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A stunning investigation of the life and legend of Mexican kingpin Joaquin Archivaldo "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, building on Noah Hurowitz's revelatory coverage for Rolling Stone of El Chapo's federal drug-trafficking trial.
This is the true story of how El Chapo built the world's wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months' worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo's family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down.
Over the course of three decades, El Chapo was responsible for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, and fentanyl around the world, becoming in the process the most celebrated and reviled drug lord since Pablo Escobar. El Chapo waged ruthless wars against his rivals and former allies, plunging vast areas of Mexico into unprecedented levels of violence, even as many in his home state of Sinaloa continued to view him as a hero.
This unputdownable book, written by a great new talent, brings El Chapo's exploits into a focus that previous profiles have failed to capture. Hurowitz digs in deep beyond the legends and delves into El Chapo's life and legacy-not just the hunt for him, revealing some of the most dramatic and often horrifying moments of his notorious career, including the infamous prison escapes, brutal murders, multi-million-dollar government payoffs, and the paranoia and narcissism that led to his downfall. From the evolution of organized crime in Mexico to the militarization of the drug war to the devastation wrought on both sides of the border by the introduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, this book is a gripping and comprehensive work of investigative, on-the-ground reporting.
A stunning investigation of the life and legend of Mexican kingpin Joaquin Archivaldo "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, building on Noah Hurowitz's revelatory coverage for Rolling Stone of El Chapo's federal drug-trafficking trial.
This is the true story of how El Chapo built the world's wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months' worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo's family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down.
Over the course of three decades, El Chapo was responsible for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, and fentanyl around the world, becoming in the process the most celebrated and reviled drug lord since Pablo Escobar. El Chapo waged ruthless wars against his rivals and former allies, plunging vast areas of Mexico into unprecedented levels of violence, even as many in his home state of Sinaloa continued to view him as a hero.
This unputdownable book, written by a great new talent, brings El Chapo's exploits into a focus that previous profiles have failed to capture. Hurowitz digs in deep beyond the legends and delves into El Chapo's life and legacy-not just the hunt for him, revealing some of the most dramatic and often horrifying moments of his notorious career, including the infamous prison escapes, brutal murders, multi-million-dollar government payoffs, and the paranoia and narcissism that led to his downfall. From the evolution of organized crime in Mexico to the militarization of the drug war to the devastation wrought on both sides of the border by the introduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, this book is a gripping and comprehensive work of investigative, on-the-ground reporting.
Noah Hurowitz is a journalist based in New York City. He covered the trial of El Chapo for Rolling Stone, and his work has also appeared in The Village Voice, The Baffler, New York magazine, and many more. El Chapo is his first book.
“El Chapo tears through the myth of Mexico's most infamous mobster
and reveals the flesh and blood of the living man, the vibrant if
cutthroat mountain culture he hailed from and the failed war on
drugs that made him.” —Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and
Blood Gun Money
“El Chapo tears through the myth of Mexico's most infamous mobster
and reveals the flesh and blood of the living man, the vibrant if
cutthroat mountain culture he hailed from and the failed war on
drugs that made him.” —Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco and
Blood Gun Money
“El Chapo is the best book you’re going to read on the rise and
fall of the 21st century’s most notorious narco. It’s a fast-paced
journey through the landscape and history of the bloody war on
drugs in Mexico. The war on drugs may have failed for most of us,
but as Hurowitz points out, it’s working out very nicely for those
who profit from it, including the narcos themselves who make their
fortunes in the black market. Pick up this book and get
smarter on the drugs business.” —Toby Muse, Kilo: Inside the
Deadliest Cocaine Cartels from the Jungles to the Streets
“Hurowitz fleshes out the harrowing details of Mexico’s drug
violence and high-level corruption, and draws on interviews with
former cartel insiders to document El Chapo’s staggering ambitions
and deep-seated paranoia…. [The author’s] access to players on both
sides of the drug war impresses.” —Publishers Weekly
“A fast-paced study of the infamous, now imprisoned Mexican drug
lord and the social structures that supported and enabled his
rise…Readers won’t look at the war on drugs the same way after
reading Hurowitz’s damning account.” —Kirkus
“[A] much-needed revisit of the Chapo story...fast-paced, at times
edgy...Hurowitz manages to capture the history of the drug war in
Mexico well.” —Small Wars Journal
“This remarkably engaging...Truly the definitive account of the
life of Joaquín Guzmán, El Chapo. Yet it is about so much more than
just the world’s most infamous drug trafficker. Through the story
of El Chapo, Hurowitz reveals in compelling fashion the calculated
and violent absurdity that is the so-called War on Drugs—a war that
has proven more effective in killing, terrorizing, and repressing
poor people across the globe than stopping the flow of illicit
drugs. This impressively researched book is essential reading.”
—Alexander Aviña, author of Specters of Revolution: Peasant
Guerrillas in the Cold War Mexican Countryside
"El Chapo buries the sensationalism and strips the myths from
Mexico's most famous drug lord. Instead Hurowitz gives us a
complex, but no less rollicking, portrait of a man caught between
America's never-ending demand for narcotics, its persistent need
for a scapegoat and a Mexican state always happy to dish one
up. El Chapo is true crime biography done right."
—Benjamin T. Smith, author of The Dope: The Real History of
the Mexican Drug Trade
"Hurowitz did what a few American journalists or writers do: he
went to Mexico to capture the background of the events that
describe and explain the failure of the American war on drugs and
the rise of criminals like Chapo Guzmán. El Chapo is a great book,
easy to digest for readers and a fabulous explanation with a
healthy narrative of the cruel reality on both sides of the Río
Bravo about narcotrafficking, corruption and political blindness."
—J. Jesús Esquivel, Washington DC correspondent
for Proceso magazine and author of El Juicio:
Crónica de la caída del Chapo
“A rare achievement: a page-turning, true crime narrative with a
deep and well-researched analysis. Hurowitz details the rise to
power of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán, but never takes his eye off the
structures of power that facilitated it, within both the Mexican
government and the global economy.” —Christy Thornton, assistant
professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins
University and author of Revolution in Development: Mexico and
the Governance of the Global Economy
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