playing for the same team, there was no external opposition to contend with, or public political disputes to stifle. With that sort of power, criminals bowed to the state and served at its pleasure.
***
A decade of war during the Mexican Revolution had paved the way for government promises of social equality, wealth redistribution, and a break from the culture of strongman politics. A new political class was coming of age, civilian leaders who would begin to define the Mexican political architecture for decades to come.
Juan N. Guerra and his family used their fortune to plug themselves into that political architecture, paying off politicians and police in an arrangement that functioned more like a cooperative than a clandestine operation. With close financial and personal ties that ran all the way to Mexico City, the family did not hide on the margins of society, as most criminals were forced to do. They were embraced by it. The organization the Guerras began would consolidate and control smuggling in the state for the better part of a hundred years and would eventually become the Gulf Cartel.
Governors, state senators, and even cabinet-level ministers would find their way into Guerra's good graces, and he into theirs. His brother, Roberto, would serve briefly in the government itself, as a top administrator of state finances in Tamaulipas. Guerra's nephew would become the mayor of Matamoros.
By the summer of 1947, the year Juan N. Guerra killed Gloria Lan-deros, his family had a decisive hold on much of the smuggling through Tamaulipas and deep ties with the politicians and authorities meant to stop them. The family enjoyed the sort of impunity that came only when politicians were fully integrated onto the payroll and into the operation-not just handed envelopes of cash here and there.
Guerra had determined early on that simply paying off individuals was not enough-making them complicit in the enterprise assured their self-interest and allowed one's outfit to be a going concern. And since the politicians controlled the police, customs agents, and mili-tary, their buy-in meant the smuggling operation was as close to a state-owned enterprise as it could get.
***
Leadership was striking the right balance of violence to inflict on enemies— enough to scare off competition but not so drastic as to draw attention or to compromise the relationships you were paying money to maintain. Discipline was a must. If all went well, you were laundering huge sums of money and overseeing complex logistical chains that ran from South America to the United States.
Where Juan N. Guerra had forged a physical network to smuggle goods and a political one to protect his business, Juan García Ábrego would pioneer his own changes, realigning the Gulf Cartel to capitalize on shifts in regional politics and appetites. He would amplify the bribery, to the tune of millions of dollars a month, and make the cartel's primary business smuggling cocaine.
For decades, drugs from South America were routed through the Caribbean to Florida, then on to a constellation of cities across the United States. But when the U.S. government shut down the Caribbean route, it inadvertently opened up Mexico as a new front in the drug-smuggling business. García Ábrego smelled a once-in-a-generation opportunity that would alter the fate of his cartel, and of Mexico itself.
***
Criminal enterprises were harsh metaphors of corporate enter-prises, their language and actions more literal but in essence quite similar: Companies lobbied, criminals corrupted; companies created brands, cartels created reputations; companies staged hostile take-overs, and so, too, did cartels.
***
In 1994, the Mexican government signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which allowed for the open trade of goods between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Cross-border commerce flourished, spawning an ever-growing number of opportunities to smuggle drugs into the United States. The busiest border crossing in all of Mexico was the city of Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas.
The same year NAFTA came into effect, there was an armed uprising in the south of Mexico by the Zapatistas, a group of poor-and poorly armed— indigenous villagers fed up with the indignity of corruption and the indifference of politicians. Though the movement was quickly crushed by the military, including the Special Forces group that would later form the Zetas, it was a hallmark of the nation's disaffection with politics and neoliberal globalization.
*****
There's a saying in Mexico, a choice, really, that criminals give those they wish to conscript: plata o plomo. The literal translation is "silver or lead": Take a payoff or catch a bullet. Those were the options the Letas gave to the politicians and police in their territories. Most went along with it; those who refused got the plomo.
***
Predatory acts against locals had not historically been a source of revenue for the cartels. Most drug traffickers enjoyed a certain amount of popularity among the common folk; they needed their support and hailed from their ranks. In a country deeply skeptical of its politicians and law enforcement, sticking it to the government was generally cheered.
But in the end, it was a numbers game: The Zetas had discovered a revenue stream that their Gulf bosses had not thought to exploit.
Kidnapping and extortion of locals were independent and complementary sources of income to international drug sales. In time, other criminal groups would find this new model hard to resist.
***
A name emerged for the missing, the unaccounted for; they were "the disappeared," as if their very presence was deleted. "Disappear" is a freighted verb in Latin America, a vocabulary shared by nations that have suffered its tragic distinction. It means not simply to vanish, but to be vanished: forcibly abducted and, often, never seen again. In the twentieth century, the authoritarian governments of Argentina and Chile tortured and disappeared thousands of supposed opposition members. Guatemala and El Salvador razed communities of accused sympathizers, both before and during their ultraviolent civil wars. Mexico had its own dark chapter in the sixties and seventies, when the PRi was responsible for the disappearance of some twelve hundred people. Historians have named this period of disappearances in the twentieth century the "dirty war."
But unlike Argentina, Chile, or Uruguay, Mexico never really tried to investigate these atrocities. While truth commissions and exhumations of mass graves sought to exorcise the sins of past regimes elsewhere in the region, government responsibility in Mexico stayed largely buried.
To disappear was a natural extension of the depraved war contin-uum, brutally efficient and practical. Without a body, there was no crime. But to disappear a person also inflicted perpetual torture on their families and loved ones, as it would be for Miriam Rodríguez.
For all the macabre scenes of murder compiled in the preceding era, the unending parade of horrors, at least families had had something to collect. To be disappeared robbed families of even the finality of death.
