Mexico Drug War Quotes

“Mexico has made a mistake. Alone, it fights a war against a global phenomenon that only matters to a few. That makes the headlines in every case because of its unusual cruelty.”
― Sabina Berman

“Emilia typed in her password and checked her inbox. A review by the Secretariat de Gobernación of drug cartel activities across Mexico. A report of a robbery in Acapulco’s poorest barrio neighborhood that would probably never be investigated. Notice of a reward for a child kidnapped in Ixtapa who was almost certainly dead by now.
Her phone rang. It was the desk sergeant saying that a Señor Rooker wished to see her. Emilia avoided Rico’s eye as she said, yes, the sergeant could let el señor pass into the detectives’ area.
A minute later Rucker was standing by her desk, sweat beaded on his forehead. The starched collar of his shirt was damp.
“There’s a head,” he said breathlessly. “Someone’s head in a bucket on the hood of my car.”
― Carmen Amato, Made in Acapulco

“So the Juárez/El Paso area before the recent drug violence was not a bilingual, bi-national, bicultural Zion, but it was one world. One entity. One place. One city where you could live in between worlds, and have the hope of creating something new. A third way to be, not along the border, but on the border.

That is what the violence has destroyed, that unity, however tenuous it ever was. It has destroyed the idea of that unity and the reality of living so uniquely astride an international border. This ‘real idea’ was always a work-in-progress, and for the moment it is lost. Yet that real idea of unity had great value.”
― Sergio Troncoso, Our Lost Border: Essays on Life Amid the Narco-Violence

“Did you attend church last Sunday?” I asked with no warning. The men all looked at each other.
“No, sir. At least I wasn’t at church this past Sunday,” the old man answered first. The others followed and mumbled their negation under their breath.
"Aha, did you happen to find the irrefutable evidence that God is nonexistent?"
“No, sir!”
― Lucian Vicovan, Another dance in the flames