Eclipse of the Assassins: The CIA, Imperial Politics, and the Slaying of Mexican Journalist Manuel Buendía

by Russell H. Bartley, Sylvia Erickson Bartley

This is a stellar, courageous work of investigative journalism and historical scholarship—grippingly told, meticulously documented, and doggedly pursued over thirty years. Tracking a Cold War confrontation that has compromised the national interests of both Mexico and the United States, Eclipse of the Assassins exposes deadly connections among historical events usually remembered as isolated episodes.
            Authors Russell and Sylvia Bartley shed new light on the U.S.-instigated “dirty wars” that ravaged all of Latin America in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s and reveal—for the first time—how Mexican officials colluded with Washington in its proxy contra war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. They draw together the strands of a clandestine web              Eclipse of the Assassins places a major political crime—the murder of Buendía—in its full historical perspective and shows how the dirty wars of the past are still claiming victims today.

Best books for public & secondary school libraries from university presses, American Library Association

Genres: History

552 pages, Hardcover

First published November 17, 2015

Reviews

[Jesús Martell]

I want to read the book

[James Creechan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The authors worked on this book for about three decades and have pieced together an amazing report of political manipulation, corruption and murder. There are two assassinations at the heart of this book — the murder of a well-known Mexican investigative journalist and essayist named Manuel Buendia and American DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Several other nefarious plots and assassination attempts are also linked to those two political events. The perpetrators worked for the Mexican State and in fact were directors of the DFS (Mexico’s Security Directorate- the equivalent of the FBI). The author’s conclusion is that the CIA had a direct hand in the killings of both men because of its illegal involvement in training and providing arms to Nicaraguan Contras. The evidence assembled by the authors is compelling and comprehensive — in fact, making the book a difficult read because of the detail. This is a required book for anyone who is remotely or vaguely concerned about geo-politics and the black hand of American political operatives.