***
Branded by decades of association with the Gulf Cartel, the people of San Fernando suffered for this unwitting alliance. Fearful of Gulf members or sympathizers in their midst, the Zetas terrorized everyone in San Fernando.
Paramedics had stopped working in twenty-four-hour shifts— anyone shot or killed overnight would have to wait for sunrise to be treated or collected. Oxxos, the convenience stores that dot the map of Mex-ico, and which usually offer twenty-four-hour service, shut down by 5 P.M. in San Fernando. The sound of metal shutters clattering down prefaced the sunset as stores hustled to close in advance of nightfall. Families huddled indoors with the lights off, waiting for daybreak. Some bricked over their front doors and slipped in and out of their homes through side entrances. Trips after curfew, to the hospital or pharmacy, were calculated in the starkest terms—was the need life-threatening? Because the drive certainly was. The Zetas' paranoia became everyone else's, too.
***
"Tenian algo que ver." They had something to do with it. The victims were to blame. This was used as a justification for the violence waged against a neighbor, a stranger, even a friend—a way of living with the death and disappearances that suddenly became a part of everyone's life, a way to warrant inaction, cowardice, selfishness.
***
Miriam quickly discovered that the marines operated in an entirely different way from the police. They acted decisively, and lethally.
The marines slayed their enemies at a ratio of nearly thirty to one, and killed more enemies than they wounded, suggesting a tendency to finish off their rivals rather than leave them to fight another day. Staff at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico joked that it was only news when someone managed to survive a shootout with the marines.
*****
Torture in Mexico is as common as the reading of Miranda rights is in the United States, practically part and parcel of legal procedure. The United Nations has called it so widespread as to be "generalized." Authorities in Tamaulipas refer to it as "therapy." Miriam listened from another room, eager to hear what the boy had to say, while wincing every now and then with discomfort at the abuse.
*****
They dug holes in suspect locations, anywhere that might indicate disturbed earth-mountainsides with uneven grading, sections of darkened soil amid dry farmland, incongruous bald patches in grassy fields—hoping it might turn up the remains of their loved ones. To know a loved one had died was a horrible comfort.
***
"I never went to the authorities because they are the same people responsible for causing all the death in the first place."
***
The prosecutors nod, ignore the impulse to argue. They promise to make it right. To build a case. Why they hadn't in all the years prior is a mystery perhaps they themselves cannot answer. Why not do a good and proper job the first time around? Why catch only that which does not fall through the cracks? Why allow the cracks, sustain them? Because not everyone was going to do what Luis Héctor did. Not everyone was going to show up and present themselves and demand answers. And they were glad for that, because there were more cries than ears to listen, more need than capacity to respond. Stripped of expectations, most people accepted, even expected, that their cases, their desires, their justice, would fall to the subfloor. Had grown so used to it that it felt like the only way things could be.
Highlights:
Back then, the criminal group that would come to be known as the Gulf Cartel dominated the state of Tamaulipas, and as a result had always had some sort of presence in town. But things had been relatively peaceful. The criminals never bothered regular working people, and in fact relied on their support to conduct business. In those days, Miriam would see them around, driving luxury trucks, throwing parties, eating opulent meals in the town's restaurants and then paying the tabs of diners to curry favor with the population. The locals had learned to coexist with the group's operators in San Fernando, and Miriam, like others, came to accept the symbiosis between them— each left the other to their own devices.
And then, all of a sudden, 2010 had happened and everything she thought she knew about San Fernando and her life there changed. A vicious breakup of the Gulf Cartel in Tamaulipas, a key smuggling route into the United States, led to the area being carved up by two main cartels, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas.
The criminal organization that became the Gulf Cartel had run things in Tamaulipas for more than seventy years, first by smuggling alcohol, home goods, and electronics into the United States and then, in the 1990s, by trafficking massive quantities of cocaine, a move that took their earnings into the billions of dollars. As competition from rival traffickers stiffened, the leader of the cartel decided in 1998 to form a paramilitary wing within his organization to protect his inter-ests. That group, originally made up of Mexican Army Special Forces deserters, was known as the Zetas.
For more than a decade, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas worked together, side by side like the fingers of a glove, smuggling cocaine into the United States and warring with rival cartels across the coun-try. But in 2010, as disagreements between the two groups mounted, the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas split, and the Zetas decided to go into business for themselves. The fight that ensued between the Gulf and the Zetas for control of the drug trade changed the way cartels operated in Mexico.
The Zetas, given their military background, were more studied in violence than their onetime Gulf bosses, and far more adept at logistics and planning. They began in 2010 to wage a war for territory and smuggling routes that staggered even the most hardened cartel killers.
The Zetas' bloodlust made the already grim violence that marked the government's War on Drugs seem quaint by comparison. The Zetas beheaded their victims or dissolved them in vats of acid; they forced captives to fight to the death for their own amusement, like a medieval death rite; and they killed innocents by the hundreds.
Then, the Zetas' brand of dehumanization caught on—and spread.
For all its exceptions, the drug economy often follows the laws of markets. It demands adaptation, flexibility. Once the Gulf had militarized by adding the Zetas to their ranks, other cartels in Mexico did, too. Competition between criminal groups got a lot deadlier after that. In 2011, the year after the Gulf and the Zetas split, Mexico registered nearly 28,000 murders, more than any other year since the government began collecting homicide data two decades before.
*****
As homicides skyrocketed and a fifth of the population abandoned San Fernando, Miriam held out. Sure, there were kidnappings, but only of the rich. Sure, people disappeared, but most were probably involved in organized crime somehow. The grisly murders? That was just the two warring cartels fighting it out. Denial allowed one to survive under the most abject circumstances, to avoid reckoning with the horrors of daily life and persevere in the face of them. The alternative was admitting that the life she had built for her family was gone; the alternative was fleeing or, in Miriam's case, fighting.
