Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers And Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel Download Free (EPUB, PDF)
The story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel, and their pursuit by a Mexican-American detective who realizes the War on Drugs is unwinnable.What’s it like to be an employee of a global drug-trafficking organization? And how does a fifteen-year-old American boy go from star quarterback to trained assassin, surging up the cartel corporate ladder? At first glance, Gabriel Cardona is the poster boy American teenager: great athlete, bright, handsome, and charismatic. But the streets of his border town of Laredo, Texas, are poor and dangerous, and it isn’t long before Gabriel abandons his promising future for the allure of the Zetas, a drug cartel with roots in the Mexican military. His younger friend Bart, as well as others from Gabriel’s childhood, join him in working for the Zetas, boosting cars and smuggling drugs, eventually catching the eye of the cartel’s leadership. Meanwhile, Mexican-born Detective Robert Garcia has worked hard all his life and is now struggling to raise his family in America. As violence spills over the border, Detective Garcia’s pursuit of the boys, and their cartel leaders, puts him face to face with the urgent consequences of a war he sees as unwinnable. In Wolf Boys Dan Slater shares their stories, taking us from the Sierra Madre mountaintops to the dusty, dark alleys of Laredo, Texas, on a harrowing, often brutal journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade. Gabriel’s evolution from good-natured teenager into a feared assassin is as inevitable as Garcia’s slow realization of the futile nature of his work. A nonfiction thriller, Wolf Boys depicts more than just Gabriel, Bart, and the officers who took them down. It shows, through vivid detail and rich, often moving, narrative, the way in which the border itself is changing, disappearing, and posing new, terrifying, and yet largely unseen threats to American security. Ultimately though, Wolf Boys is the intimate story of the “lobos” themselves: boys turned into pawns for cartels. Their stories show how poverty, ideas about identity, and government ignorance have warped the definition of the American dream.
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 13, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1501126547
ISBN-13: 978-1501126543
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #5,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #13 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Crime > Organized Crime #30 in Books > Law > Criminal Law #32 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Crime & Criminals
Although "Wolf Boys" was not the book I was expecting, it was a book that informed and entertained the reader at the same time. By expecting something different, I mean only that I thought the book was solely the story of Gabriel Cardona (Wolf Boy) and Robert Garcia (Texas homicide detective - who was born in Mexico). But realistically, in telling the story of the Wolf Boys and the Mexican drug cartels (with the cut-throat competition, killings and retaliation), there is no way to limit the characters to Gabriel and Robert (or even just the families of the two).I couldn't really "get into" the book into Part 2 (about page 73 or so), but when I did get into it, I enjoyed it very much. Everything is tied together, and the different threads help to illustrate the breadth and depth of when and where the drug war began (and even what the drug war is and what it means for people) and how it has made many impacts and changed over the decades. In addition to Gabriel's story, who becomes a rising star for the drug cartel called the Zetas, and of course Robert, the homicide detective who is on Gabriel's trail, there are the strands involving the experiences of the drug cartel members - from their extensive training and then through various assignments, failures or successes and the consequences for either. I really liked the politics and history, because it helped me get a glimpse of how many different factors made and later changed the buying, selling, smuggling and moving of illegal drugs.The story unravels at an appropriate pace and kept me engaged; there are quite a few "example" stories, just one or two-page shockers of members of opposing drug cartels and what happens to them, but they seemed to fit.
This is an excellent story told from the perspective of those living within the ongoing perpetual opium war; teenage high school students recruited by the Mexican drug cartels, and the men & women assigned to stop the drug trafficking. The author did his due diligence in research, interviews, and travelling to get as close to the truth as possible. Dan Slater even provides a few pages for the reader writing about his sources. However, if the reader is contemplating reading Wolf Boys, may I suggest one non fiction work of illuminating scholarship/American War Machine: Deep Politics, The CIA, Global Drug Connection, and the Road To Afghanistan by Peter Dale Scott. The theme of that work coincides with Wolf Boys: The Threat To The Public State From The Private and Corporate Wealth.This theme is thoroughly presented in both works, For example, in Wolf Boys the author goes into American history of the fur trade/The fur traders-such as America's richest man, John Jacobs Astor, whose American Fur Company controlled 75% of the fur trade-benefited the most from early prohibition. The whiskey for fur bonanza for Astor was quite rewarding. The Indians?Actually, the author asks the reader/In future attempts to regulate vice, the only question would be which community bore the black-market burden-as consumers of vice, suppliers of the market, or both Who would be the Indians next?The reading Wolf Boys immerses the reader within the cultures of those caught within its vortex; and at the same time drawing the real-life characters in such a way that the reader cares. The author also gives context to the politics and markets, so that the complexities are seen & understood more clearly.
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