priest because a lot of the crackdown is now on the muslim institutions but you did that because he's right across the street from -- i wanted that ending that i know people are not going to expect. i used to when in the 2000 chapter instead of men because it is the two women and i know a lot of people think -- i think one of the reasons bush was able to succeed is every guy fought the were the ones who are going to deliver -- it was kind of like a mano a mano and i liked the used to women in those chapters. there are lots of ways to do that then you're right even though i'm not present in the voice is the things i decided to show you and tell you -- i really wanted to use alan's story. when he told me to schedule a right, sammy and johnny in the plymouth, things like that and i think everybody here reads that chapter and thinks it is a christian family then when i throw in the art at the picnic

they are like no way. it's like yes, we picnicked. we live, breathe, we technique. so yes, there's little things you put in there but it's easy because it is such a bad image they have like i don't have to do much to kind of sort of spark that. i like to use imagery. that is a good question. i talked to a high school in chicago last weekend i have to say it was a public high school and they had the best questions and this is sort of consistent, this new generation. >> you briefly mentioned after 9/11 how was very maternal -- after 9/11 a lot of people talked about the death of feminism because there was this idea that men were needed to rule the world or take care of the world to protected and that

i yawn the republican side a lot of people -- republican called arms for the war in afghanistan was to liberate women, this book about about women in afghanistan, the plight of women. now like nine years later there is a massive -- there's a very deep and profound problem. it was the afghan saying that women are made for the home and there have been laws passed recently that forced marriage, legalization of rape and i was curious to know your point of view of the civil rights for women in afghanistan and people are against the war that for very many ideological reasons and that isn't surprising. but who's just curious to know how do you feel about women being in the dark if you let afghanistan? >> i think in your right identifying it is a problem but there is this problem for us as people feel they can talk about it because it somehow saying the

military invasion of afghanistan is somehow if you can see that his there is a problem and women's rights you are conceding the invasion is somehow justified but i think it sort of -- i have no problem saying x and y is wrong. we've been in to the to existing in this polarized world where either x or y is right or x or y is wrong and it can never be both and i think that it is incumbent on us because i've been a part of a lot of american feminist circles and you do have that conflict like externally you feel like you have to defend and say no it's not really like that because they use the so-called condition or status of women as a way to penalize, to rationalize the group, that is one way and it's never a conversation that happens with context. but internally you still can't feel comfortable to have the conversations external internal to the communities we should be able to speak about these things

and along that issue this is why it is unjust x and y. i was at the doj at the time and in the main hall it's called the great hall was the main justice aires -- i think it is a beautiful art deco massive statute of justice and she's naked but it looks like a man with press basically. there's nothing sexual about the statue and john ashcroft he would be speaking here and he would be framed by the breasts of justice and so at a cost this is where we would have a lot of events or discussions when i was at the doj sat at the cost of $8,000 to the u.s. taxpayer they draped this july normanesque curtain that hid justice at the department of justice so i mean why is he finding is a problematic to see a naked woman that he has to go to -- but everything that is going on in afghanistan is not correct. listen, these are complicated issues and i think the point is

to not have year. in the book i don't whitewash. there are characters who at times are weak or not strong and i told everybody when i interviewed him i know there is a temptation to cast yourself as the most handsome, dramatic hero but that isn't going to ring true so i think we have to have this sort of openness and if we put it out there and talk about it and i don't like it can be used against us if that makes sense. good question. >> i'm curious about your experiences as an arab-american, like were there any prejudice to overcome regarding your ethnicity throughout your childhood or maybe even more currently? >> i was the only arab american in my high school and was one of the few immigrants. there was a bunch of cory in kids and they sold their names said they were no longer, they

were like amanda and dominique. i was the only one with a foreign name in my high school and any time -- people who understood i was arab -- i grew up in the 80's, so it wasn't a good time for the arabs on tv and so i definitely felt implicated by all of that and definitely felt like terror every time something blew up for a plane went down because you were going to hear a whole lot of racism and even though i was kind of young i knew that was corrected somehow implicated me. and then in high school and 91 during the first gulf war which is kind of one of the reasons i was a run for the second 1i remember this is an guantanamo little discrimination but i went to the mall because nordstrom opened and there was something i desperately wanted and i went with my dad who never had a mustache and then for some reason unknown to anyone a few months before the gulf war he grew a mustache and all of a setting he looked more like

saddam hussein. we begged him to shave the must negative and he's like i really can't because now it looks like i'm cheating because of -- and he really would achieve it and we went to the mall and i've got my lipsticks white light is perfect and we were followed all the way back to the car. we barely made it, think of for keyless entry making its way into technology we have gotten out of there. i remember hearing the way they were talking about iraq east like total pleasure, we are going to get them and in the chapter the same way for me as a dozen detector like the yellow ribbon which i used to always remember singing that song tie a yellow ribbon around -- and i like that song and all of a sudden the yellow ribbon seemed to be a little bit celebratory. even though that isn't what it meant, those sorts of things as a teenager upset me and obviously like today actually checking and i could not check in, this guy was like where is

your green card i'm like i'm straight at american i don't have a green card this is my driver's license cities like a kid there seems to be a problem so i got pushed over and over. finally the woman, and this was a black woman with an afro she's like you're on a watch list. i was like on a watch list. i don't know of me before the day, my secretary clearance of the doj took longer than any other but i also come from a place of privilege in many ways, being a woman sometimes we get off easier, its arab men that they are so scared of that definitely all of those things they built up over time and that is what sensitized me wanting to be a civil rights lawyer because if you kind of feel like you are marginalized or left out or there is no place, and i sort of talked about in the after word for me i always used to go you know where they sell personalized mugs and key chains and magnets i was always looking for my name and i would kind of get down alexandra, i would come back and there was alice, it was

never there and that somehow it to me you're really not supposed to be here so it always made me feel a little bit on the outside which also let me to want to be a civil rights lawyer but eventually i learned about the outside story of basically african-american people and i found my america there in many ways. parts of that receipt dated with me. everyone has their own journey. okay. that's good. do you need to say some closing -- thank you, everybody. [applause] >> alia malek is a former justice the permissible rights attorney and a contributor to the colu and the new york times. for more information on the author, you can go to

aliamalek.com. too good to be true is the name of the book by erin arvedlund the rise and fall of ferdinand off. what is too good to be true? >> everything about bernie madoff was good to be true. the returns, the consistency of the returns and the fact that nobody seemed to be knowing how he was investing the money. so all in all it turned out that if it really is too good to be true you should stay away. >> why did you write about

bernie madoff? was there a fascination? >> i wrote a story back in 2001 questioning his returns and asking how he managed to run this billion dollar hedge fund and no one had ever heard of before. the story ran and nothing happened. seven years went by and then last december 08 he was arrested so i was approached by pain when to write a book. >> when you were writing in 2001, why? >> hedge funds were on the rise. i wanted to write about somebody under the radar so to speak. i knew that hedge funds were going to be a big deal and as we see today they are everywhere. and they are here to stay. and they are probably going to be regulated by congress pretty soon. back then bernie madoff was unknown on the street, and he

never lost money and i wanted to know how he did it and that is why i wrote the original story. >> where does your book and? >> welcome it is still ongoing because on friday in fact two of madoff's computer programmers were charged with conspiracy and helping perpetuate this fraud. really it is going to probably keep going a couple of years because the need to figure out who else was involved because certainly madoff didn't do it alone. >> follow-up book? >> writing a paperback the will be held in the spring. >> erin ariselund fall with bernie madoff. from the texas book festival and austin howard campbell talks about the drug war in the border towns of el paso, texas and juarez, professor campbell collected testimony from drug traffickers

and lock law enforcement officials. this event is 45 minutes. >> okay. i want to read a brief statement about the mexican drug war and then we will talk about my book. the mexican drug war is a tragedy more than 14,000 people have died since 2006 when president calderon took office and also 23,000 people had been kidnapped since that time. this is the worst violence in mexico since the revolution. the such violence included decapitation and unspeakable torture. juarez has been the hardest hit and i think it is one of the most dangerous cities in the world for murdered and kidnapped. 3700 people have been murdered juarez since january, 2008. 2100 fight this year alone compared to ten in el paso. think about that, 2100 juarez this year died and just ten and el paso. my daughter, my oldest daughter goes to el paso high school. 12 of her classmates have had relatives murdered in juarez

