The New York Times published my review of Azam Ahmed's Fear is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance, September 26, 2023.
"Drawing on four years of meticulous archival and field research, as well as countless interviews, scholarly works and his own journalism, Ahmed, a former Mexico bureau chief (and current investigative correspondent) for The New York Times, lifts the veil on daily life in a war-torn zone. While people employ the phrase “war on drugs” to mean an effort to combat illegal trafficking, or, worse, as a euphemism for state-sanctioned violence, Ahmed sets out to prove that in Mexico cartels have behaved as occupying armies on newly gained territory, governing by force and submitting local communities to increasingly spectacular acts of cruelty. The so-called war on drugs shows its truest face here: as a war against the civilian population. Ahmed’s book is a study of how such a war touches every aspect of social life, tearing it to pieces, and how the impunity with which cartels operate perpetuates a never-ending cycle of evil."
Full article here.
--crg
