‘Sicario’ Film Review: Dirty War on Mexican Drug Cartels Could Become Reality

[Judi Lynn]

‘Sicario’ Film Review: Dirty War on Mexican Drug Cartels Could Become Reality
Posted on Oct 28, 2015
By Sebastian Rotella / ProPublica

[center]

[/center]

I saw the movie “Sicario” the other day. And it reminded me why the border still haunts me.

“Sicario” is an important contribution to a cinematic genre that examines the dark realities of the U.S.-Mexico border. The film centers on an FBI agent in Arizona who joins a shadowy, CIA-led task force pursuing a Mexican drug lord. She becomes alarmed by secretive, brutal methods that leave a trail of corpses. She discovers that the unit’s mysterious Colombian “consultant” is an assassin (sicario) unleashed by the U.S. government on the cartels.

“Sicario” has drawn admiring reviews, commentary about the tough subject, and criticism in Mexico. My editors asked me to assess its portrayal of the underworlds of the U.S.-Mexico border.

I covered the borderlands for the Los Angeles Times in the 1990s and return there now and then. I’ve spent years reporting about mafias, justice and intrigue across the Americas and around the world. And I’ve written fiction and nonfiction in which the border plays a big role.

My first novel, “Triple Crossing,” describes the troubled dreams of a rookie Border Patrol agent: “The border seethed on the edge of his sleep. Haunting him. Disembodied faces surging up out of the riverbed at him.”

That image comes from personal experience. I still see the faces of people I knew — heroes and outlaws, bigshots and grunts — who lived intensely and died violently.

I remember interviewing a reformist police chief days before rogue federal cops assassinated him. I see a young prosecutor in a Tijuana diner telling me about investigating the chief’s murder — 18 months before killers butchered him in front of his house. I relive an early-morning phone call with sad news about a gentle, doomed warden who let me explore one of the world’s strangest prisons: a savage village where gangsters lived with their families, inmates ran shops and eateries, and gunfights erupted on the basketball court at high noon.

So I watched “Sicario” with a wary but respectful eye. I once wrote that the storytellers of the border know there is no better story in the world. But it’s a hard tale to tell, especially for Americans. Even if you speak fluent Spanish and have walked both sides of the line.

More:
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_dirty_war_on_mexican_drug_cartels_featured_in_sicario_could_20151028

[MisterP]

1. the cartels, of course, started as political throat-cutters for the first dirty wars

Mexico had a dirty war since the 60s, and just hired pistoleros who shot any tomato-picker who complained his guts had turned blue or whatever

Ollie North had el Padrino's "ticket punched" and got him out of jail every year: with the revelation he was then sent north 1987, followed by the illiterate Don of Honduras 1988 (sparking a riot that burned half the embassy)

the One Big Cartel then broke up and Medellin's anticommunists were killed off by Cali's: Noriega would please the DEA by turning in Cali men (not that the DEA offices stayed open long once they started asking questions) and surgically sodomize any asset who went rogue

[flamingdem]

2. Yow, quite a paragraph, would like to know more

especially about Colombia and the political connection.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Invaluable information at your links. So much has happened without our knowledge in Mexico,

so much brutality US taxpayers have paid for with their tax dollars, regardless of their sense of morality, fair play, humanity.

[center]



Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, Juan Matta-Ballesteros [/center]
Had never known about what happened to that asset you mentioned. So much hatred. It doesn't seem possible. He was lucky when he finally managed to die. It's beyond comprehension. Overwhelming.

These things shouldn't be allowed to happen with no one knowing or caring about what the hell happened. They have to be exposed, even if it is years later.

Thanks for the highly helpful post.

[MisterP]

7. and that's where we get Red Ribbon Week

[MinM]

3. Just watched it...

and it brought to mind this thread:

From torture to terrorism: How DEA case led to extraordinary rendition

In the way it shows just how murky these operations can get.

[MinM]

4. Cartel Land

'Cartel Land' Blurs the Borders of Good and Evil
Friday, February 26, 2016


An armed member of the citizens' self-protection police patrol in Tancitaro community, state of Michoacan, Mexico, on January 16, 2014. (Hector Guerrero/Getty)

The Oscar-nominated documentary Cartel Land from filmmaker Matthew Heineman began as a cinematic portrait of the American vigilantes bent on curbing the flow of Mexican drug activity into their state of Arizona. But when Heineman learned of the Autodefensas, a civilian group waging its own war against the cartels in Mexico, he took his camera south of the border. Bob talks to Heineman about how his film blurs the line between good and evil, and how he was able to capture extraordinary moments of violence, corruption, cult of personality and even adultery, all with his subjects’ full participation.

Guests: Matthew Heineman
Hosted by: Bob Garfield

Tags: academy awards arts border cartel land drug trafficking immigration media mexico oscars vigilante world news

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/cartel-land-blurs-borders-good-and-evil/

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thanks for providing the material on "Cartel Land." Definitely will be looking for it. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

8. Excellent! Thanks for your impressions. n/t