The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin

by Terrence E. Poppa, Peter Lupsha

During the last years of his violent life, Pablo Acosta smuggled a staggering 60 tons of cocaine a year into the United States-one third of the total U.S. consumption.

Set only miles from the Texas border, Drug Lord is an extraordinary inside look at how drug trafficking really works in Mexico. Based on interviews with Acosta and other insiders, Poppa weaves a tale of the smuggler's rise from humble beginnings, his violent struggle to maintain control over his empire, the treachery and over-indulgence that fostered his downfall, and his grisly death at the hands of the judiciales, the Mexican federal police he had been paying off for years and who turned against him when he was no longer of use.

Drug Lord was first published in 1990. The new, critically acclaimed version is an essential update with never before published information about Pablo Acosta's partner, Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Carrillo Fuentes, the infamous 'Lord of the Skies,' took over where Acosta left off and built the greatest narcotics smuggling organization ever in the Western Hemisphere. The new version, about 100 pages longer than the original work, also tracks the career of the fearsome Comandante Calderoni, the Mexican federal police commander who killed Acosta. Calderoni later defected to the United States, gaining asylum here after spilling his guts to the FBI about the involvement of the Mexican presidential family in drug trafficking.

364 pages, paperback