If you read Azam Ahmed’s Fear Is Just a Word, you will never go to Mexico. Ahmed tells the true story of Miriam Rodriguez who tries to get her kidnapped daughter, Karen, back from the local drug cartel, the Zetas, who demand ransom. The kidnapping took place in 2013 and Rodriguez pays several ransoms to the Zetas…but they don’t return Karen.
As Ahmed shows Rodriguez’s growing fear for her daughter, he weaves in the political history of Mexico, an authoritarian and corrupt Government. The Government used to be partners with the drug cartels until the cartels grew too rich and too powerful. Now the drug cartels in Mexico rule the country with violence, murder, kidnappings, torture, and mass execution events.
Miriam Rodriguez buys a gun and decides to hunt down the men who kidnapped her daughter. You would think that a 56-year-old woman wouldn’t present much of a threat to psychotic drug cartel thugs…but you would be wrong.
Fear Is Just a Word presents an accurate picture of a country ruled by vicious criminals. Miriam Rodriguez’s mission to bring justice and vengeance to the Zetas is an astonishing story. If you think things are bad in the U.S., you have to compare that with the incredible, malevolent horrors of Mexico. GRADE: A
Well, yes. I tend to think of Hamas in terms of a similar sort of cartel, vs. the Netanyahu plus Latter-Day Kach Party heirs government in Israel as splitting the difference between Mein Drumpf and Dick Cheney and their stooges. Things can usually manage to get worse…
Todd, the random violence described in FEAR IS JUST A WORD is horrifying.
Unfortunately, drug addiction will never go away, nor those who profit from it big-time. This looks like an interesting story, but in these days of unendingly depressing events in the U.S. and the world, I’m not up to reading it. The story has a doubly unhappy ending, as far as I can glean from news accounts on the web.
Fred, FEAR IS JUST A WORD shows how drugs not only kill the addicts, it turns the pushers into psychopaths who kill for thrills.
I don’t get it.
When I was a student (almost 60 years ago) I tried some grass, ok.
But when a friend offered me LSD I remembered the actions of a room neighbour who had jumped out of the window because he thought the police were coming … .
On the other hand I just talked with my granddaughter who spent more than a year on “travel and work” (which you can’t do in the USA) in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. She told me that in every group of young Canadians she met there was at least one person who had Narcan on them – just in case someone needed help …
And more than a hundred thousand deaths every year cause by drug overdose in the USA …
How will this develop?
A “friend” of mine told me:
That’s juat Darwin’s logic …
But so many people’s lives being destroyed!
Wolf, even in Western NY, there were 371 overdose deaths. Narcan became a staple with police, EMTs, and school officials as the death rate climbed.
No, I will never go to Mexico, nor will I read this book. Life is enough of a challenge as it is.
Jackie did go to Tijuana once, by the way. It was on a teachers’ junket to San Diego. I mean, a work week. Yeah, that’s what I meant, work.
Jeff, Azam Ahmed charts the decline of the Mexican Government as the drug cartels grew stronger and…irresistible.
I’m with Jeff on both his travel and reading plans.
A hard pass for me.
Beth, James Taylor’s “Mexico” is one of my favorite songs. But I’ve never been there and don’t ever plan to be after reading FEAR IS JUST A WORD.
And we wonder why thousands are clamoring at the border. How could you not want a safer, better life.
And also consider how many of those are escaping places that might even be worse for safety and prospects of a good life than Mexico…where they know they’ll at least have to dwell briefly while trying to get to the US. Where they’re likely to face all the troubles the poorest face in this country, atop the trumped up Greg Abbott level of hostility in store for them.
Todd, fleeing drug cartels and corrupt governments make sense. But U.S. isn’t prepared for millions of immigrants.
Part of the problem is, how much the US and US-based corporations have helped create these crises in the nations to the south of us.
Todd, Latin America and South America have a history of instability. As you point out, the U.S. is the cause of some of it.
Patti, the Mexico presented in FEAR IS JUST A WORD is a modern hellscape. No one would want to live under those conditions.
And also consider how many of those are escaping places that might even be worse for safety and prospects of a good life than Mexico…where they know they’ll at least have to dwell briefly while trying to get to the US. Where they’re likely to face all the troubles the poorest face in this country, atop the trumped up Greg Abbott level of hostility in store for them.
Todd, Greg Abbott is just the tip of the Immigrant Hostility Mountain. Trump and the GOP have made immigration a political issue that demonizes the immigrants and anybody who wants to help them.