This Owl has just finished reading ‘The Border’ (2019), by the American Don Winslow (New York, 1953), which is the last installment of the trilogy made up of ‘The power of the dog’ (2009) and ‘The cartel’ (2015). One of the best drug sagas ever written.
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‘The power of the dog’ It was located in the initial years in which the United States administration began a fight to the death against drug trafficking south of the Rio Grande. Art Kellera young DEA agent, of Latino origin, does not take long to obtain good results and liquidates the local ‘Boss’.
A serious mistake: another more cruel and ambitious, Adán Barreda, replaces him. From his Sinaloa cartel, he manages to unite all the cartels in Mexico in ‘The Federation’, which floods the United States with cocaine across the border.
The ‘Capo de capos’ believes that he can kill whoever he wants. He kidnaps, tortures, and murders DEA agent Ernie Hidalgo, Keller’s best friend. In the midst of an orgy of blood, massacres and betrayals, the agent will not stop until he arrests the drug trafficker and deposits him in a North American federal prison.
In ‘the cartel’ Keller reappears, who lives as a monk, isolated in a New Mexico monastery, dedicated to raising bees. After thirty years in the war against drugs, he just wants to rest and forget his violent past as an agent. But his plans are ruined when he receives a visit from an ex-colleague with the terrible news that Barreda has escaped from the Mexican prison where he was transferred and has put a price on his head: two million dollars.
Things get complicated when the vengeful drug lord escapes from prison determined to rebuild the empire that made him the ‘Boss of Boons’ of the drug trafficking and forces Keller to leave his comfortable retirement to embark, once again, on the search and capture of the psychopath.
‘Border’
Y ‘Border’ It is perhaps the best of all. Almost a thousand pages that leave us mesmerized. In Mexico, a bloody war was waged for control of the drug route between the Sinaloa de Barreda cartel and border cartels such as the Juarez cartel. That confrontation left a hundred thousand dead, positioned Adan as the “Boss of bosses” and created “stability” in the country that was welcomed by the government.
But then uncontrollable, ultraviolent groups arose, such as ‘Los Zetas’, which declared war on Barreda and unleashed a bloodbath in the country, with beheadings, skinning and massacres that were posted on YouTube.
Both the Mexican and US governments are betting on Barreda defeating ‘Los Zetas’ and executing a plan to ‘help’ him. They make Barreda agree to a meeting with ‘Los Zetas’ in a small Guatemalan town, ‘Dos Erres’, to establish a truce. Agent Keller arrives there with a group of foreign mercenaries to put an end to ‘Los Zetas’ and rescue Adán Barreda.
But ‘Los Zetas’ ambushed those from Sinaloa and killed their bosses. Barreda flees and Keller goes in search of him. The final balance: the death of the leaders of ‘Los Zetas and those of Sinaloa, and Keller, who is rescued by the Mexican Special Forces, affirms that Barreda is dead, but there is no body.
This is how ‘The Border’ begins. With an illegal US action in Guatemala. A Keller Appointed Head of the DEA, partly to keep the secret, because there is a senator involved in the raid. But the consequences of Barreda’s death in Mexico are cataclysmic.
Since no one expected his death, they had not prepared a line of succession in the mafia and everyone claims the throne. From his own cartel, a fratricidal war was launched, to which the other mafias joined at a time when Mexican heroin, a powerful drug mixed with fentanyl, flooded the North American market. The most addictive and deadly drug of all that have ever existed and caused overdose deaths like an epidemic.
On the other hand, we have his acid criticism of the American political system through the character of John Dennison, the real-estate businessman and television talker, candidate for president of the United States. Donald Trump? Ambitious man, hater, racist and who will not hesitate to start a personal war against the protagonist, Art Keller.
On the streets are new cartels and a new generation of drug lords. They call themselves ‘Children’, successors of big drug traffickers such as the Tapia or the Esparza. To combat them, Art Keller He must once again lead a team in the DEA and at his side he will have the impulsive and ambitious Hugo Hidalgo, son of his murdered best friend who is planning revenge.
The hallucinatory and suicidal journey of two children, Nico and Flor, along with thousands of Guatemalan migrants on the ‘La Bestia’ train, which crosses Mexico to the US border, is starkly described. ‘The border’ is a book that the Mexican president should read López Obrador, because 40% of his territory is taken over by drug trafficking. I turn off the TV.
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