Journalism can become literature when the force of its articles, chronicles or reports end up taking the narrative out of the everyday scene, crossing that threshold to the wild side. An obvious case is that of Anabel Hernandez Garcia and his approach to underworld orbits where he can capture those dark realities from which to compose investigative novels, not to mention unusual biographies.
Perhaps it is because certain reflections of what is seen and experienced sometimes need a minimum disguise to be able to be offered to the world. Because the mere fact that they occur points to each and every one of us, incapable of ensuring that vaunted better world for which we barely end up lifting a finger.
The point is that Anabel narrates layer to each, from the most realistic even the most sordid realism. Ultimately, the nuance is hardly noticeable and social sins try to find atonement in works that assault our conscience.
Top 3 recommended books by Anabel Hernández
The traitor. The secret diary of the son of Mayo
Her story dates back to January 2011, when she was contacted by one of Vicente Zambada Niebla's attorneys, better known as Vicentillo, who was facing trial in a Chicago court. The intention was to share with the journalist documents and facts that expanded and clarified several of the episodes that she had just released in The lords of the narco.
Among the documents to which he had access are the disturbing self-portrait as a clown that appears on the cover and the diaries made by Vicentillo during the negotiations to collaborate with the North American government, which until now were secret. In them, the boss reconstructed his story and the history of one of the largest drug trafficking organizations on the planet.
Throughout these pages, the author delves into the Sinaloa Cartel through the story of Vicentillo, who starkly exhibits how the internal system that gives life to the criminal organization, violence, the thousand ways of drug trafficking works and the complicity between politicians, businessmen and forces of order.
But above all it reveals the profile of who for the last half century has been the king of drug trafficking. Who has never stepped in jail and who from his throne has seen friends, enemies, partners, competitors, relatives, government employees and even his own children fall, without this making a dent in his power, Vicentillo's father: Ismael el May Zambada.
The lords of the narco
This second edition of Los señorres del narco, revised and updated, includes Chapo's unpublished interview with the DEA. Anabel Hernández had access not only to vast documentation, unpublished until today, but to direct testimonies from authorities and experts on the subject, as well as from people involved with the main Mexican drug cartels.
This has allowed him to rigorously examine the origins of the bloody power struggle between criminal groups, and question the federal government's "war" against organized crime. When investigating the intricate networks of conspiracy, the author had to go back to the 1970s, when drug trafficking was controlled by making drug traffickers practically pay taxes to the government.
In his disturbing journey, he advances to the eighties, when the heads of the Pacific criminal organization, sponsored by the CIA, ventured into the juicy cocaine business, and leads us to the emergence of powerful bosses such as the Beltrán Leyva brothers, Ismael El Mayo Zambada or Joaquín Guzmán Loera, who managed to penetrate the structures of the State and put them at their service.
After demolishing the myth of El Chapo's escape from the Puente Grande prison in a laundry cart, this book narrates his rise in the hierarchy of crime and how a "pact of impunity" with numerous public officials and businessmen. This book, in short, is presented as a shocking journey into the world of drug trafficking to search for the powerful springs that move it, and has discovered them by name and surname.
Emma and the other narco ladies
En Emma and the other narco ladies the author goes through the veil and shows the deepest drives that make people narcos attempting power y money at all costs.
The author of The traitor (2019), multi-award-winning and internationally recognized as an expert on drug trafficking issues, once again turns the table and offers the reader an almost anthropological analysis of the drug lords and his closest environment from a new perspective: the world of his women. Characters like Emma Colonel and other wives of important drug traffickers, a former Miss Universe, and some of the most recognized and acclaimed actresses, singers, and television hosts in Mexico, both past and present.
Mothers, wives y Lovers. Women who conform to macho rules of their masters and dance before them -in private, parties or orgies- the dance of the seven veils, and they do it on the corpses of the thousands who have been victims of the very men whom they delight with their complicit presence in exchange for money, jewelry y We take care of your rental property in Valencia. .
With the investigative rigor that characterizes her, Anabel Hernández, through interviews with witnesses to the events, takes the reader to family gatherings, parties and bedrooms of various drug traffickers where stories of love, purchase and sale of pleasure, incest occur. , ambition, betrayal and revenge. A hitherto unknown world.
Other interesting books by Anabel Hernández ...
The real night of Iguala
Faced with events like September 26, 2014, no country can move forward without knowing the truth to which the victims and society are entitled. The events of Iguala force us to reflect on the moment in which Mexico is living: they starkly portray the degradation of the institutions whose obligation is to seek justice and protect ourselves; at the same time they portray us as a society, they show what our deepest fears are, but also our hopes.
In the midst of the polarization and loneliness experienced in a country like Mexico, people have begun to forget that the pain that injustice causes to others should be our own pain. In this investigation the reader will explore the labyrinth of the case, its traps, its darkness and the light. He will arrive at Juan N. Álvarez Street, he will see the shell casings and sandals lying on the ground.
You will enter the “Raúl Isidro Burgos” Rural Normal School, you will hear the intense voices of its students, sometimes full of courage and pride, other times of fear and loneliness. He will travel to the sordid places where infamous torture was applied to fabricate culprits, as well as to the offices of high officials where the cover-up was carried out. Likewise, he will hear firsthand the testimonies of those who received juicy offers of money to blame themselves and others, and thus close the uncomfortable case.
In this investigation the reader will explore the labyrinth of the case, its traps, its darkness and the light. He will arrive at Juan N. Álvarez Street, he will see the shell casings and sandals lying on the ground. He will enter the Normal Rural "Raúl Isidro Burgos", he will hear the intense voices of his students, sometimes full of courage and pride, other times of fear and loneliness. He will travel to the sordid places where infamous torture was applied to fabricate culprits, as well as to the offices of high officials where the cover-up was carried out.
Likewise, you will hear firsthand the testimonies of those who received juicy offers of money so that they would blame themselves and others, and thus close the uncomfortable case. Finally, you will glimpse in the voices of the witnesses the desperation of the victims during the hours of extermination, the courage of the survivors and the tears of those who were disappeared.
