Review
------
New York Magazine:
"[Saviano’s] facts are brilliantly woven into seamless, immersive
storytelling — New Journalism with better sources and more
back."
Chicago Tribune:
“ZeroZeroZero shows a kind of revolted fascination with its own
topic: the shadowy and depraved criminal networks fighting for
dominance in the international cocaine trade….Saviano writes in a
hybrid style that mixes rants and research, narrative and
analysis, novelistic flourishes and confessional musings….his
obsessive investigations reveal dozens of haunting details.”
Man’s Life:
“The level of connections Saviano draws, the stories he tells,
form an incredible network of modern crime, a web that wraps the
whole world with threads so fine they’re almost invisible. It’s
difficult to overstate what Saviano achieves here, ZeroZeroZero
is a landmark work on the drug world…. a must read because it’s
one of those dangerous books that once you finish reading it the
world won’t ever quite look the same.”
Penthouse:
“This real-life investigation of the international cocaine trade
has more crime, corruption, twists, and turns than any mystery
novel could dream of. Saviano—who already lives under
protection after writing an expose of the Nes mafia—digs deep
into the world of cartels, money laundering, and brutal violence
to paint an insanely realistic picture of the drug trade.”
The Economist:
"Taken as a whole, [ZeroZeroZero] is an angry rebuke to all
those—traffickers and politicians alike—who perpetuate the
violence….By reminding readers of the senseless suffering wrought
by the cocaine trade, this book makes a powerful case for a new
approach.”
Financial Times:
"In articulating [his] cri de coeur, [Saviano] has developed a
literary style that switches from vivid descriptions of human
depravity to a philosophical consideration of the meaning of
violence in the modern world. Indeed, when he revisits his work
on Nes — the city where he was brought up and from which he is
now excluded — his reflections soar into the realm of the poetic.
But for me, most important of all is the hope Saviano gives to
countless victims of criminal violence by standing up to its
perpetrators, especially those from his home country."
Booklist, starred:
“With keen observation and deep probing, Saviano is an
anthropologist and philosopher as much as a journalist. This is
an epic account of how the modern cocaine trafficking business
came to be and how widespread, how impenetrable, and how
intertwined with international commerce and politics—and our
everyday lives—it is.”
Library Journal:
“A wide-ranging and chilling account of how cocaine dominates
world markets…. This overview of the cocaine industry will be
important for legal and criminal collections.”
Kirkus, starred:
“This revealing new book, with a strong focus on Mexico's
cartels, surges with fast-moving prose detailing the lives of
drug lords and pushers, the inner workings of their violent
world, and how their lucrative business (between $25 billion and
$50 billion annually) affects all our lives…. Saviano describes
the complexities of money laundering, how world banks help make
it possible, and the many ways in which drugs are smuggled: in
paintings, handcrafted doors, frozen fish, and more. Throughout,
the author provides vivid stories of the lives of well-known drug
bosses and their minions. Saviano says he can no longer look at a
beach or a without seeing cocaine, and many will share that
view after reading this dark, relentless, hyperreal report.”
Publishers Weekly, starred:
“Following 2006’s Gomorrah, reporter Saviano returns with another
blistering crime exposé, this time delivering a wide-ranging and
disturbing look at international cocaine trafficking….His
eventual and surprising conclusion—that cocaine legalization is
the only reasonable solution to the problem of trafficking—will
generate controversy.”
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About the Author
----------------
Roberto Saviano was born in Nes in 1979. He is the author
of Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International
Empire of Nes’s Organized Crime System and has lived under
protection since its publication in 2006. His writing
appears in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Der
Spiegel, Die Zeit, and The Times (London).
Virginia Jewiss received her PhD in Italian literature from Yale
University, where she is a lecturer in the humanities. Her
translations include Melania Mazzucco's novels Vita and Limbo and
screenplays by Paolo Sorrentino, Matteo Garrone, and Gabriele
Salvatores. Jewiss's translation of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah
was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2007.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
--------------------------------------------------------
The guy sitting next to you on the train uses cocaine, he took it
to get himself going this morning; or the driver of the bus
you’re taking home, he wants to put in some overtime without
feeling the s in his neck. The people closest to you use
coke. If it’s not your mother or her, if it’s not your
brother, then it’s your son. And if your son doesn’t use it, your
boss does. Or your boss’s secretary, but only on Saturdays, just
for fun. And if your boss doesn’t, his wife does, to let herself
go. And if not his wife, then his lover—he gives her cocaine
instead of earrings, in place of diamonds. And if they don’t, the
truck driver delivering tons of coffee to cafés around town does;
he wouldn’t be able to hack those long hours on the road without
it. And if he doesn’t, the nurse who’s changing your
grandher’s catheter does. Coke makes everything seem so much
easier, even the night shift. And if she doesn’t, the painter
redoing your girlfriend’s room does; he was just curious at first
but wound up deep in debt. The people who use cocaine are right
here, right next to you. The officer who’s about to pull
you over has been snorting for years, and everyone knows it, and
they write anonymous letters to his chief hoping he’ll be
suspended before he screws up big time. Or the surgeon who’s just
