POPPA'S 'DRUG LORD' TRADE BOOK REISSUED

Investigative reporter Terrence E. Poppa once ran around El Paso with
a loaded .38-caliber pistol in a cigar box.

Mexican drug traffickers had threatened to kill him.

"I was pretty shaken up," Poppa said in a recent telephone
interview.

Poppa, a former El Paso Herald-Post reporter, wrote "Drug Lord: The Life and
Death of a Mexican Kingpin," the classic biography of Pablo Acosta, a
cocaine and marijuana smuggler in the 1980s based in Ojinaga, Mexico, a
border town in northeastern Chihuahua, four hours downstream from El Paso.
Poppa interviewed Acosta, plus various law enforcement officials along the
Rio Grande, and tapped into official documents and other sources.

El Paso independent publisher Cinco Puntos Press recently issued the
third edition of "Drug Lord," billed as a still fascinating story and
still relevant because of Poppa's description of the "plaza," the
franchise system the Mexican government created to control and profit
from the drug trade.

Mexican federal authorities killed Acosta in 1987 in Santa Elena, an
isolated village along the Rio Grande across from Big Bend National
Park. Mexican officials worked with the FBI in El Paso to mount a
surprise raid against Acosta from the U.S. side of the border.

"Drug Lord" was published in 1990 and reissued in 1998.

"It was a book before its time, a revelation almost," Cinco Puntos
Press publisher Bobby Byrd said. "It revealed the Mexican
government's, especially its army, complicity in the drug trade,
something that the U.S. government ignored or didn't care about."

Byrd read the original book in the early 1990s. In 2002, he included
part of the book in "Puro Border," an anthology of writing about the
U.S.-Mexico border. "Drug Lord" had gone out of print, but Poppa
agreed last year to let Cinco Puntos reissue a trade edition.

Poppa, a 1987 Pulitzer finalist for his investigative reports on the
drug war in Mexico, is still apprehensive about previous brushes with
death threats. He avoids public appearances to promote the book and
does not reveal where he lives in the United States or what he does
for a living. He is working on another book project unrelated to drug
trafficking.

Poppa suggests in the book's new epilogue that the brutal cartel wars
of the past three years are attempts by cartel leaders to fill a power
vacuum left after the demise of the PRI, the once dominant party that
ruled Mexico for decades with iron-fisted control.

Poppa also argues the United States must end its 40-year war on drugs
and consider legalizing narcotics to help Mexico's fledgling democracy
flourish.

"If there's not a change in the United States with respect to how the
problem of drug addiction is dealt with, then the constant inflow of
money from the United States is going to erode Mexico's culture and
political system and take away the democratic gains it has made,"
Poppa said. "We have this policy of prohibition in this country, an
approach that hasn't worked. It's having horrific consequences in
Mexico that could lead to a destablilization of Mexico and result in a
national security nightmare for the United States."

The 1980s kidnapping and torture of El Paso photographer Al Gutierrez
inspired the book. Drug traffickers captured Gutierrez while he was on
assignment in Juarez for the El Paso Herald-Post. Gutierrez was
released a few days later.

Gregory Rocha, a political science professor at the University of
Texas at El Paso, suggests some people forget that Pablo Acosta laid
the foundation for the rise of the Juarez Cartel because of his close
alliance with Amado Carrillo Fuentes, who emerged as a Juarez drug
lord and the top trafficker in Mexico. He later died in Mexico City,
supposedly while having surgery to alter his appearance.

"Second, the violence we see today in Juarez is not that different
from the violence that took place during Acosta's reign. The only
difference is that it took place on a smaller scale then," Rocha said.
"Poppa's access to the innermost circle of the drug trade then is
simply not possible today."