*****
Starting in the 1920s, after the United States outlawed the sale of alcohol, a group of contrabandists had managed to seize on the immense opportunity to grow rich by sneaking tequila and other liquors across the Rio Grande into Texas. But the smugglers flourished even after the Volstead Act was repealed. Having established a network, they began fencing anything they could find a market for, and on either side of the border— car parts, home electronics, tires, even cigarettes.
The organization, which would be retroactively named the Gulf Cartel by the government and media many decades later, was founded in the 193os by a former police officer named Juan Nepomuceno Guerra. Under Guerra, the roots of organized crime were only just beginning to sink themselves into the nation's foundation. Guerras network of smugglers was aided by his network of political connections, which assured the free and steady flow of merchandise. The government became partners in the smuggling enterprise, laying the groundwork for the integrated corruption and complicity to come and the patterns of crime and violence that would emerge in the following decades.
The United States would become a bold, unwitting partner in the growth of organized crime in Mexico, especially in Tamaulipas, first by banning alcohol, which helped lead Juan N. Guerra and his acolytes to create the organization, and later by banning narcotics, which prompted Guerras successor, Juan García Ábrego, to expand into smuggling cocaine. The expansion into drug smuggling would grow the revenue of the Gulf Cartel and other criminal organizations by billions of dollars, and would come at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives across Mexico.
*****
In the years after the revolution, Mexico remained an authoritarian state - a centralized structure that answered to the president, who wielded enormous power. For most of the twentieth century, Mexico was ruled by one political party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, whose seemingly contradictory name in fact summed up its greatest asset—that it could be both institutional and revolutionary at once, all things to all people, an amorphous ideology whose sole principle was political dominance.
A single party proved a remarkable way to control the politics of a nation. The party worked with business and union leaders, workers and capitalists, criminals and cops. With every leader at every level playing for the same team, there was no external opposition to contend with, or public political disputes to stifle. With that sort of power, criminals bowed to the state and served at its pleasure.
***
A decade of war during the Mexican Revolution had paved the way for government promises of social equality, wealth redistribution, and a break from the culture of strongman politics. A new political class was coming of age, civilian leaders who would begin to define the Mexican political architecture for decades to come.
Juan N. Guerra and his family used their fortune to plug themselves into that political architecture, paying off politicians and police in an arrangement that functioned more like a cooperative than a clandestine operation. With close financial and personal ties that ran all the way to Mexico City, the family did not hide on the margins of society, as most criminals were forced to do. They were embraced by it. The organization the Guerras began would consolidate and control smuggling in the state for the better part of a hundred years and would eventually become the Gulf Cartel.
Governors, state senators, and even cabinet-level ministers would find their way into Guerra's good graces, and he into theirs. His brother, Roberto, would serve briefly in the government itself, as a top administrator of state finances in Tamaulipas. Guerra's nephew would become the mayor of Matamoros.
By the summer of 1947, the year Juan N. Guerra killed Gloria Lan-deros, his family had a decisive hold on much of the smuggling through Tamaulipas and deep ties with the politicians and authorities meant to stop them. The family enjoyed the sort of impunity that came only when politicians were fully integrated onto the payroll and into the operation-not just handed envelopes of cash here and there.
Guerra had determined early on that simply paying off individuals was not enough-making them complicit in the enterprise assured their self-interest and allowed one's outfit to be a going concern. And since the politicians controlled the police, customs agents, and mili-tary, their buy-in meant the smuggling operation was as close to a state-owned enterprise as it could get.
***
Leadership was striking the right balance of violence to inflict on enemies— enough to scare off competition but not so drastic as to draw attention or to compromise the relationships you were paying money to maintain. Discipline was a must. If all went well, you were laundering huge sums of money and overseeing complex logistical chains that ran from South America to the United States.
Where Juan N. Guerra had forged a physical network to smuggle goods and a political one to protect his business, Juan García Ábrego would pioneer his own changes, realigning the Gulf Cartel to capitalize on shifts in regional politics and appetites. He would amplify the bribery, to the tune of millions of dollars a month, and make the cartel's primary business smuggling cocaine.
For decades, drugs from South America were routed through the Caribbean to Florida, then on to a constellation of cities across the United States. But when the U.S. government shut down the Caribbean route, it inadvertently opened up Mexico as a new front in the drug-smuggling business. García Ábrego smelled a once-in-a-generation opportunity that would alter the fate of his cartel, and of Mexico itself.
***
Criminal enterprises were harsh metaphors of corporate enter-prises, their language and actions more literal but in essence quite similar: Companies lobbied, criminals corrupted; companies created brands, cartels created reputations; companies staged hostile take-overs, and so, too, did cartels.
***
In 1994, the Mexican government signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which allowed for the open trade of goods between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Cross-border commerce flourished, spawning an ever-growing number of opportunities to smuggle drugs into the United States. The busiest border crossing in all of Mexico was the city of Nuevo Laredo, in Tamaulipas.
The same year NAFTA came into effect, there was an armed uprising in the south of Mexico by the Zapatistas, a group of poor-and poorly armed— indigenous villagers fed up with the indignity of corruption and the indifference of politicians. Though the movement was quickly crushed by the military, including the Special Forces group that would later form the Zetas, it was a hallmark of the nation's disaffection with politics and neoliberal globalization.
