Narcoland: Journalist Braves Death Threats to Reveal Ties Between Mexican Government & Drug Cartels

[Judi Lynn]

Narcoland: Journalist Braves Death Threats to Reveal Ties Between Mexican Government & Drug Cartels
Monday, 30 September 2013 13:23 By Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now | Video Report

Anabel Hernández has been described as one of the most courageous journalists in Mexico. In 2010, she published a groundbreaking book linking top Mexican governmental officials to the world's most powerful drug cartels. She received so many death threats that the National Human Rights Commission assigned her two full-time bodyguards. Despite the danger, she continued to report. In 2012, she received the Golden Pen of Freedom award from the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. Her own father was kidnapped and murdered 13 years ago. Her book on the Mexican drug wars, "Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords And Their Godfathers," has just been translated into English. "What I found in official documents and by testimonies is that the secretary of public security, Genaro Garcia Luna, was the most powerful chief of police in the government of Felipe Calderon. He was really involved with the drug cartels, with the Sinaloa cartel, he was in the payroll as the same, as the most important chief of the police of the federal police," Hernández said. "So these guys not just protect the Sinaloa cartel, they also help them traffic drugs and money in the most important airports in Mexico."

Video, and transcript at:

http://www.truth-out.org/video/item/19145-narcoland-journalist-braves-death-threats-to-reveal-ties-between-mexican-government-drug-cartels

[FreakinDJ]

1. Everyone knows that already

[Judi Lynn]

2. 'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie'

'Mexico's war on drugs is one big lie'

Anabel Hernández, journalist and author, accuses the Mexican state of complicity with the cartels, and says the 'war on drugs' is a sham. She's had headless animals left at her door and her family have been threatened by gunmen. Now her courageous bestseller, extracted below, is to be published in the UK

Ed Vulliamy
The Observer, Saturday 31 August 2013

During January 2011, Anabel Hernández's extended family held a party at a favourite cafe in the north of Mexico City. The gathering was to celebrate the birthday of Anabel's niece. As one of the country's leading journalists who rarely allows herself time off, she was especially happy because "the entire family was there. There are so many of us that it's extremely difficult to get everybody together in one place. It hardly ever happens."

Anabel Hernández had to leave early, as so often, "to finish an article", and it was after she left that gunmen burst in. "Pointing rifles at my family, walking round the room – and taking wallets from people. But this was no robbery; no one tried to use any of the credit cards – it was pure intimidation, aimed at my family, and at me." It was more than a year before the authorities began looking for the assailants. And during that time the threats had continued: one afternoon last June, Hernández opened her front door to find decapitated animals in a box on the doorstep.

Hernández's offence was to write a book about the drug cartels that have wrought carnage across Mexico, taking some 80,000 lives, leaving a further 20,000 unaccounted for – and forging a new form of 21st-century warfare. But there have been other books about this bloodletting; what made Los Señores del Narco different was its relentless narrative linking the syndicate that has driven much of the violence – the Sinaloa cartel, the biggest criminal organisation in the world – to the leadership of the Mexican state.

Her further sin against the establishment and cartels was that the book became, and remains, a bestseller: more than 100,000 copies sold in Mexico. The success is impossible to overstate, a staggering figure for a non-fiction book in a country with indices of income and literacy incomparable to the American-European book-buying market. The wildfire interest delivers a clear message, says Hernández: "So many Mexicans do not believe the official version of this war. They do not believe the government are good guys, fighting the cartels. They know the government is lying, they don't carry their heads in the clouds."

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/mexico-drugs-anabel-hernandez-narcoland