waking up and will soon operate on your aunt. Cocaine helps him
cut open six people a day. Or your divorce lawyer. Or the judge
presiding over your lawsuit; he doesn’t consider it a vice,
though, just a little boost, a way to get more out of life. The
cashier who hands you the lottery ticket you hope is going to
change your life. The carpenter who’s installing the cabinets
that cost you a month’s salary. Or the workman who came to put
together the IKEA closet you couldn’t figure out how to assemble
on your own. If not him, then the manager of your condo building
who is just about to buzz you. Or your electrician, the one who’s
in your bedroom right now, moving the outlets. The singer you are
listening to to unwind, the parish priest you’re going to talk to
about finally getting confirmed because your grandson’s getting
baptized, and he’s amazed you’ve put it off for so long. The
waiters who will work the wedding you’re going to next Saturday;
they wouldn’t be able to last on their feet all that time if they
didn’t. If not them, then the town councillor who just approved
the new pedestrian zones, and who gets his coke free in exchange
for favors. The parking lot attendant who’s happy now only when
he’s high. The architect who renovated your vacation home, the
mailman who just delivered your new ATM card. If not them, then
the woman at the call center who asks “How may I help you?” in
that shrill, happy voice, the same for every caller, thanks to
the white powder. If not her, your professor’s research
assistant—coke makes him nervous. Or the physiotherapist who’s
trying to get your knee working right. Coke makes him more
sociable. The forward who just scored, spoiling the bet you were
winning right up until the final minutes of the game. The
prostitute you go to on your way home, when you just can’t take
it anymore and need to vent. She does it so she won’t have to see
whoever is on top or under or behind her anymore. The gigolo you
treated yourself to for your fiftieth birthday. You did it
together. Coke makes him feel really macho. The sparring partner
you train with in the ring, to lose weight. And if he doesn’t,
your daughter’s riding instructor does, and so does your wife’s
psychologist. Your husband’s best friend uses it, the one who’s
been hitting on you for years but whom you’ve never liked. And if
he doesn’t, then your school principal does. Along with the
janitor. And the real estate agent, who’s late, just when you
finally managed to find time to see the apartment. The security
guard uses it, the one who still combs his hair over his bald
spot, even though guys all shave their heads these days. And if
he doesn’t, the notary you hope you never have to go back to, he
does it to avoid thinking about the alimony he has to pay his
ex-wives. And if he doesn’t, the taxi driver does; he curses the
traffic but then goes all happy again. If not him, the engineer
you have to invite over for dinner because he might help you get
a leg up in your career. The man who’s giving you a ticket,
sweating profusely even though it’s winter. The squeegee man with
hollow eyes, who borrows money to buy it, or that kid stuffing
flyers under windshield wipers, five at a time. The politician
who promised you a commercial license, the one you and your
family voted into office, and who is always nervous. The
professor who failed you on your exam. Or the oncologist you’re
going to see; everybody says he’s the best, so you’re hoping he
can save you. He feels omnipotent when he sniffs cocaine. Or the
gynecologist who nearly forgets to throw away his
before going in to examine your wife, who has just gone into
labor. Your brother-in-law, who’s never in a good mood, or your
daughter’s boyfriend, who always is. If not them, then the
fishmonger, who proudly displays a fish, or the station
attendant who spills on your car. He sniffs to feel young
again but can’t even put the pump away correctly anymore. Or the
family doctor you’ve known for years and who lets you cut the
line because you always know just the right thing to give him at
Christmas. The doorman of your building uses it, and if he
doesn’t, then your kids’ tutor does, your nephew’s piano teacher,
the costume designer for the play you’re going to see tonight,
the vet who takes care of your cat. The mayor who invited you
over for dinner recently. The contractor who built your house,
the author whose book you’ve been reading before falling a,
the anchorwoman on the evening news. But if, after you think
about it, you’re still convinced none of these people could
possibly snort cocaine, you’re either blind or you’re lying. Or
the one who uses it is you.
1.
THE LESSON
“They were all sitting around a table, right here in New York,
not far from here.”
“Where?” I asked instinctively.
He gave me a look that said he couldn’t believe I was stupid
enough to ask a question like that. What I was about to hear was
an exchange of favors. The had arrested a young man in
Europe a few years back. A Mexican with an American passport. He
was sent to New York, where they let him stew in the swamp of the
underworld instead of in jail. Every now and then he’d spill some
news to keep from being arrested. Not an informer exactly, but
pretty close, something that didn’t make him feel like a rat, but
not one of those silent as stone types either. The would
ask him generic questions, nothing specific enough to expose him
in front of his gang. They needed him to say which way the wind
was blowing, what the mood was, rumors of meetings or wars. No
proof or evidence, just rumors. They’d collect the evidence later
on. But now that wasn’t enough. The young man had recorded a
speech on his iPhone at a meeting he’d gone to. A speech that
made the uneasy. Some of them, whom I’d known for years,
wanted me to write about it somewhere, to make noise, to see what
sorts of reactions it got in order to find out if the story I was
about to hear really went the way the young man said it had, or
if it had been staged, a little theater piece. They wanted me to
shake things up in the world where those words had been uttered,
where they’d been heard.
