618 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 5 / 2015 “Writing about cocaine is like using it. You want more nuances every time, more information, and those you find are succulent, you cannot do without them any longer. You are addicted” (Saviano) Roberto Saviano, Italian journalist, born in Naples in 1979, hit the headlines with the publication in 2006 of “Gomorrah”, in which he describes the activity of the Camorra. Since then he has lived surrounded by bodyguards and members of the carabinieri day and night. In his new research work, “ZeroZeroZero”, written in a journalistic style, he looks at cocaine trafficking in the world in which everyday stories and not so everyday stories intermingle, capable of turning the stomachs of even those familiar with the whole issue. Such is the case, for example, with the description of the brutal torture and later murder of Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, a DEA agent who had infiltrated the Guadalajara Cartel. His story had already been told in the powerful novel “The power of the dog” by Don Winslow, which Saviano echoes, highlighting it as typifying he most extreme and irrational violence, far beyond anything imaginable. But one story does not rule out other interpretations, not narrated in the book, like the one which at the end of 2013 points the finger at the CIA’s involvement in the murder, after Kiki discovered links between Washington and Caro Quintero, the cartel kingpin, as a way of financing the Nicaraguan counter-revolution. Saviano refers to some of the most relevant moments in the history of organised crime, such as the alleged meeting held in 1989 in Acapulco, chaired by Félix Gallardo “The Godfather”, in which agreements were reached on how to divide out the business among the various cartels. Various leading figures, who in recent years have become tragically famous, were recorded as attending that meeting: Guzmán Lorea, best known as “The Chapo”, who received areas in Lower California and Sonora, and who was to create the powerful Sinaloa cartel; Rafael Aguilar, who took over the region from Juarez to New Laredo, later again taken over by Armando and Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the well-known Juárez cartel; and the Arellano Félix brothers, who took control of the Tijuana route. This carving up of territory triggered a lust for the control of the different cartels, leading to a vicious war which continues to the present time. Also related to this story is one of the most widely reported incidents, the murder of cardinal Posadas Ocampo, who some members of the Tijuana cartel mistook for Guzmán, “the Chapo” in a spectacular shoot-out at Guadalajara airport in May 1993. Some theorists argue, however, that this was no accident, and that the cardinal was aware of the activities of Salinas de Gortari. Then there was the first incident deemed a narco-terrorist attack, when a bomb went off in a square in Morelia (Michoacan) in 2008, leaving 8 people killed and 100 injured, in the war between the Michoacana and the Zeta families. There is an underlying belief that comes across throughout the book, which is that the production of drugs per se is not what is important. Distributing, supplying, http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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