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Desperados

Latin Drug Lords, US Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win

by Elaine Shannon

ISBN: 0670810266
Publisher: Viking Penguin, New York, USA
Publication Date: 1988
Binding: Hard Cover    499 pages
Book Condition: Excellent

Edition: Frist Edition

NOTE:   All of my listings used  to contain many HUGE close-up photos embedded within my listing - however in June 2017 action taken by Photobucket, the image hosting website, has removed them all -  THIS  listing has had my photos deleted. I am happy to email any photos you request via email.

Published in New York, USA by Viking Penguin this is a genuine First edition from 1988. The hard cover book is in nearest to fine condition. 

This is a VERY collectible copy! Internally & Externally mint clean HARDCOVER with a very good dustjacket, which is unclipped  price still present from 1988) - it has some rubbing.  It measures  9½ins  X  6½ins  or  24cms  x  16cms and the pages are all unmarked.  Very carefully and well preserved since purchase. A GREAT copy(see below)!!

This hard cover FIRST Edition has grey boards with black backstrap to spine and sharp silver titles.  Tightly bound there are 499 spotless pages. Illustrated with photographs

Synopsis ………

In the course of covering the international drug scene for 10 years for Newsweek (she is now with Time ) Shannon clearly developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. Here she draws on that expertise, basing her book on the torture-murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1985, a case that is still unresolved. She reveals that the U.S. government has talked a good anti-drug fight but has done little more than form study commissions, convene conferences and sign treaties. She contends, also, that Mexico's war on drugs has been rife with corruption, from street cops to high officials. And, farther south, the Colombian administration has been fighting a losing battle against a cartel headquartered in Medellin, with judges and lawmen assassinated by the dozen. The conclusion: the only way to win the war is to end the demand in America for marijuana and cocaine. An instructive study.

Review from N Y Times ……….

DESPERADOS Latin Drug Lords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can't Win. By Elaine Shannon. Illustrated.

Enrique Camarena, an agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration stationed in Guadalajara, Mexico, left his office on the afternoon of Feb. 7, 1985, to meet his wife for lunch. They never met. Camarena was kidnapped outside the American Consulate and subsequently tortured. One month later his body was found, wrapped in a plastic bag. Early this year a Federal indictment was brought in the case, and in September three men were convicted of participating in the murder.

''Desperados'' traces the tortuous quest by law enforcement officials to solve the case of Camarena's abduction, torture and murder. Elaine Shannon, after a well-reported reconstruction of the investigation, concludes that the indictment - which charged five Mexicans, including two former police officials, with Camarena's murder and named four other men as accessories - is a ''thin and unsatisfying account of the murder.'' She goes on to raise disturbing questions, such as whether additional senior Mexican officials were involved in the killing or in efforts to cover it up.

These questions are largely left unanswered. The book, however, places them in a larger context - the clash that has often occurred between drug enforcement and other American foreign policy goals. The relationship between the United States and Mexico is a particularly sensitive example of that conflict.

Ms. Shannon suggests that drug enforcement in Mexico has sometimes been subordinated to that special alliance, but important elements of United States-Mexican relations - oil, geography, culture, immigration, history, trade or debt - are not given much attention. What is more convincing than that argument is her contention that the Reagan Administration, including Vice President Bush, has not given top priority to the ''war'' against drugs, judging the fight against Communism to be more important and favoring photo opportunities and propaganda over meaningful action against the drug trade.

Mexicans do not easily accept the fact that American agents are operating in their country. Mexican officials are quick to point out that it is the insatiable drug demand by Americans that drives the drug business and to contend that American banks, into which traffickers often deposit their laundered profits, benefit from drugs. American officials, for their part, cannot accept the killing of one of their own agents. Nor will they rest easy as long as Mexico continues to account for one-third of the heroin and marijuana that is imported into this country.

When the book moves beyond the particulars of the Camarena case to the more general topic of drug enforcement it is less focused, though still well researched. Ms. Shannon recalls earlier wars on drugs as well as Americans' historical ambivalence about controls on drugs. There are also chapters on the drug scene in Colombia, Panama, Bolivia and Peru.