*****
There's a saying in Mexico, a choice, really, that criminals give those they wish to conscript: plata o plomo. The literal translation is "silver or lead": Take a payoff or catch a bullet. Those were the options the Letas gave to the politicians and police in their territories. Most went along with it; those who refused got the plomo.
***
Predatory acts against locals had not historically been a source of revenue for the cartels. Most drug traffickers enjoyed a certain amount of popularity among the common folk; they needed their support and hailed from their ranks. In a country deeply skeptical of its politicians and law enforcement, sticking it to the government was generally cheered.
But in the end, it was a numbers game: The Zetas had discovered a revenue stream that their Gulf bosses had not thought to exploit.
Kidnapping and extortion of locals were independent and complementary sources of income to international drug sales. In time, other criminal groups would find this new model hard to resist.
***
A name emerged for the missing, the unaccounted for; they were "the disappeared," as if their very presence was deleted. "Disappear" is a freighted verb in Latin America, a vocabulary shared by nations that have suffered its tragic distinction. It means not simply to vanish, but to be vanished: forcibly abducted and, often, never seen again. In the twentieth century, the authoritarian governments of Argentina and Chile tortured and disappeared thousands of supposed opposition members. Guatemala and El Salvador razed communities of accused sympathizers, both before and during their ultraviolent civil wars. Mexico had its own dark chapter in the sixties and seventies, when the PRi was responsible for the disappearance of some twelve hundred people. Historians have named this period of disappearances in the twentieth century the "dirty war."
But unlike Argentina, Chile, or Uruguay, Mexico never really tried to investigate these atrocities. While truth commissions and exhumations of mass graves sought to exorcise the sins of past regimes elsewhere in the region, government responsibility in Mexico stayed largely buried.
To disappear was a natural extension of the depraved war contin-uum, brutally efficient and practical. Without a body, there was no crime. But to disappear a person also inflicted perpetual torture on their families and loved ones, as it would be for Miriam Rodríguez.
For all the macabre scenes of murder compiled in the preceding era, the unending parade of horrors, at least families had had something to collect. To be disappeared robbed families of even the finality of death.
***
Branded by decades of association with the Gulf Cartel, the people of San Fernando suffered for this unwitting alliance. Fearful of Gulf members or sympathizers in their midst, the Zetas terrorized everyone in San Fernando.
Paramedics had stopped working in twenty-four-hour shifts— anyone shot or killed overnight would have to wait for sunrise to be treated or collected. Oxxos, the convenience stores that dot the map of Mex-ico, and which usually offer twenty-four-hour service, shut down by 5 P.M. in San Fernando. The sound of metal shutters clattering down prefaced the sunset as stores hustled to close in advance of nightfall. Families huddled indoors with the lights off, waiting for daybreak. Some bricked over their front doors and slipped in and out of their homes through side entrances. Trips after curfew, to the hospital or pharmacy, were calculated in the starkest terms—was the need life-threatening? Because the drive certainly was. The Zetas' paranoia became everyone else's, too.
***
"Tenian algo que ver." They had something to do with it. The victims were to blame. This was used as a justification for the violence waged against a neighbor, a stranger, even a friend—a way of living with the death and disappearances that suddenly became a part of everyone's life, a way to warrant inaction, cowardice, selfishness.
***
Miriam quickly discovered that the marines operated in an entirely different way from the police. They acted decisively, and lethally.
The marines slayed their enemies at a ratio of nearly thirty to one, and killed more enemies than they wounded, suggesting a tendency to finish off their rivals rather than leave them to fight another day. Staff at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico joked that it was only news when someone managed to survive a shootout with the marines.
*****
Torture in Mexico is as common as the reading of Miranda rights is in the United States, practically part and parcel of legal procedure. The United Nations has called it so widespread as to be "generalized." Authorities in Tamaulipas refer to it as "therapy." Miriam listened from another room, eager to hear what the boy had to say, while wincing every now and then with discomfort at the abuse.
*****
They dug holes in suspect locations, anywhere that might indicate disturbed earth-mountainsides with uneven grading, sections of darkened soil amid dry farmland, incongruous bald patches in grassy fields—hoping it might turn up the remains of their loved ones. To know a loved one had died was a horrible comfort.
***
"I never went to the authorities because they are the same people responsible for causing all the death in the first place."
***
The prosecutors nod, ignore the impulse to argue. They promise to make it right. To build a case. Why they hadn't in all the years prior is a mystery perhaps they themselves cannot answer. Why not do a good and proper job the first time around? Why catch only that which does not fall through the cracks? Why allow the cracks, sustain them? Because not everyone was going to do what Luis Héctor did. Not everyone was going to show up and present themselves and demand answers. And they were glad for that, because there were more cries than ears to listen, more need than capacity to respond. Stripped of expectations, most people accepted, even expected, that their cases, their desires, their justice, would fall to the subfloor. Had grown so used to it that it felt like the only way things could be.
January 22, 2024
A devastating story of cartel violence and disappearance, told through the lens of one family’s experience.
Did an excellent job of personalizing the experience of losing a family member to the war on drugs, showing the sclerotic state of Mexican bureaucracy and how it re-traumatized the families of victims, and demonstrating the complete failure of the war on drugs.
Sometimes felt like the book lost the forest for the trees by over-focusing on Miriam and her backstory and less on the overall context of events.
Timeline was sometimes a bit hard to follow, especially in the first two parts - a fair bit of jumping around. I felt the last ~100 pages of the book were the strongest.
Did an excellent job of personalizing the experience of losing a family member to the war on drugs, showing the sclerotic state of Mexican bureaucracy and how it re-traumatized the families of victims, and demonstrating the complete failure of the war on drugs.
Sometimes felt like the book lost the forest for the trees by over-focusing on Miriam and her backstory and less on the overall context of events.
Timeline was sometimes a bit hard to follow, especially in the first two parts - a fair bit of jumping around. I felt the last ~100 pages of the book were the strongest.
April 23, 2024
Incredible story of a brave mother who went through a world of pain. As someone who’s interested in Latin and Central American culture, this one struck many chords, more so as it centres on the sad state of affairs Mexico has found itself in. Gang violence and drugs have pillaged a beautiful country and this books sheds lights on it and exactly what it’s people go through daily to feed Americas lust for illegal drugs. Ever more topical as people want to rid the nation of Mexicans, books like this are vital to see exactly why these people need to escape in the first place. A sad and shocking read, but a crucial one for the modern day.
May 29, 2023
Fear is Just a Word - Azem Ahmed
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this heart-rending and powerful eARC.
I am reading this book the day before Mother's Day, the perfect time to read about a mother's unwavering love of her daughter, and Mom's dedication in seeing that her daughter's killers are brought to justice (even if she must bring them to justice herself).
An account of a young woman in her wary 20:s she is kidnapped for ransom by members of a brutal San Fernando gang, in the hotbed of gang warfare
A difficult journey of love, by a mother for the daughter she lost. An amazing story, well-written and captivating, nothing should keep this 5 star novel off the bestseller lists.
Until next time, love your "loved ones"... 😘😉
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this heart-rending and powerful eARC.
I am reading this book the day before Mother's Day, the perfect time to read about a mother's unwavering love of her daughter, and Mom's dedication in seeing that her daughter's killers are brought to justice (even if she must bring them to justice herself).
An account of a young woman in her wary 20:s she is kidnapped for ransom by members of a brutal San Fernando gang, in the hotbed of gang warfare
A difficult journey of love, by a mother for the daughter she lost. An amazing story, well-written and captivating, nothing should keep this 5 star novel off the bestseller lists.
Until next time, love your "loved ones"... 😘😉
December 12, 2023
The incredible story of a mother who goes after the Mexican drug cartel that kidnapped her daughter. This true story is about a brave, focused, and fearless woman who finds herself having to deal with government officials, military personnel, and Zeta cartel members all while helping other families who were also trying to locate their own disappeared relatives.
A heart-wrenching and shocking read that is hard to put down.
Thank you author, publisher, and Netgalley for this ARC.
A heart-wrenching and shocking read that is hard to put down.
Thank you author, publisher, and Netgalley for this ARC.
February 6, 2024
Page 162 my book
More than a hundred thousand people have disappeared in Mexico since the start of the War on Drugs.
This is a sad book to read. It’s both searing and riveting. A woman, Miriam, becomes an activist after her daughter is kidnapped and disappears in the city of San Fernando, which is about one hundred miles south of the U.S. border.
Page 58
“Disappear” is a freighted verb in Latin America, a vocabulary shared by nations that have suffered its tragic distinction. It means not simply to vanish, but to be vanished: forcibly abducted and, often, never seen again.
Page 59
To disappear was a natural extension of the depraved war continuum, brutally efficient and practical. Without a body, there was no crime. But to disappear a person also inflicted perpetual torture on their families and loved ones… To be disappeared robbed families of even the finality of death.
Miriam becomes in a very real sense the investigator – prodding officials at all levels of government to do something – the local police, state police and officials, the federal government, and the military.
The military became involved when the town of San Fernando was taken over by the Zeta cartel. San Fernando was an essential passageway to the U.S. The Zetas terrorized the town – extorting businesses and kidnapping. It was an extension of their income from drug money.
Miriam was relentless in pursuing those involved in the kidnapping of her daughter and built up a huge file. She formed a network of contacts with all levels of government and ceaselessly badgered them to investigate and interview suspects. She was often there during the interviews asking follow-up questions, challenging the interviewees when there were inconsistencies, getting more names, and establishing who was who in the cartel command structure. Mariam was continually learning about both the Zetas and the Mexican legal structure. From these interviews, Miriam managed to build up a web of the perpetrators complicit in her daughters' kidnapping. She was putting everything in writing – establishing a paper trail, almost becoming a lawyer. She established an activist group for the victims of kidnappings.
Entire communities were living under the terrorist threat of cartel violence. It could happen to anyone, anytime. It reached the stage where if you knew of a family suffering from a kidnapping – one would avoid them, like they were carrying some sort of plague. Life became like living under an endless existential threat. The entire legal system was subservient to the cartels. Miriam managed by relentless agitation to produce some results.
As a warning the level of violence and sadism is atrocious. What makes people act in this way is beyond comprehension.
The author gives us a history of Mexico and shows how corruption has become increasingly ingrained at all levels of government. It took a woman like Miriam to confront and battle that.
Page 103
Losing a loved one to kidnapping and murder hardened you, rearranged the way you thought and the way you felt about others. With justice in such short supply, with just two of every hundred homicides solved nationwide, you took what you could get, who cared about some dead Zetas? Not even their own families, as it turned out. Of the six bodies left in Chaco’s funeral home, only one, Marganta’s, was collected.
Page 170 – 171
Samuel told [Miriam] that he had never wanted to file a complaint and had no plans now. After his son had vanished, abducted while with friends, the only closure he had received had been a visit from the men responsible, who warned him to keep his mouth shut…. [They] attempted to extort him for seven hundred dollars, which made him laugh. He didn’t even earn that much in a month… He had his other children to think about.
More than a hundred thousand people have disappeared in Mexico since the start of the War on Drugs.