The officer waited for me in Battery Park, on a little
jetty. No hat or dark glasses, no ridiculous disguise. He showed
up in a brightly colored T-shirt and flip-flops, with a smile
that said he couldn’t wait to spill his secret. His Italian was
full of dialect, but I could understand him. He wasn’t looking
for complicity of any sort; he had orders to tell me about the
speech and didn’t waste time. I remember the story perfectly; it
has stayed inside me. The things we remember aren’t stored merely
in our heads; I’m convinced that other parts of our bodies
remember too. The liver, testicles, fingernails, ribs. When you
hear such words, they get lodged there. Each body part sends what
it remembers to the brain. More and more I realize that I
remember with my stomach, which stores up the beautiful as well
as the horrendous. I know that certain memories are there,
because my stomach moves. My diaphragm, that membrane rooted at
the very core of my body, creates waves. The diaphragm makes us
pant and shudder, but it also makes us piss, defecate, and vomit.
That’s where the pushing during childbirth starts. Where
everything starts. And I’m sure there are places that collect
much worse, that store up the waste. I don’t know exactly where
that place is inside of me, but I know it’s full. My place of
memories, of waste, is saturated. That might seem like a good
thing, but it isn’t. Because if the waste doesn’t have anywhere
to go it starts worming its way into places it shouldn’t. It
thrusts itself into places that collect different sorts of
memories. That man’s story filled up forever the part of me
that remembers the worst things. Those things that resurface just
when you start thinking everything’s going better, when you start
imagining you’ll finally be able to go home, when you tell
yourself it really was worth it after all. It’s in moments like
that when the dark memories resurface from somewhere, like an
exhalation, like t in a dump, buried and covered over by
plastic, that somehow finds its way to the surface and poisons
everything.
The officer told me that the young man, his informer, had
heard the only lesson worth learning—that’s what he called it—and
had recorded it on the sly. Not to betray anyone, but to be able
to listen to it again. A lesson on how to be in the world. And he
let the officer hear the whole thing; they listened together,
sharing the young man’s earbuds.
“Now you have to write about it. Let’s see if somebody gets
pissed off . . . which would mean that the young man’s telling
the truth. If you write about it and nobody does anything, then
either it’s just a load of crap from some B-grade actor, and our
Chicano friend is making fools of us . . . or nobody believes the
bullshit you write.” He laughed.
I nodded without promising anything; I was just trying to
understand the situation. Supposedly it was an old Italian boss
talking to a group of Latinos, Italians, Italian Americans,
Albanians, and former Kaibiles, the notorious Guatemalan elite
soldiers. At least, that’s what the young man said. No facts,
statistics, or details. Not something you learn against your
will; you just enter the room one way and you come out changed.
You’re still wearing the same clothes, have the same haircut,
your beard is still the same length. No signs of being initiated,
no cuts over your eyebrows, no broken nose, and you haven’t been
brainwashed with sermons either. You go in, and when you come
out, at first glance you look exactly the same as when you were
pushed through the door. But only on the outside. Inside you’re
completely different. They didn’t reveal the ultimate truth to
you, they merely put a few things in their proper place. Things
you hadn’t known how to use before, that you’d never had the
courage to take in.
The officer read me the transcription he’d made. They’d
met in a room not far from where we were, seated in no particular
order, randomly, not in a horseshoe like they do at ritual
initiations. Seated like they do in a club in some small town in
southern Italy, or on Arthur Avenue in New York City, to watch
the soccer game on TV. But there was no soccer game on TV in that
room, and this was no gathering of friends. They were all members
of criminal organizations, of all different ranks. The old
Italian gets up. They knew he was a man of honor, that he’d come
to the United States after living in Canada for a long time. He
begins talking without even introducing himself; he doesn’t need
to. He speaks a bastard Italian, some dialect thrown in, mixed
with English and Spanish. I wanted to know his name, so I asked
the officer, trying to sound casual, as if it were a
passing curiosity. He didn’t bother answering me. There were only
the boss’s words.
Them folks who think they can get by with justice, with laws that
are equal for everybody, with hard work, dignity, clean streets,
with women same as men, it’s only a world of fags who think it’s
okay to make fools of themselves. And everyone around them. All
that crap about a better world, leave it to them idiots. To the
rich idiots who can afford such luxuries. The luxury of believing
in a happy world, a just world. Rich people with guilty
consciences, or with something to hide. Whoever rules just does
it, and that’s that. Sure, he can say he rules for the good, for
justice and liberty and all. But that’s just sissy stuff; leave
all that to the rich fools. Who rules, rules. Period.
I tried asking how he was dressed, how old he was. Cop questions,
things a reporter or a nosy obsessive would ask, believing that
the typology of a boss who’d give this sort of speech can be had
in the details. The officer ignored me and kept on
talking. I listened, sifting his words like sand in hopes of
finding the nugget, the name. I listened to his words but was
searching for something else. I was searching for clues.
“He wanted to explain the rules to them, capish?” the
officer said. “He wanted them to really get into it. I’m sure
he’s not lying. This isn’t some lazy Mexican wank, I’m telling
you. I swear on my life, even if no one believes me.”
The officer buried his nose in his and started
reading again.
The rules of the organization are the rules of life. Government
laws are the rules of one side that wants to fuck the other side.
