Borderland Beat: Reporting On the Mexican Cartel Drug War

by Alex Marentes

The Borderland Beat Project is collaboration from a group of people of different backgrounds located in the U.S. and Mexico that gather information related to the Mexican drug cartels and presents it in English through the internet, publications and presentations.
The information in this book is fast-paced, with a lot of DTO information thrown at you at once. It's filled with sicario activity and the Mexican government's attempt to intervene, but it also contains a lot of direct, behind-the-scenes information from the author. This particular information is the involvement of the author from his early stages when he started to formalize his plan to bring to life the Borderland Beat Project.
Follow Buggs as he sets the stage and takes you on a wild ride in to the dark shadows of the violence and chaos of the Mexican drug cartels. A narrative, as told in the deep dark pages of the Borderland Beat blog.

398 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 16, 2019

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Borderland Beat is an engaging, but flawed book on the drug cartel wars in Mexico. Through a series of anecdotes Marentes describes some of the major events and several illustrative minor events in the competition between the cartels and the security forces. Marentes jumps back and forth in time and place as he tells these stories.

Overall, this book does not achieve its potential of applying a higher level of analysis to the series of reporting already on the Borderland Beat blog. As a result of its non-linear storytelling and the lack of a clear narrative the reader is not equipped to know what parts of the story are missing, which are true, and which are false. It would be unfair to hold this completely against Marentes as it is clearly impossible to know the truth in the series of battles between unreliable narrators, but the fact that many of his stories are backed by photographic and video evidence as well as his access, through the prominence of his respected blog, to many professional observers of the Mexican drug wars should have allowed him to provide reliable analysis.

[Jan Notzon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was full of astonishing information, but Mr. Marentes sure needs an editor. This was some of the poorest English I've ever read. I realize it was from a blog, but the English could have been spruced up at least to some degree for the printed edition.

If you want to know what the appetite for drugs in this country is doing to our southern neighbor (and our own) I would give this my qualified recommendation. The author is honest about when he's reporting rumor and the graphicness of what is going on in Mexico is hair-raising.

I feel so sorry for the honest, law-abiding people there. And it all starts and is fed right here.

[Denise Delocos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. Audible version is no bueno. Annoying mispronounced words in Spanish.

[Josh Ortiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, though I’m biased for the topic / genre in general. The usual violence and same sad story, but a good read.

[Lucía · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nunca había leído un libro tan horripilantemente escrito 😵‍💫.