This is a sad book to read. It’s both searing and riveting. A woman, Miriam, becomes an activist after her daughter is kidnapped and disappears in the city of San Fernando, which is about one hundred miles south of the U.S. border.
Page 58
“Disappear” is a freighted verb in Latin America, a vocabulary shared by nations that have suffered its tragic distinction. It means not simply to vanish, but to be vanished: forcibly abducted and, often, never seen again.
Page 59
To disappear was a natural extension of the depraved war continuum, brutally efficient and practical. Without a body, there was no crime. But to disappear a person also inflicted perpetual torture on their families and loved ones… To be disappeared robbed families of even the finality of death.
Miriam becomes in a very real sense the investigator – prodding officials at all levels of government to do something – the local police, state police and officials, the federal government, and the military.
The military became involved when the town of San Fernando was taken over by the Zeta cartel. San Fernando was an essential passageway to the U.S. The Zetas terrorized the town – extorting businesses and kidnapping. It was an extension of their income from drug money.
Miriam was relentless in pursuing those involved in the kidnapping of her daughter and built up a huge file. She formed a network of contacts with all levels of government and ceaselessly badgered them to investigate and interview suspects. She was often there during the interviews asking follow-up questions, challenging the interviewees when there were inconsistencies, getting more names, and establishing who was who in the cartel command structure. Mariam was continually learning about both the Zetas and the Mexican legal structure. From these interviews, Miriam managed to build up a web of the perpetrators complicit in her daughters' kidnapping. She was putting everything in writing – establishing a paper trail, almost becoming a lawyer. She established an activist group for the victims of kidnappings.
Entire communities were living under the terrorist threat of cartel violence. It could happen to anyone, anytime. It reached the stage where if you knew of a family suffering from a kidnapping – one would avoid them, like they were carrying some sort of plague. Life became like living under an endless existential threat. The entire legal system was subservient to the cartels. Miriam managed by relentless agitation to produce some results.
As a warning the level of violence and sadism is atrocious. What makes people act in this way is beyond comprehension.
The author gives us a history of Mexico and shows how corruption has become increasingly ingrained at all levels of government. It took a woman like Miriam to confront and battle that.
Page 103
Losing a loved one to kidnapping and murder hardened you, rearranged the way you thought and the way you felt about others. With justice in such short supply, with just two of every hundred homicides solved nationwide, you took what you could get, who cared about some dead Zetas? Not even their own families, as it turned out. Of the six bodies left in Chaco’s funeral home, only one, Marganta’s, was collected.
Page 170 – 171
Samuel told [Miriam] that he had never wanted to file a complaint and had no plans now. After his son had vanished, abducted while with friends, the only closure he had received had been a visit from the men responsible, who warned him to keep his mouth shut…. [They] attempted to extort him for seven hundred dollars, which made him laugh. He didn’t even earn that much in a month… He had his other children to think about.
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January 8, 2024This is truly a very powerful and moving telling of the death of a young innocent girl, and her mother’s fight for justice in the death. Azam Ahmed is a noted New York Times reporter, who digs deeply into the story, taking the reader right into the heart and soul of the investigation. It talks about the Mexican cartels, and their powerful hold on the region. There are many, and their fight for power and supremacy, and quest for financial gain at the expense of the innocent, is certainly well-known from first-hand information on television.
But Azam takes us even deeper into this world, bringing to the forefront how the innocent are caught in the crossfire, with the Cartels not caring who lives and dies in their campaign for control in the town of San Fernando in Mexico. The Zetas controlled their area. They were notorious for being one of the most vicious and cut-throat gangs in that town. They killed without conscience, even murdering more than seventy people one night, burying the bodies in a mass grave on a farm. In FEAR IS JUST A WORD, Azam writes about the disappearance of Karen Rodriquez one night. When people are kidnapped, the Cartels ask for ransom money, promising to return the victim once the money is paid. Sometimes that happens, more times than not, it does not. Karen’s mother Miriam paid the $77,000 the Zeta asked for, expecting to see her daughter again.
She kept up hope that Karen would be back, but soon accepted the fact she would likely never see Karen again. Then she went into revenge mode, targeting those she believed were behind the abduction. She turns into a one person wrecking crew almost, as she learns the names of the people who were behind Karen’s death. She files reports with authorities, and soon gets results when people are killed thanks to the Marines, but it is a long ways from getting to the top of the Cartel’s chain of command.
Slowly and surely, more results happen, as she learns how Karen died, who was responsible, and presumably where she was buried. Bones are discovered, and she wants them tested for Karen’s DNA.
Azam brings us as close to the workings of the Cartel as possible, how they hired young men and women to do their bidding, underlings for the big bosses who snap their fingers and tell them what to do and who to kill. Miriam put her life on the line, for not only revenge for her daughter, but for others whose families were torn apart in similar ways. Miriam was gunned down by the Zetas on Mother’s Day 2017, but her tireless work had helped bring down many in the Cartel, as the quest continued for more members.
FEAR IS JUST A WORD, is as riveting a book as you would ever find, truly compelling and filled with raw emotion and courage.
But Azam takes us even deeper into this world, bringing to the forefront how the innocent are caught in the crossfire, with the Cartels not caring who lives and dies in their campaign for control in the town of San Fernando in Mexico. The Zetas controlled their area. They were notorious for being one of the most vicious and cut-throat gangs in that town. They killed without conscience, even murdering more than seventy people one night, burying the bodies in a mass grave on a farm. In FEAR IS JUST A WORD, Azam writes about the disappearance of Karen Rodriquez one night. When people are kidnapped, the Cartels ask for ransom money, promising to return the victim once the money is paid. Sometimes that happens, more times than not, it does not. Karen’s mother Miriam paid the $77,000 the Zeta asked for, expecting to see her daughter again.