And we ain’t gonna let ourselves get fucked by nobody. There’s
people who make money without taking any risks, and they’re
always gonna be afraid of those who make money by risking
everything. If you risk it all, you have it all, capish? But if
you think you gotta save yourself, or that you can do it without
jail time, without fleeing, without going into hiding, then let
me make it clear right from the start: you are not a man. And if
you’re not a man, you can leave this room right now, and don’t
even hope to ever become one, ’cause you will never ever be a man
of honor.
The officer looked at me. His eyes were two narrow slits,
as if he were trying to see words he remembered all too well. He
had read and listened to that testimony dozens of times.
Crees en el amor? Love ends. Crees en tu corazón? Your heart
stops. No? No love and no heart? So, do you believe in coño, in
pussy? Well, even pussies dry up after a while. You believe in
your wife? Soon as your money runs out, she’ll tell you you’re
neglecting her. You believe in your children? As soon as you stop
giving them money they’ll say you don’t love them. You believe in
your mama? If you don’t nurse her, she’ll say you’re an
ungrateful child. Listen to what I’m tellin’ you. You need to
live, vivir. You got to live for yourselves. It’s for yourselves
that you need to know how to be respected, and how to show
respect. La famiglia. Respect the people who are useful to you
and despise the ones who aren’t. The people who can give you
something get your respect, and the ones who are useless lose it.
Somebody who wants something from you, doesn’t he respect you?
Somebody who’s afraid of you? So what happens when you got
nothing to give? When you got nothing left? When you’re no longer
useful? Then you’re basura, rubbish. If you have nothing to give,
then you’re nothing, nada, nulla.
“So,” the officer said, “I understood right then and there
that the boss, this Italiano, was somebody who counts, who knows
what life’s about. Really knows. That Mexican kid couldn’t have
come up with that speech on his own. The spic dropped out of
school at sixteen; they fished him out of a gambling den in
Barcelona. And the way this guy talks, his Calabrian dialect, how
could some actor or braggart ever invent that? If it weren’t for
my wife’s grandmother I never would have understood a word of
it.”
I’d heard dozens of speeches on Mafia moral philosophy—in
penitents’ confessions and wiretappings. But this was different;
it was like training for the soul.
I’m talkin’ to you; I even like some of you. Some of you, I’d
like to smash your face. But even if I like you the best, if you
got more pussy or more money than me, I want you dead. If one of
you becomes my brother, and I make him my equal in the
organization, then one thing is clear: He’s gonna try to fuck me
over. Don’t think a friend will be forever a friend. I’ll be
killed by somebody I shared my food with, my , everything.
I’ll be killed by somebody I ate with, somebody who gave me
shelter. I don’t know who it’ll be or I’d already have eliminated
him. But it’ll happen. And if he doesn’t kill me, he’ll betray
me. Rules are rules. And rules are not laws. Laws are for
cowards. Rules are for men. That’s why we have rules of honor.
Rules of honor don’t tell you you have to be good, just, upright.
Rules of honor tell you how to rule. What you have to do to
handle people, money, power. Rules of honor tell you how to
behave if you want to rule, if you want to fuck the guy above
you, if you don’t want to be fucked by the guy below you. There’s
no sense explaining them. Rules of honor exist, period. They
evolved on their own, on and through the blood of every man of
honor. How do you choose?
Was that question for me? I searched for the right answer.
How can you choose, in a few seconds, a few minutes, hours, what
you should do? If you choose wrong, you’ll pay for it for years,
for that quick decision. The rules are always there, but you got
to know how to recognize them, you got to understand when they
really count. And then there’s God’s laws. God’s laws are
contained in the rules. God’s laws—the real ones, though, not the
ones they use to make poor fools tremble with fear. But remember
this: You can have all the rules of honor you want, but still,
only one thing’s for certain. You’re a man only if you know deep
down what your destiny is. Poor fools grovel, because it’s
easier. Men of honor know that everything dies, everything passes
away, nothing lasts forever. Journalists start out wanting to
change the world and end up wanting to be editor in chief. It’s
easier to condition them than to corrupt them. Each one matters
only for himself and for the Honored Society. And the Honored
Society says you matter only if you rule. You can choose how,
later. You can rule with an iron fist or you can buy consensus.
By spilling blood or giving it. The Honored Society knows that
every man is weak, depraved, vain. It knows that people don’t
change; that’s why rules are everything. Bonds of friendship are
nothing without rules. Every problem has a solution, from your
wife who leaves you to your group that splits up. The solution
merely depends on how much you offer. If things go poorly, you
merely offered too little. Don’t go looking for other
explanations.
It seemed like a university seminar for aspiring bosses. What was
this?
You have to know who you want to be. If you rob, shoot, rape,
deal drugs, you’ll make money for a while, but then they’ll take
you and crush you. You can do it. Sure, you can do it. But not
for long, ’cause you don’t know what might happen to you; people
will fear you only if you stick a pistol in their mouth. But as
soon as you turn your back, what happens? As soon as a job goes
wrong? If you belong to the organization, you know there’s a rule
for everything. If you want to make money, there’s ways to do it;
if you want to kill, there are motives and methods; if you want
to get ahead, you can, but you have to earn respect, trust, you
have to make yourself indispensable. There’s even rules for if
you want to change the rules. Whatever you do outside the rules,
you never know how it might end. But whatever you do that follows
the rules of honor, you always know exactly what it’s going to
get you. And you know exactly how the people around you will
react. So if you want to be an ordinary man, just keep doing what
you’re doing. But if you want to become a man of honor, you got
to have rules. And the difference between an ordinary man and a
man of honor is that the man of honor always knows what’s
happening, while the ordinary man gets screwed by chance, bad
luck, or stupidity. Things happen to him. But the man of honor
knows what’s gonna happen, and he knows when. You know exactly
what belongs to you and what doesn’t; you know exactly how far
you can push yourself, even if you want to push past every rule.
Everybody wants three things: power, pussy, and money. Even the
judge when he condemns bad people, even the politicians, they
want dinero and pussy and power, but they want to get it by
showing they’re indispensable, defenders of the law or the poor
or who knows what. Everybody wants money, even though they go
around saying they want something else, or doing things for other
people. The rules of the Honored Society are rules for
controlling everybody. The Honored Society knows you can have
money, pussy, and power, but it also knows that the man who’s
capable of giving up everything is the one who decides everybody
else’s e. Cocaine. That’s what cocaine is. All you can see,
you can have it. Without cocaine, you’re nothing. With cocaine,
you can be whoever you want. If you sniff cocaine, you screw
yourself all on your own. The organization gives you rules for
moving up in the world. It gives you rules for killing and for
how you’re gonna be killed. You want to lead a normal life? You
want to be worth nothing? Fine. All you need to do is not see,
not hear. But remember this: In Mexico, where you can do whatever
you want, get high, fuck little girls, drive as fast as you like,
the only ones who really rule are the ones who have rules. If you
do stupid stuff, you got no honor, and if you got no honor, you
got no power. You’re just like everybody else.
The officer pointed his finger at a particularly worn page
of his . “Look, look at this . . . he wanted to explain
absolutely everything. How to live, not just how to be a mafioso.
How to live.”
You work, a lot. You have some money, algo dinero. Maybe some
beautiful women. But then they leave you, for somebody more
handsome, with more dinero than you. You might have a decent
life—pretty unlikely—or a shitty life, like everybody else. But
when you end up in jail, the ones on the outside, who think
they’re clean, will insult you, but you will have ruled. They’ll
hate you, but you’ll have bought yourself everything good in
life, everything you wanted. You’ll have the organization behind
you. It might happen that you suffer some, and maybe they’ll even
kill you. The organization backs whoever’s strongest, obviously.
You can climb ains with rules of , blood, and money.
But if you become weak, if you make a mistake, you’re fucked. If
you do good, you’ll be rewarded. If you make a bad alliance,
you’re fucked; if you make a mistake in war, you’re fucked; if
you don’t know how to hold on to power, you’re fucked. But these
wars are permitted, they’re allowed. They’re our wars. You might
win and you might lose. But on only one condition will you always
lose, and in the most painful way possible: if you betray the
organization. Whoever tries to go against the Honored Society has
no hope of surviving. You can run from the law but not from the
organization. You can even run from God, ’cause God can wait
forever for the fugitive. But you can’t escape the organization.
If you betray it and run, if they screw you and you run, if you
don’t respect the rules and you run, somebody’s gonna pay.
They’ll come looking for you. They’ll go to your family, to your
allies. Your name will be on the list forever. And nothing can
ever erase it. Not time, not money. You’re fucked for all
eternity, you and your descendants.
The officer closed his . “The kid, it was like he
came out of a trance.”
And then the officer told me what the young man had asked him:
“So am I betraying the organization now, letting you listen to
this?”
“Write about it,” the officer said to me. “We got our eye
on him. I’ll put three guys on his ass, twenty-four hours a day.
If someone tries to close in on him, we’ll know he wasn’t
bullshitting, that it isn’t some joke, this is a real boss
talking.”
That story really stunned me. Where I come from, it’s what
they’ve always done. But it was strange to hear those same words
in New York. Where I come from, you don’t join merely for the
money; you do it above all in order to belong, to have a
structure, to move as if on a chessboard. To know exactly which
piece to move and when.
“It’s risky, I think,” I said to him.
“Do it,” he insisted.
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
I couldn’t . I tossed and turned. It wasn’t the story itself
that struck me so much. It was the whole chain that left me
perplexed. I’d been contacted to write the story of a story of a
story. The source—the old Italian—I trusted instinctively. A bit
because, when you’re far from home, whoever speaks your language,
I mean your very same language—same codes, same locutions, same
vocabulary, same omissions—you recognize immediately as one of
your own, as someone to pay attention to. And also because his
speech was delivered at the right time, to exactly the people who
needed to hear it. If those words were true, they signaled a most
dreadful turning point. The Italian bosses, the last remaining
Calvinists of the West, were training new generations of Mexicans
and Latin Americans, the criminal bourgeoisie born of drug
trafficking, the most ferocious and hungry recruits in the world.
I couldn’t stay still. My bed felt like a wooden plank, my room
like a cell. I wanted to pick up the phone and call that
officer, but it was two in the morning and I didn’t want him to
think I was crazy. I went to my desk and started an e-mail. I
would write about it, but first I had to understand more. I
wanted to listen to the actual . That training lesson
about how to be in the world wasn’t only for mafia affiliates but
for anyone who decides they want to rule on this Earth. Words no
one would utter with such clarity unless he were training people.
When you talk publicly about a soldier, you say he wants peace
and hates war, but when you’re alone with him, you train him to
shoot. That speech was an effort to bring Italian organized crime
traditions into South American organizations. That kid wasn’t
boasting at all.
I got a text. The young man, the informer, had wrapped himself
around a tree while driving. It wasn’t revenge. Just a fancy
Italian car he didn’t know how to drive, and he slammed it into a
tree. End of story.
2.
BIG BANG
Don Arturo is an elderly gentleman who remembers it all. And
he’ll talk about it to anyone who’s willing to listen. His
grandchildren are too big, he’s already a great-grandher, and
he prefers to tell the little ones other stories. Arturo tells of
how one day a general arrived, dised his horse, which seemed
incredibly tall but was merely a y animal in a land of
skinny, arthritic beasts, and ordered that all the gomeros—the
peasants who raised opium poppies—be rounded up. Burn all the
fields: It was an order. That’s the way the government works. Do
it or end up in jail. For ten years. Jail, the gomeros all
thought, the sooner the better. Growing grain again was worse
than going to jail. But during those ten years their children
wouldn’t be able to grow poppies, and the land would be seized
or, in the best of circumstances, devastated by drought. The
gomeros merely lowered their eyes: Their lands and their poppies
would all be burned. Soldiers arrived and dumped diesel fuel on
the soil, the flowers, the mule tracks, the paths leading from
one estate to another. Arturo told how fields once red with
poppies were now stained black with buckets of dark, dense diesel
fuel, how a foul smell saturated the air. Back then, the work was
all done by hand; those big poison pumps didn’t exist yet.
Bucketfuls of stench. But that’s not the reason old Arturo
remembers it all. He remembers because it was there that he
learned how to recognize courage, and that cowardice tastes of
human . The fields caught fire, but slowly. Not a sudden
burst of flame, but row by row, fire contaminating fire.
Thousands of flowers, stems, and roots catching fire. The
peasants all watched, and so did the and the mayor, the
women and the children. A painful spectacle. Then all of a sudden
they saw screaming balls of fire come shooting out of the nearby
bushes. Living flames, it seemed, leaping and ping for breath.
But the fire hadn’t suddenly come to life—these were animals.
A among the poppies, they hadn’t heard the noise or smelled
the diesel fuel, which they’d never smelled before. Flaming
rabbits, stray dogs, even a small mule. All on fire. There was
nothing to be done. No a of water can put out diesel flames
on , and besides, the land all around was on fire. The
howling beasts were consumed right before the people’s eyes. And
that wasn’t the only tragedy. The gomeros who had gotten drunk
while dumping the fuel, they too caught fire. They drank cerveza
as they worked, and then fell a in the brush. The fire took
them, too. They howled a lot less than the animals, staggering
around as if the alcohol in their veins were feeding the fire
from within. No one went to help them; no one ran over with a
blanket. The flames were too fierce.
That’s when Don Arturo saw a dog, all skin and s, run toward
the fire. The dog dove into that inferno and came out with two,
three, finally six puppies, rolling each one on the ground to put
out the flames. Singed, spitting smoke and ashes, covered in
sores, but alive. They stumbled after their mother, who walked
past the people gazing at the fire. She seemed to look right at
each one of them, her eyes piercing the gomeros, the soldiers,
and all the other miserable human beings who were just standing
there. An animal senses cowardice. And respects fear. Fear is the
more vital instinct, and deserves more respect. Cowardice is a
choice, fear is a state of mind. That dog was afraid, but she
dove into those flames to save her young. Not one man had saved
another man. They’d let them all burn to death. That’s how the
old man told it. There is no right age for understanding. To him
it came early, when he was only eight. And he remembered this
truth till he was ninety: Beasts have courage and know what it
means to defend life. Men boast about courage, but all they know
how to do is obey, crawl, get by.
For twenty years there were only ashes where poppies had once
grown. Then one day, Arturo recalled, a general came. Another
one. On estates in every corner of the Earth, there’s always
someone who appears in the name of a powerful figure, someone
with a uniform, boots, and a horse—or an SUV, depending on when
we’re talking about. He ordered the peasants to become gomeros
again, Arturo remembered. Enough with grain, time for poppies
again. Drugs again. The United States was preparing for war, and
before the s, before the bullets, tanks, planes, and aircraft
carriers, before the uniforms and boots, before everything else,
the United States needed morphine. You don’t go to war without
morphine. If any of you have been in pain, excruciating pain, you
know what morphine is: peace from suffering. You don’t go to war
without morphine, because war is suffering, broken s, and
lacerated . There are treatises and demonstrations, candles
and pickets for people’s outrage. But for burning there’s
only one thing: morphine. Maybe you live in the part of the world
that is still fairly tranquil. You know the cries of hospital
wards, of women in labor, of the , of children who scream and
joints that dislocate. But you’ve probably never heard the
screams of a man hit by a bullet, his s shattered by a
submachine or shrapnel, his arm or half his face ripped off.
Those are real cries, the only ones memory cannot forget. Our
memory of sounds is fleeting; memories are linked to actions,
contexts. But the cries of war never go away. Veterans and
reporters, doctors and career soldiers all wake up to those
cries. If you’ve heard the screams of a dying man, or one lying
wounded in the middle of a battlefield, there’s no point spending
money on psychoanalysts or seeking comfort. You’ll never forget
those screams. Only chemistry can stop them, soothe them, only
chemistry can lessen the pain. At the sound of those cries, the
other soldiers all turn to stone. Nothing is less militaristic
than the screams of someone wounded in battle. Only morphine can
silence those cries and let the others go on thinking they’ll get
off scot-free, come out unscathed, be victorious. And so the
United States, which needed morphine for war, asked Mexico to
increase its opium production, and even helped build a railroad
to facilitate transportation. How much opium was needed? Lots. As
much as possible. Arturo had grown up by then. He was almost
thirty, already had four kids. He wasn’t about to set fire to his
fields, as his her had done. He knew what would happen—first
they’d ask, then they’d order him to do it. So when the general
left, Arturo took the back roads and caught up with him. He
intercepted the general’s caravan and negotiated. He would sell a
portion of his opium on the black market. The bulk would go to
the government, which would sell it to the United States
; the rest he’d smuggle out, for those Yankees who wanted
to enjoy a little opium or morphine. The general accepted the
proposal in exchange for a hefty cut. And on one condition: “You
get your opium across the border yourself.”
Old Arturo is like a sphinx. None of his children are narcos.
None of his grandchildren are narcos. None of their wives are
narcos. But the narcos respect him because he was the first opium
smuggler in the entire area. Arturo went from gomero to broker.
He didn’t simply grow poppies; he mediated between producers and
traffickers. He kept it up until the 1980s, and that was only the
beginning, because back then most of the heroin that made its way
to America was handled by Mexicans. Arturo had become a powerful,
well-to-do man. But something ended his activity as opium broker.
That something was Kiki. After the Kiki ordeal Arturo decided to
go back to growing grain. He abandoned opium and the men who
dealt in heroin and morphine. It’s an old story, the one about
Kiki. From many years ago. But it’s a story that Arturo never
forgot. So when his children said they wanted to traffic in coke,
just as he had in opium, Arturo realized the time had come to
tell them the story of Kiki. If you don’t know it, it’s well
worth hearing. Arturo took his children outside the city and
showed them a hole, now full of flowers, most of them dried. A
deep hole. And he told them the story. I’d read it but hadn’t
understood how decisive it was until I got to know the strip of
land called Sinaloa, a paradise where people endure punishments
worthy of the worst inferno.
• • •
The story of Kiki is linked to that of Miguel Ángel Félix
Gallardo, whom everyone knows as El Padrino, the Godher. Félix
Gallardo worked for the Federal Judicial of Mexico, and
then worked as a bodyguard for the family of Governor Leopoldo
Sánchez Celis, from which perch he began amassing his
understanding and his power. As a officer he tracked
smugglers, studied their methods, uncovered their routes,
arrested them. He knew everything. He hunted them down.
Eventually he would go to their bosses and propose that they
organize, but under one condition—that they choose him as their
boss. Whoever accepted became part of the organization, whoever
preferred to remain independent was free to do so. And later
killed. Arturo agreed to join. The era of transporting marijuana
and opium on a large scale had be for Félix Gallardo. He got
to know personally every inch of every access route into the
United States: where you could climb over, where trucks or horses
could slip through. There weren’t any cartels in Mexico back
then; Félix Gallardo created them. Cartels. Everyone calls them
that now, even kids who don’t really know what the word means.
Most of the time, it’s exactly the right word. Groups that manage
coke, coke capital, coke prices, coke distribution. That’s what
cartels are. After all, “cartel” is the economic term for a group
of producers who agree on prices, production levels, and how,
when, and where to distribute. This holds for the legal as well
as the illegal economy. The prices in Mexico were decided by only
a few drug cartels. El Padrino was considered the Mexican czar of
cocaine. Under him were Rafael Caro Quintero and Ernesto Fonseca
Carrillo, known as Don Neto. In Colombia, the rival Cali and
Medellín cartels were in the midst of a full-blown war to control
cocaine trafficking and routes. Massacres. But Pablo Escobar,
lord of Medellín, also had problems outside Colombia: The U.S.
, whom he couldn’t manage to bribe, were sequestering too
many of his shipments off the coast of Florida and in the
Caribbean, and he was losing tons of coke. Airport bribes were
getting so high that he was losing lots of money. So Escobar
decided to ask Félix Gallardo for help. Escobar, El Magico, and
Félix Gallardo, El Padrino, understood each other right away. And
they reached an agreement. The Mexicans would get the coke into
the United States. Félix Gallardo knew the U.S.-Mexico border,
and for him all corridors were open. He knew the routes marijuana
took—the same ones that opium took—and now cocaine would take
them as well. El Padrino trusted Escobar; he knew he wouldn’t
become a rival because the Colombian boss wasn’t strong enough to
set up his own man in Mexico. Félix Gallardo didn’t guarantee
Escobar exclusivity. He’d give Medellín priority, but if Cali or
other smaller cartels asked him to handle their shipments, of
course he’d take them on as well. To profit from everyone without
becoming anyone’s enemy is a difficult praxis in life, but at
that moment at least, when lots of cartels needed to cross the
border, it was possible to squeeze money out of all of them. More
and more money.
The Colombians usually paid cash for each shipment. Medellín
would pay—first in pesos, then in dollars—and the Mexicans would
get their load into the United States. But after a while, El
Padrino realized that currency could depreciate and that cocaine
was more profitable: It would be a real coup to distribute it
directly in the North American market. So when the Colombian
cartel started commissioning more shipments, El Padrino demanded
to be paid in goods. Escobar accepted; it even seemed like a
better deal. And in any case, he couldn’t not accept. If a
shipment was easy to transport, if it could be hidden in trucks
or trains, 35 percent of the coke went to the Mexicans. If it was
tricky and had to pass through underground tunnels, the Mexicans
got 50 percent. Those impassible routes, that border, those
nearly two thousand miles of Mexico sutured to the United States,
became El Padrino’s greatest resource. The Mexicans went from
being transporters to actual distributors. Now it was they who
would place the coke with the American organizations, with the
bosses, area managers, and pushers. It wasn’t just the Colombians
anymore. Now the Mexicans could aspire to have a seat at the
business table too. That and more. Much more. That’s how it works
in big companies too; the distributor often becomes the
producer’s main competitor, and its earnings surpass the head
company’s.
But El Padrino was clever and understood that it was essential to
maintain a low profile. Especially with the whole world watching
Escobar, El Magico, and Colombia. So he tried to be prudent. To
lead a normal life, to be a leader rather than an emperor. And he
paid attention to the details, knew that every move had to be
oiled, that every checkpoint, every officer in the area, every
mayor of every village they went through had to be paid off. El
Padrino knew he had to pay. To make sure your good fortune was
understood to be everyone’s good fortune. And—most important—to
pay before anyone had time to talk, betray, blab, or offer more.
Before he could sell himself to a rival clan or to the .
The were key. He’d been an officer himself once. Which is
why they found someone who could guarantee their shipments would
move smoothly: Kiki. Kiki was a cop who could guarantee impunity
from the state of Guerrero to the state of Baja California. From
then on, entry into the United States was smooth. Caro Quintero
practically worshipped Kiki, and often invited him to his home.
He’d tell him how a boss should live, what his lifestyle should
be, how he should appear to his men: rich, well-off, but not too
ostentatious. You have to make them believe that if you thrive,
they’ll thrive too. That the people who work for you will thrive
too. They have to want your business to grow. If instead you show
them that you have it all, they’ll want to take something from
you. It’s a fine line, and success lies in never overstepping it,
never giving in to the allure of a life of luxury.
Kiki got drugs through everywhere with remarkable ease, and El
Padrino’s clan paid willingly. It seemed that Kiki could bribe
everyone, could get everything across the border smoothly. It was
because of this extraordinary trust, which Kiki had earned over
time, that they began talking to him about something they never
had mentioned to anyone: El Búfalo. After the umpteenth tractor
trailer loaded with Colombian coke and Mexican grass made it over
the American border, Kiki was taken to Chihuahua. He’d heard
people mention El Búfalo a thousand times, but he’d never
understood what it was exactly, a code name, a special operation,
a nickname? El Búfalo was not the boss of bosses, or some sacred,
venerable beast, even though it was usually spoken of with
reverence. El Búfalo was one of the biggest marijuana ations
in the world. Over 1,300 acres of land and something like 10,000
peasants working it. Every protest movement in the world, from
New York to Athens, from Rome to Los Angeles, was characterized
by marijuana use. Parties without joints? Political
demonstrations without joints? Impossible. Weed, the symbol of a
light buzz, of togetherness and feeling good, of sweet relaxation
and friendship. For a long time almost all the marijuana that
Americans smoked, the grass consumed in universities in Paris and
Rome, the weed toked at Swedish demonstrations and on German
picket lines, was grown in El Búfalo; that’s where it came from,
before mafias delivered it around the world. They needed Kiki to
get more trucks through, more trains full of El Búfalo gold. And
Kiki agreed.
On the morning of November 6, 1984, 450 Mexican soldiers invaded
El Búfalo. Helicopters rained down soldiers, who ripped up
marijuana s and seized what had already been harvested,
entire bales ready for drying and chopping. Between what was
sequestered and what was burned, $8 billion worth of weed went up
in smoke. El Búfalo and all its ings were under the control
of Rafael Caro Quintero’s clan, and it operated with the full
protection of the and army: The ranch was vast and was the
main economic resource of the area. Everybody profited from El
Búfalo. Caro Quintero couldn’t believe that with all the money
he’d invested to oil the machine, to bribe the and the
army, a operation of this scale could have escaped his
notice. Even the planes in the area would notify him
before taking off, ask his authorization. No one could understand
what happened. The Mexicans must have been pressured by the
Americans. The DEA, the U.S. Drug Administration,
must have stuck its nose in El Búfalo business.
Caro Quintero and El Padrino were alarmed. The two shared a deep
trust; they cofounded the organization that held the monopoly on
drug trafficking in Mexico. They asked everyone who worked for
them, at every level, to investigate everyone in their pay.
Because they should have known about the raid in advance.
Normally they were warned if the authorities were going to
strike, and they themselves would make sure some drugs were
found. A good a, if the officer responsible had news
cameras with him, or needed to climb the ranks. A little less if
he wasn’t one of their men. Kiki talked with everyone, with Don
Neto, with El Padrino’s political cronies. He wanted to so