When I was a reporter covering U.S. Mexico relations, I often looked to George Grayson for expert commentary. Here at CIS, where he is a member of the board, I have come to admire not just his expertise, but also his courage in reporting the stories he has told in The Executioner's Men, a new book he has written with investigative reporter Samuel Logan. This is a brief review.
The Zetas, Mexico's most notoriously brutal and viciously efficient criminal band, began when a group of highly trained military men went rogue and threw in with the Gulf Cartel. Then they went even roguer and struck out on their own, starting their own cartel, making extreme brutality their blood sport with acts of savagery that are often-literally eye-popping.
Up until now, their story had its most dramatic telling in the "narcocorridos" they commissioned to spread their fame and the fear with which they seek to paralyze their foes. Now those folk ballads have been eclipsed by a powerful tale told by two of the best sourced and most knowledgeable chroniclers of Mexico's descent into the hell of narcoterror.
George Grayson, a professor at the College of William & Mary, has long been recognized as a Mexico expert who is remarkably well plugged into the country's political system. Here he is joined by investigative reporter Samuel Logan to tell the astonishing tale that demands to be understood. Vivid in its sometimes gruesome detail, powerful in its significance for Mexico and the United States, meticulously documented with footnotes that can serve as tools for other academics and journalists, The Executioner's Men is a crime story that must be read and understood.