On November 22, 1988, a grandmother from Anacostia, in the southeast quadrant of the District of Columbia, calmly washed dishes at home while her grandchildren played nearby. As an older black woman living in the nation's "murder capital," Washington, D.C., the proliferation of gangland drug wars in her area had likely often crossed her mind, especially when the issue surfaced on the evening news.
Tragically, Mrs. Stevens would not have the luxury of pondering the ramifications of our drug-racked society or the impact of a far-off cocaine network in Colombia, the Medellin cartel. A stray shot from a high-caliber handgun, originating from a wild drug fight in the street, shattered her second-story kitchen window, hitting Mrs. Stevens in the head. She died instantly.
Mrs. Stevens, like Vondalia Robinson, a bright college-bound teenager and innocent bystander who had been shot in the head twice drugging a drug-related shootout about three weeks earlier, share a common background as victims of a "business" where, in the words of drug baron Carlos Lehder, "some people have to die." The real tragedy is that the morbid consequences of the drug war scarcely merit any reaction by most Americans, barraged as they are by daily revelations of shootings, gang wars, and corruption. The community is shocked but not surprised. Clearly, it isn't necessary to take drugs to die in the war.
Kings of Cocaine is the most detailed and readable account to date about the infamous cocaine network known as the Medellin cartel. The book shows vividly how the "fruits" of this multibillion-dollar enterprise, including death, crime, and suffering, can be felt on a daily basis in almost every town and community throughout the United States. But even those previously jaded by the incredible violence of the cartel, and those already impressed by the tenacity of its efforts to undermine the social fabric of the United States, will be surprised by heretofore unknown details of the cartel's exploits. The book helps illuminate nontraditional linkages in the drug war: the nexus between Marxist guerrillas and the cartel; networks of corruption-driven distribution centers in the Bahamas, Haiti, Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Colombia; as well as a seemingly endless string of drug-related homicides in the United States. In short, the book helps explain the industry of death that inevitably follows the demand for cocaine.
Kings of Cocaine enables the reader to see the cartel and its elaborate network through the eyes of major drug traffickers, drug dealers who have been "turned," Drug Enforcement Administration agents, ambassadors, judges, Colombian presidents, and cabinet ministers. This inside perspective is extremely valuable to policymakers, who are constantly trying to put together disjointed pieces of this exceedingly complex puzzle. After all, one must know how a cartel functions before attacking it. But most importantly, Kings of Cocaine weakens the image of the cartel as omnipotent and untouchable by delving into some of its most fundamental weaknesses; the U.S.-Colombian extradition treaty, the uneasy alliance between traffickers and guerrillas, and the competition among traffickers themselves.
Kings of Cocaine is refreshing in the sense that it contradicts the conventional vision, as provided by Time and Newsweek, portraying the drug war as a one-sided battle in which our only enemy, the trafficker, is fought by a bunch of
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