crime and criminals

Many different worlds collide in the dusty, sprawling metropolis of El Paso/Juarez, igniting a culture of chaos. This conflagration is fueled to levels of heroic proportions by economic opportunity. The biggest opportunities arise from the official American goals of stopping the illegal drug trade, the so-called War on Drugs.

Profits previously unimaginable are within reach for the daring in a black market created by drug prohibition laws. Consequently, 'greed' violently governs lives on both sides of the border with the protection, or camouflage, of law enforcement and government on both sides of the border. In "Down by the River," Charles Bowden investigates and records for history a collage of bizarre events at the frontlines of a war that can never be won.

I'm from El Paso. I have encouraged people for many years to open their minds to the murderous results of this war on drugs-but with limited success and much frustration at times. Now others can and do comment readily to me because this eye-popping book is now available as credible social research. Charles Bowden has provided us with facts, names, dates, researchable footnotes, and irrefutable grounds to support what we already know and feel.

Most everyone around here remembers the sad story of the Jordan family, around whom the book centers. Many people agree with Phillip Jordan, the eldest brother of this local family, who believes his youngest brother Bruno was killed with an Uzi in a carjacking as a warning from the Juarez cartel to 'back off.'

Was this a nasty hint for Phil to drop his announced plans to increase DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) success in his hometown? Anyone who has heard the story has an opinion similar to mine, and, in my opinion, it was a dire warning. His brother's murder occurred as Phillip Jordan was in the process of filling his promotion with the DEA to head the El Paso Intelligence Center, or EPIC.

Seeing in print the details of local daily newspaper stories supported with what I've only heard in whispers is at the same time affirming yet even more frightening. With so much documentation available to so many, why aren't we approaching these issues with more realism? Why are so many people paying so dearly with their lives or time in prison?

The borderland that surrounds the Rio Grande is like a test tube for corruption. What happens here can happen anywhere if left unchecked. We cannot continue on our current path and expect to achieve any success, nor can we abruptly legalize the most popular illegal drugs without major global repercussions. We need to see the truth and deal with it.

According to Bowden, pragmatic patriotism may be at the heart of many of the sophisticated and driven businessmen, narcocorridos, when they employ thousands and build roads, churches, schools and more. Ironically, here in the United States public funds continue to be routed away from education and public health and towards law enforcement and harsher punishments. Our leaders must be plagued with self-protective amnesia or hysterical blindness to allow a system of honor and integrity to be replaced with practices of conspiracy and deceit. The snitch culture of coercion and lies, undercover agents, and entrapment prevalent in our law enforcement and judicial system today is a far cry from "protect and serve" slogans of most police departments.

The drug economy has grown so powerful that human lives are often a business expense, where torture and murder are 'business tools.' Drugs represent 20% of the American economy and over 60% of the Mexican economy, tying the hands of presidents, law enforcement, and politicians to payoffs and bank transactions of unprecedented scale. Who can dispute that when an entire nation depends on a profitable enterprise, legal or not, there will be no real effort to curb it? In "Down by the River" Bowden introduces policy makers and US operatives who know and accept this reality. The balance of blood lost in this clash of public policy and real life is monumental.

Relentlessly, Charles Bowden compels the reader to see the true colors of the growing economic force of a global black market. He took great personal risks to be involved within the shadowy collision of trafficking and enforcement groups. To then publish a documentary illuminating the bloody reality of a 30-year war is unparalleled journalism.
"Down by the River" may be a difficult book to read for some, yet Bowden's unyielding prose hammers out new consciousness, making it difficult to put down. He captures the diversity of the Mexican/US borderland with all its contradictions and magic in lustrous vivid imagery. It is a complete exposé of government propaganda and its mystification of rampant mind-numbing corruption.

Telling the truth in a time of universal deceit is an act of revolution. Thank you, Charles Bowden.
November Coalition (www.november.org)

I've been somewhat aware of the corruptive influence that drugs has had on our society, but this book really opened my eyes. And it makes sense the way Mr. Bowden describes it.

In many ways the story sums up the struggle anyone has with senseless tragedy: the search for meaning and understanding, and how sometimes there is none. This is a story of a family in the cross hairs of several cultures and how those cultural expectations destroyed several of its members.

It is also the story of another family, that of the boy accused of the shooting. Amidst the violence and the massive corruption, the reader is led along a parallel path of two families and how a shooting in a parking lot changed so many lives.

I was able to put myself in the place of the people in the book, hoping and searching with them for answers. The many names grew confusing at times, but Mr. Bowden successfully reminded the reader of the role each person had earlier on in the story. From time to time it was necessary to put the book down and absorb the ramifications of what I had just read.

This book is heartily recommended.

Bowden and I live in the same city, Tucson, and since some of his work is regional in nature I've long been a fan of his. I remember his byline from local newspapers. Although I'm Anglo, I married into a large Mexican-American family with roots in Chihuahua and Sonora. Although El Paso is 400 miles away, life along the border is pretty much the same. Due to La Migra's increased presence in California and Texas, more trafficking (in humans and drugs) has shifted to southern Arizona. So, much of the action he focuses on that was taking place in the mid- to late '90s in El Paso is now going on in and around Tucson. In Arizona, a few pieces of welded railroad track and surplus military hardware create boundaries between Mexico and the United States. But the vast majority of the border is marked by barbed wire fences in some places and places where there used to be barbed wire. The porous border plays tricks, though. It's easy to cross and each year more and more migrants cross over, headed north. The federal government keeps tabs of known migrants who die in the vast emptiness of Arizona's deserts -- often from injury, just as often after being abandoned by their coyotes (smugglers). In FY 2002 a new record in migrant deaths was set. The FY 2003 that just ended broke the record set in 2002, and only weather and fate know what's in store for 2004. Bowden's Down By the River captures the complex relationships that exist along the border. Although I am in no way connected to the drug trade, it is all around this city and its impact affects every aspect of life. There is no river separating Arizona from Sonora; walk through a steel turnstile and without challenge you leave the U.S. and enter a country where chaos reigns, and no one really seems to be who they say they are, and there is a sense of danger -- real and imagined -- in the air. Even casual tourists like myself tend to breathe a sigh of relief once we are through Customs and back in the U.S., for in some small way a sense of safety returns. Other reviewers can tell you the story of this book, of Phil Jordan's search for meaning in a place where meaning doesn't exist. Bowden tells Jordan's tale convincingly, and the smells, the sounds, always the sounds, of Mexico, resound in the back of my mind as I read this book. Mexico is a country where the senses of sight and sound are overwhelmed. Beneath the noise, there is another world, an unspoken world, and Bowden does an excellent job of capturing the duality of life along the border. Down by the River is a great read -- even for someone like me who's spent enough time along "the line" to understand the complexity of the duality and of how two different cultures are so intertwined. Excellent work, Bowden.