She kept up hope that Karen would be back, but soon accepted the fact she would likely never see Karen again. Then she went into revenge mode, targeting those she believed were behind the abduction. She turns into a one person wrecking crew almost, as she learns the names of the people who were behind Karen’s death. She files reports with authorities, and soon gets results when people are killed thanks to the Marines, but it is a long ways from getting to the top of the Cartel’s chain of command.
Slowly and surely, more results happen, as she learns how Karen died, who was responsible, and presumably where she was buried. Bones are discovered, and she wants them tested for Karen’s DNA.
Azam brings us as close to the workings of the Cartel as possible, how they hired young men and women to do their bidding, underlings for the big bosses who snap their fingers and tell them what to do and who to kill. Miriam put her life on the line, for not only revenge for her daughter, but for others whose families were torn apart in similar ways. Miriam was gunned down by the Zetas on Mother’s Day 2017, but her tireless work had helped bring down many in the Cartel, as the quest continued for more members.
FEAR IS JUST A WORD, is as riveting a book as you would ever find, truly compelling and filled with raw emotion and courage.
November 22, 2023
We Americans visit Mexico for the beaches, the food, and the beauty, yet there is another side that is deliberately hidden from the International tourist. This book explores those "just south-of-the-border" states and their struggles. Being from Texas, I have crossed the border numerous times, the danger level has increased with each visit, with the last 2-3 visits being changed due to gang activity. The last visit was to Matamoros, the setting for this book. NAFTA in 1992 quickly changed Nuevo Laredo and later the gun battles were frequent events at Reynosa, leaving only Matamoros as a drive-over option. This has become the easternmost trade route for "meth, cocaine, and cheap illegal goods sent to the USA's wealthy to satisfy our "recreational" needs.
The Zetas was the cartel that controlled the illegal trade at this border crossing as well as the Mexico trade routes. Controlled may not be the correct word since the Drug War created increased violence with 100,000 bodies missing and 52,000 re-covered, which leaves a large number buried under the Mexican soil in unknown locations. Battles between the soldiers and the Zetas resulted in 2000 gang members being killed but did little to change the behavior
This story details one woman's task in finding her daughter's killers. The Zetas showed up in San Fernando shooting up the town with "Big Boy Guns", intimidating the citizens, and killing enemy gang members, all just to protect their trade route, and to expand their quest for total control. Extortion, bribes, kidnapping for ramson, and political ownership were the norm.
Miriam, the mom, developed a list of gang members who took part in the killing of her young daughter and set about locating each and informing the inept law officials leading to an arrest. Soon she is on the hit list, yet continues her quest. In her state there were 661 bodies claimed, each the result of extermination by the Zetas. Miriam and her son continue this search until justice is obtained; that is at least "Mexican-style justice". In the end, she loses, but her son continues.
As a tourist, one feels fairly safe, but the locals have a different perspective. Being poor and having few options add to the current border issues. No easy answers!
The Zetas was the cartel that controlled the illegal trade at this border crossing as well as the Mexico trade routes. Controlled may not be the correct word since the Drug War created increased violence with 100,000 bodies missing and 52,000 re-covered, which leaves a large number buried under the Mexican soil in unknown locations. Battles between the soldiers and the Zetas resulted in 2000 gang members being killed but did little to change the behavior
This story details one woman's task in finding her daughter's killers. The Zetas showed up in San Fernando shooting up the town with "Big Boy Guns", intimidating the citizens, and killing enemy gang members, all just to protect their trade route, and to expand their quest for total control. Extortion, bribes, kidnapping for ramson, and political ownership were the norm.
Miriam, the mom, developed a list of gang members who took part in the killing of her young daughter and set about locating each and informing the inept law officials leading to an arrest. Soon she is on the hit list, yet continues her quest. In her state there were 661 bodies claimed, each the result of extermination by the Zetas. Miriam and her son continue this search until justice is obtained; that is at least "Mexican-style justice". In the end, she loses, but her son continues.
As a tourist, one feels fairly safe, but the locals have a different perspective. Being poor and having few options add to the current border issues. No easy answers!
October 5, 2023
Fear is Just a Word is a story with many layers. It's the tale of a mother seeking revenge. It's the worst nightmare of a parent whose child has gone missing. It's the story of marginalized youth living in a failed state and their path to perdition. Azam Ahmed tells all these stories with empathy, heart, and the thoroughness of a skilled investigative journalist.
Ahmed spent years sitting down with many of the characters in this book, specially the family of Miriam Rodriguez, revisiting every detail of a tragic story so that this important work of nonfiction could come to life.
The story will be captivating for readers for different reasons. Just like a thriller, you will be pulled into Miriam's relentless quest to bring justice to everyone involved in her daughter's murder. It's also a well-documented work about the making of the drug cartel in Mexico and how it thrived under the auspices of lay enforcement and government authorities.
But what makes Fear Is Just a Word and Ahmed's writing an important work is more nuanced. At some point in the book, Ahmed recounts a time when Miriam confronted one of her targets after his arrest. Her conscious and humanity pushed side to side from anger to compassion, from wanting justice to offering food to her daughter's perpetrator.
Many members of the drug cartel who were involved in her daughter's murder grew up in the streets of San Fernando. They worked at gas stations, begged for money in the streets, and were her daughter's friends. Some were forced to join the cartel; others joined by choice.
