Peter Watt and Roberto Zepeda shed light on this dark moment in Mexican history, a drug war that has become one of the most brutal and mistunderstood conflicts of the twenty first century.

Ioan Grillo, author of El Narco: The Bloody Rise of Mexican Drug Cartels

By carefully linking together the economic, political and criminal histories of Mexico over the past decades, Watt and Zepeda roll back the curtain on the "war on drugs". Their book offers a comprehensive analysis, examining overlapping facts that others have assumed unrelated and documenting step by step the hypocrisy and corruption rampant in this war of contradictions. With its cast of shady characters and stranger-than-fiction events, the book leads logically to the conclusion that there is much more than meets the eye to the US and Mexican governments' efforts to "defeat organized crime". The information presented here will be an important tool in understanding the real interests behind the drug war-it will be up to a new generation to use that tool to end this deadly and unjust war before the death toll climbs even higher.

Laura Carlsen, Director, Americas Program

This is a superb, carefully documented analysis of how American drug and neoliberal policies have helped open up Mexico to crony capitalism, crony drug trafficking, increasing wealth disparity, impoverishment of the lower 50 percent, police and army corruption and domination, and now a murderous, fruitless, US-driven drug war. Concerned Americans should read this book, and get others to read it, as a step towards decriminalizing marijuana - the chief commodity of the Mexican cartels - to help end the nightmare.

Peter Dale Scott, author of American War Machine