![]() ![]() ![]() Two years later, she was honoured by Unicef for her work on slave labour and the exploitation of Mexican girls entrapped in agricultural work camps in southern California. Within a year, Hernández had broken a scandal about the extravagance with which the winning presidential candidate, Vicente Fox, had decorated his personal accommodation using public funds – while campaigning on a ticket of economic austerity. When Mr Hernández was murdered, Anabel Hernández's resolve to nurture her craft – fearless of, and without illusions about, the establishment – was deepened by the outrage. The police in Mexico City said they would investigate only if they were paid the family refused, figuring – as sometimes happens – that the police would take the money without taking any action. But in December of that year, she found herself personally caught up in the murky crossover between state and criminals when her father was kidnapped: a crime the family believes to have been unconnected to his daughter's work. The rules of drug trafficking that Anabel Hernández describes are also the rules of capitalism."īy the year 2000, Anabel Hernández had made a name for herself in Mexican journalism, on the daily paper Reforma. Because it is not the mafia that has transformed itself into a modern capitalist enterprise, it is capitalism that has transformed itself into a mafia. Two writers in particular have been pioneering the struggle to counter this untruth: one is Hernández, and the other is Roberto Saviano – author of Gomorrah, about the Camorra of Naples – who writes in a foreword to Hernández's English edition: " Narcoland shows how contemporary capitalism is in no position to renounce the mafia. Hernández's book will be published in English this month with the title Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and their Godfathers, so that we in the English-speaking world that consumes so much of what the cartels deal, and which banks their proceeds, might learn the lie of "cops and robbers", of "upright society versus the mafia" – the received wisdom that still contaminates coverage of drug wars and the "war on drugs". They know the government is lying, they don't carry their heads in the clouds." They do not believe the government are good guys, fighting the cartels. The wildfire interest delivers a clear message, says Hernández: "So many Mexicans do not believe the official version of this war. The success is impossible to overstate, a staggering figure for a non-fiction book in a country with indices of income and literacy incomparable to the American-European book-buying market. Her further sin against the establishment and cartels was that the book became, and remains, a bestseller: more than 100,000 copies sold in Mexico. But there have been other books about this bloodletting what made Los Señores del Narco different was its relentless narrative linking the syndicate that has driven much of the violence – the Sinaloa cartel, the biggest criminal organisation in the world – to the leadership of the Mexican state. Hernández's offence was to write a book about the drug cartels that have wrought carnage across Mexico, taking some 80,000 lives, leaving a further 20,000 unaccounted for – and forging a new form of 21st-century warfare. ![]() And during that time the threats had continued: one afternoon last June, Hernández opened her front door to find decapitated animals in a box on the doorstep. But this was no robbery no one tried to use any of the credit cards – it was pure intimidation, aimed at my family, and at me." It was more than a year before the authorities began looking for the assailants. "Pointing rifles at my family, walking round the room – and taking wallets from people. It hardly ever happens."Īnabel Hernández had to leave early, as so often, "to finish an article", and it was after she left that gunmen burst in. There are so many of us that it's extremely difficult to get everybody together in one place. ![]() As one of the country's leading journalists who rarely allows herself time off, she was especially happy because "the entire family was there. The gathering was to celebrate the birthday of Anabel's niece. D uring January 2011, Anabel Hernández's extended family held a party at a favourite cafe in the north of Mexico City. ![]()
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