The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico.

Host Per Fagereng speaks with  Michael Deibert, about his new book, In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico. The book looks at decades of failed policy through the prism of the rise of one particularly violent drug trafficking organization and its even more violent progeny, Los Zetas. 

Levels of violence have increased dramatically in Tamaulipas, the state in Mexico that borders Texas that the Gulf Cartel hail from and where Los Zetas operate widely throughout. The level of violence in Mexico has in fact changed very little since the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto took office and Mexico is still suffering the same fallout from broken policies both within and from it's northern neighbor, the United States.

Michael Deibert will be giving a reading at Powell's City of Books in Portland on July 8.

Deibert's previous book, The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair, was published last autumn by Zed Books in cooperation with the Royal African Society, the International African Institute and the World Peace Foundation.  His first book was Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti.