Drug Cartels Do Not Exist

Oswaldo Zavala is a professor of contemporary Latin American literature and culture with a joint appointment at the College of Staten Island and at The Graduate Center, both institutions part of the City University of New York (CUNY).William Savinar is a writer, translator, and English teacher living in Mexico City.

"Spend enough time with [Oswaldo Zavala], talk about the drug trade long enough, and, more likely than not, you'll come to realize that most of what you know about it is a myth."—Freddy Martínez, Remezcla

• INTRODUCTION: THE INVENTION OF A FORMIDABLE ENEMYCHAPTER ONE: NARCO CULTURE DEPOLITICIZEDCorpses Without History: Narco Noir Novels and the Myth of the Cartel KingdomNeutralized Chronicles: The Journalistic Imaginary on Drug TraffickingThe Cartel, Narcos, Sicario: National Security Discourse in American Movies and TelevisionCHAPTER TWO: THE CARTELS DON’T EXIST (BUT STATE VIOLENCE DOES)The Drug War and Its Raisons d’État: Sovereignty and Biopolitics in the Contemporary Mexican NarcoNarrativeThe Recapture of "El Chapo" and the State's Media ConquestA Latecomer to the End of the World: Trump, the US, the "Narco" and the Mexican Energy ReformCHAPTER THREE: FOUR WRITERS SUBVERTING THE NARCONARRATIVECesar López Cuadras and the Precarious Life of the Drug TraffickerDaniel Sada and the Return to the PoliticalRoberto BolaÑo and the Narco's FaceJuan Villoro and the Country Too Faithful to Its Own ImageCHAPTER FOUR: DRUG TRAFFICKING, SOLDIERS, AND POLICE ON THE BORDERImaginary Lines of Power: Politics and Mythology in the Literature on Ciudad JuÁrezJuliÁn Cardona and Charles Bowden, Heretics Preaching in HellWho Controls the Plaza? The City, the State, and Organized CrimeEPILOGUE: THE NEW "CARTEL WAR" IS NOT NEW, NOR A WAR, NOR BETWEEN CARTELSAfterword for the English EditionAcknowledgments