"The Sicario: A Juárez hit man speaks."

Here is an excerpt from Charles Bowden's article in Harper's Magazine:

"I am ready for the story of all the dead men who last saw his face. As I drank coffee and tried to frame questions in my mind, a crime reporter in Juárez was cut down beside his eight-year-old daughter as they sat in his car letting it warm up. This morning as I drove down here, a Toyota passed me with a bumper sticker that read, with a heart symbol, i love love. This morning I tried to remember how I got to this rendezvous. I was in a distant city and a man told me of the killer and how he had hidden him. He said at first he feared him, but he was so useful. He would clean everything and cook all the time and get on his hands and knees and polish his shoes. I took him on as a favor, he explained. I said, 'I want him. I want to put him on paper.' And so I came. The man I wait for insists, 'You don’t know me. No one can forgive me for what I did.' He has pride in his hard work. The good killers make a very tight pattern through the driver’s door. They do not spray rounds everywhere in the vehicle, no, they make a tight pattern right through the door and into the driver’s chest. The reporter who died received just such a pattern, ten rounds from a 9mm and not a single bullet came near his eight-year-old daughter. I wait. I admire craftsmanship... I have spent years getting to this moment. The killers, well, I have been around them before. Once I partied with two hundred armed killers in a Mexican hotel for five days. But they were not interested in talking about their murders. He is." Link to Extended Excerpt on Anderson Cooper 360

Analysis: THIS is what an interview with an assassin should look like. It is a gripping ten-page account of the interview between the author - a veteran and award-winning journalist - and the subject, a world-weary and repentant sicario who has been staying out of the business for the last two years. The article is gripping, intense, and incredibly vivid in its detail and emotion. It's unfortunate that you can only read an excerpt of it online, but it's completely worth the drive to your local bookstore to pick up a copy of May 2009 edition of Harper's in order to read it (and thanks to James Creechan and Lindsay Beyerstein for recommending this!).

There are a few things about the article that I want to point out, which will hopefully encourage those of you with a profound interest in this topic to go out and buy the mag. First, the writing is really good. Yes, it's very dramatic and reads like a novel in some places. But isn't that what keeps you interested? Bowden, unlike some writers, doesn't use that tactic to detract from shaky "facts" or a mediocre story. The subject and the interview are very grave, which merits a degree of drama, in my opinion. I think it adds context and perspective, especially for those who don't follow border violence issues and don't realize just how bad things are in some places in Mexico.

Several important aspects of the drug smuggling business are revealed here, and it's not in a question-and-answer format that makes you wonder whether or not the answers were planted or the subject was set up to answer in a certain way. For example, the subject explains at great length that he never really knew who he was working for. He got orders, carried them out, and got paid in cash, booze, drugs, and women. He had rules to follow, and as long as he followed them, he stayed alive.

He explains that towards the end of his "career," after things started getting really bad in 2006, he was kidnapped twice. He talked about how his captors and torturers were amateurs in their methods - something I've noticed going on in the Tijuana area for about a year or so. This is part of what's contributing to the more grisly slayings and collateral damage - the fact that some newer hitmen are inexperienced, not as likely to follow the rules, and bloodthirsty. There's a part of the article where the subject talks about the difference between men that kill as a job and men that kill because they like killing. He felt that the men who enjoyed killing for its own sake were sick and needed to be killed themselves because they were a liability...an interesting viewpoint.

One of the more disturbing parts is his discussion of the corruption among Mexican law enforcement and the collusion between police and the DTOs. I knew corruption was widespread in many, if not most, areas of Mexico, but I had no idea it was this pervasive. The mere thought of Mexican cops taking part in kidnappings and torture - regardless of whether or not the victims are dirty themselves and owe money to a drug lord - is tough to swallow. However, it makes the problem of corruption so real, and helps the reader see what in incredible obstacle corruption poses to the Calderon administration.

So if you haven't figured it out yet, I think this is an incredibly good read, and well worth the time, effort, and $6.95 to get it at the news stand. It's an insight into a world who some think they know, yet we've only begun to scratch the surface; we may never get to the day-to-day truth that lies deep beneath for so many in Mexico.

Comments

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Thanks for the writeup, Sylvia.

The police corruption the hitman describes is horrifying.

I knew they corrupted cops en masse, but I didn't realize that they handpicked their own teenage recruits to send to the police academy. The idea that the Juarez PD has its own kidnapping squad gives me chills.

[Dwight Andersen]

I thought you were an expert. Everybody in Mexico is fighting each other and killing each other over the drug money. EVERYBODY! All police are crooks. The police do not solve crimes they plan and commit them. The Army is a terrorist organization and they want their share of the drug money too. Every Mexican is either directly involved in the drug trade or knows someone who is. They are not wishing for peace, they are fighting to get in on the drug money. And since murderers are not caught, why not murder? The Mexican State (except the Army) is weak. If the Generals wanted to stop it they could stop it in a month. But then they would not get fabulously wealthy.