The violence in this story is inexcusable and, many times, incomprehensible. But a criminal was a child, a daughter, or a neighbor once. The lives of victims and perpetrators are intertwined in San Fernando and other parts of Mexico. In the end, everyone is a casualty of a failing state, corruption, and violence.
Ahmed's writing does justice to Miriam's plight, but also to the many lives lost to the war on drugs in Mexico.
Ahmed spent years sitting down with many of the characters in this book, specially the family of Miriam Rodriguez, revisiting every detail of a tragic story so that this important work of nonfiction could come to life.
The story will be captivating for readers for different reasons. Just like a thriller, you will be pulled into Miriam's relentless quest to bring justice to everyone involved in her daughter's murder. It's also a well-documented work about the making of the drug cartel in Mexico and how it thrived under the auspices of lay enforcement and government authorities.
But what makes Fear Is Just a Word and Ahmed's writing an important work is more nuanced. At some point in the book, Ahmed recounts a time when Miriam confronted one of her targets after his arrest. Her conscious and humanity pushed side to side from anger to compassion, from wanting justice to offering food to her daughter's perpetrator.
Many members of the drug cartel who were involved in her daughter's murder grew up in the streets of San Fernando. They worked at gas stations, begged for money in the streets, and were her daughter's friends. Some were forced to join the cartel; others joined by choice.
The violence in this story is inexcusable and, many times, incomprehensible. But a criminal was a child, a daughter, or a neighbor once. The lives of victims and perpetrators are intertwined in San Fernando and other parts of Mexico. In the end, everyone is a casualty of a failing state, corruption, and violence.
Ahmed's writing does justice to Miriam's plight, but also to the many lives lost to the war on drugs in Mexico.
November 1, 2023
What a stunner! Azam Ahmed has written a story that seems like the next best action thriller, and while it is a thriller, it's all 100% true. Miriam lives in a town that the Mexican Cartel Zeta is starting to overtake. Even to shutting down the town at one point with an unbelievable shoot out between Zeta and the local police. What happens next, is the town tries to recover. The only problem is, Zeta becomes out of control, 'disappearing' the locals to hold for ransom, even kidnapping some more than once just for the money. Miriam, like the rest of the townspeople, tries to keep her head down and continues her normal every day life, until...her daughter is kidnapped as well. What happens next is a mother who becomes frustrated with the lack of attention and action of the local police department that she takes matters into her own hands and hires someone to take care of two of her daughters captors. Only, she realizes that the plan doesn't leave her room to ask questions and find out all who are involved, so Miriam changes tactics and starts filing reports with the police as she tracks down people, names, addresses, phone numbers, and keeps filing reports to leave a paper trail of evidence that will help her hold those responsible for their actions. The story is unbelievable, but it's just heartbreakingly true. Highly recommend!!!
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*
*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my own opinion*
April 2, 2024
As a 41 year old man, coming from a third world country, every word in this book seems so familiar and real to me. It’s sad to admit, but it’s our reality in our country. The ones that are supposed to protect our society are the ones that hurt us because of their involvement with the cartel. I say most of them, knowing and also believing that we still have good people in higher positions. It’s devastating to know how we destroy our own towns, cities, and countries over drugs. They are killing our society. But like they say back home, if we didn’t have consumers, we would not have people selling. You can’t place the blame on one party, I just wish we would all take the time to educate our kids about how dangerous their decisions can be. Sometimes young kids never find the way out and the ones that do, I’m happy for them. After all this, I really think this book exposes the reality and cruelty of the cartels operating in different countries and Latin America. Also I would like to recognize the amazing job that the president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele has been doing in only 4 years. He has almost stopped the danger of drugs and the Maras. We need more leaders like him, honest young people. I do believe if we educate our kids better with higher values, we will stop being third world countries because they are our future leaders and society.
October 12, 2023
For many years, I, and others, have been searching for the best summation of the narco wars and their place in the Mexican political and cultural milieu. If you want American post-war history, you have Caro's "The Years of Lyndon Johnson". If you want European history from 1945 to now, you have Judt's "Postwar". But there has not been an attempt worth reading that treats the greatest crisis in our hemisphere with the same level of rigor and brilliance.
Until now.
Ahmed's "Fear is Just a Word" joins that pantheon. He combines the journalist's dogged pursuit of firsthand experience and facts with a level of writing that is without peer in his age group and generation. He elects to tell a story of Mexican culture, Mexican history, Mexican politics and Mexican society through the lens of one of the most captivating stories of our time. This is a gargantuan undertaken but he pulls it off. The writing is crisp, the disbursement of history just enough to drive its salience home to the reader and the mystery/action elements are captivating.
After finishing, I looked Ahmed up to find his other books and was stunned to learn that this was his first. I am hard pressed to identify a stronger debut. Ahmed is a brilliant writer and this is a brilliant work. I read it in three sittings and suspect many will do the same. We look forward to the next one.
Until now.
Ahmed's "Fear is Just a Word" joins that pantheon. He combines the journalist's dogged pursuit of firsthand experience and facts with a level of writing that is without peer in his age group and generation. He elects to tell a story of Mexican culture, Mexican history, Mexican politics and Mexican society through the lens of one of the most captivating stories of our time. This is a gargantuan undertaken but he pulls it off. The writing is crisp, the disbursement of history just enough to drive its salience home to the reader and the mystery/action elements are captivating.
After finishing, I looked Ahmed up to find his other books and was stunned to learn that this was his first. I am hard pressed to identify a stronger debut. Ahmed is a brilliant writer and this is a brilliant work. I read it in three sittings and suspect many will do the same. We look forward to the next one.
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