''Desperados,'' by design, does not attempt to deal with the larger question of how to solve the drug problem. It is above all a book about drug enforcement, the lonely, sometimes frustrating pursuit of drug kingpins by American agents. It is almost without exception a man's world. There are few women working as drug agents or narcotics traffickers.

The author's vehicle is the Drug Enforcement Administration, the primary, but not the only, United States agency involved in drug enforcement. She appears to have made good use of the cooperation and trust she has developed with the officials of the agency as a reporter for Time magazine and, before that, as one for Newsweek.

Indeed, the best-written passages are those in which Ms. Shannon explores the attitudes of D.E.A. agents, their perception of themselves as a ''lonely breed.'' We learn that, at least for Camarena and his colleagues in Guadalajara, the definitions of the old frontier have been turned on their heads. Traffickers are no longer the hunted. Lawmen have become the ''desperados,'' a title formerly given to the boldest criminals.

One occasionally gets a feel for the drug investigator's ''relentless curiosity, cantankerous individualism and uncompromising attitude towards his job.'' But one wants to know more. What causes agents like Camarena to knowingly break the D.E.A.'s rules against acting alone or undercover, to endanger themselves? Ms. Shannon feels more comfortable sticking to facts, rather than feelings. As a result the narrative is too straightforward, an investigator's chronology.

There are also too many names to remember amid the sometimes dense accumulation of facts and evidence. And the writing does not always inspire or compel one to read on. But the underlying facts often do. There is no happy ending. The Camarena case remains a mystery, and drugs are more available and cheaper than at any time in this decade. The author appears to side with many American law enforcement agents who believe that Mexican authorities, who have primary responsibility for the investigation in the Camarena case, should have been pushed even harder by the United States, despite already strained relations.

But the drug traffic is not the only area in which the United States finds itself refraining from pushing too hard. American allies around the world continue to defy us by developing nuclear bombs or violating human rights. Quiet diplomacy prevails under the banner of national security. Ms. Shannon realizes there are limits. She suggests it may not be practical to ask countries to eradicate marijuana or coca crops, which provide a livelihood to so many people.

REVIEWS ......

Very perceptive historical insight into today's drug problem  …………   As a current federal "narc" and former "border rat" (9 years on the US/Mexico border in California), I feel that Shannon did an excellent job portraying the past drug problems in Mexico. Guess what? We did not solve them then and the problem is worse now. Customs Commisioner Von Raab and DEA Administrator Lawn were very outspoken on the issue of the kidnapping of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena. Of course, that was before the days of "political correctness". America still refuses to decertify Mexico due to their unwillingness to truly combat drugs and continued reputation of graft and corruption. Having met and worked with many mentioned in DESPERADOS, I have utmost respect for those who indeed fought the drug war. Elaine Shannon's DESPERADOS is worth the time to read and is a must for the drug agent's home or office library.

Well-documented examination of the DEA in Mexico  ………………….. Events in this book revolve around the kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena in Guadalajara, Mexico in 1985. It is not only the story of how this came to pass, but an examination of US drug policy in the '70s and '80s, and reveals the flimsiness of Reagan's "war on drugs." The reader will be outraged by the manner in which political considerations took precedence over the apprehension of the killers of an American agent. Despite my outrage at what I read, the book is gripping and an excellent piece of documentary work. An excellent case study of the investigation into the Sinaloa cartel.

From Library Journal  ……….     The "desperados" of the title in this excellent work refer, not to drug dealers, but to agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), fighting the war on drugs throughout Latin America. News magazine veteran Shannon focuses on the DEA war in Mexico, before and after the murder of agent Kiki Camerena by drug lords. She also details the role of the U.S. government, which stresses positive moves and ignores negative ones when dealing with drug-producing countries. An incisive and gripping account, and a good companion to Paul Eddy's The Cocaine Wars: Murder, Money, Corruption, and the World's Most Valuable Commodity.  Very highly recommended. Sally G. Waters