Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the Mexican Border - Softcover

As numerous assassinations and a notoriously violent crime illustrate, Mexico is in the midst of a power struggle between the forces of corruption and organized crime--fueled principally by drug money--and those working to continue a transition to an electoral democracy. These problems, as Sebastian Rotella chronicles vividly in Twilight on the Line: Underworlds and Politics at the U.S.-Mexico Border, flow over into America as well. As a result of the success of the Drug Enforcement Agency in blocking drugs (mainly Colombian cocaine) from entering through Florida, drug lords began looking to the vulnerable U.S.-Mexican border as a route for their contraband, a shift that exacerbated not only the flow of drugs, but of illegal immigrants as well. To explain the broader problem, Rotella focuses on individuals working for justice in Mexico, explaining in great detail the difficulties men such as Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio encountered in working for change. Both men, along with countless others, were gunned down for daring to stand up to the crime bosses. As the Los Angeles Times bureau chief for Latin America, Rotella is well acquainted with the subject, deftly analyzing the social and political repercussions of the brutal drug trade in both countries. Though he offers no real solutions to the problems (of course, the same could be said of stymied Mexican officials), he does convey the desperate situation with compassion and honesty.

Sebastian Rotella is Los Angeles Times bureau chief for South America. He covered the U.S.-Mexico border for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 to 1996, and won the Bartolome Mitre prize for distinguished reporting on narcotics issues from the Inter-American Press Association in 1996.