this year. so you're talking about a serious tragedy. but the juarez murders in 2009 have included 100 women, more than any year during the so-called fantasize. least 50 businesses have burned as a part of extortion activities. indeed, october 29th was the first day this year with no homicides in juarez to be think about that. every day i read in the paper five, ten, 15, even 20 people murdered including yesterday included murders. the violence is the result is a war between the cartel and the juarez cartel, the leader attempting to take control of the lucrative juarez plaza from the juarez plaza run by fuentes. the mexican military said 10,000 troops and 10,000 federal police to juarez but this only worsened the violence. military is alleged to have committed hundreds of human rights abuses and the police are notoriously corrupt. there's no end in sight to this

bloody conflict. the purpose of my book is to put a human face on the statistics to look at cultural dimensions of drug trafficking. the book is modeled on studs terkel sprick "working" explores the lives of drug traffickers and enforcements and their own words. so that as a sort of a brief statement about the mexican drug war and the purpose of my book to put a human face on this bloody tragedy going on throughout mexico and worst in juarez. >> i should add this is a first academic book published about the drug trafficking war so it is valuable especially when all we have right now are news accounts which are helpful that at the same time promote some false assumptions about this issue. so a very useful book and also a very accessible book. there is actually a small section in the introduction that

address this the social science have theoretical issues. the rest is mostly told in the words of the individuals that collaborated with him on this book so it is a collection of stories essentially, real-life stories and they are very fascinating. so i would like for you to tell a bit about how you can upon the subject and i think we have this notion of the interpol but just as someone who runs off to a country far away from home and then comes back and does his writing and i think the way the project developed is quite different from that and almost seems from reading it like the topic shows you. can you tell a bit about that? >> that's right. i went to live in mexico in the early 80's i lived in mexico city and was fascinated by this under world of subterranean drug traffickers was with underworld but they're seemed to be so much information in the newspapers about it the never seemed to be arrested they seem to function efficiently and make all this money. i leader live in southern mexico

and remember my friends that used cocaine use to buy cocaine from the military barracks. it seemed like the drug issue was starting to emerge and there was knowledge about it but no one was stopping the drug cartels from functioning. i moved to el paso in 1991 and my first semester, my first class as a young professor there was a student who was an immigration authority, immigration agent for the u.s. government used to come to class in his uniform and i found it interesting he wore a gold necklace with a huge gold anchor all the time but he wasn't a very good student then all of a sudden i saw his name and photograph in the paper and he had been arrested for collaborating with a cartel a juarez and a 21-ton load of drugs dustin los angeles i believe in 1989 or 81i can't remember the date the was the largest confiscation of drugs in world history. all of those drugs can from juarez and el paso and went to l.a. and other places.

the reason i wrote this book was basically the book fell into my lap and my neighborhood, in my class is in the stores everywhere i went i met people involved in drug trafficking or law enforcement and especially my students started opening up to me when i would talk about these issues and they would tell me my dad or my mom is so and so in the cartel in juarez so at some point i realized i had to start taking it on these stories and making sense of them that the drug issue was so pervasive in fact i even refer to the cartel of juarez has [inaudible] because it permeates both cities and every neighborhood rich and poor of el paso. recently cecile and i were talking about this, midlevel the tenant of the cretul juarez murder he lived two houses away from the police chief of el paso. i.c.e., the law enforcement knew about this guy. they didn't even tell the police chief of all el paso and of

course the police chief left the house is always a the point is the drug trafficking issue for those of you from the border know it is a very incestuous business and it involves people on both sides and it's a very lucrative trade but especially now it's become a violent struggle to control and they had their own war three years ago which was that that the juarez mine is the worst one ever so what i decided to do is collect all these stories from people i knew, from neighbors, students in my class is from people i met casually from my wife's relatives and put together a kind of panama of the everyday lives of drug traffickers and law enforcement people on the order and in the juarez el paso area so that is how this whole project got going. >> once the book falls into your left you are faced with all of these questions of how to handle such a tricky and delicate subject considering this is written your communities and

going on in your home, so were other instances of how you have to evaluate and handle this case or do i write about it or not right about? >> there were a lot of stories i couldn't put in the book because they were too dangerous for me or to people i know. i don't know how many of you are familiar with the whole drug trafficking issue but if you live in a border community everyone around you is affected by it and so the answer to collect the stories i felt now have a huge responsibility because these are students in my class is people that lived four houses away from me and how do i tell their stories without getting them in trouble me in trouble so i had to disguise some of the names and details in the book and i've tried to capture the essence of these stories and like those of you read the book will enjoy these stories because they are fascinating. what i'm trying to say here is it is a human drama. people are dalia, getting murdered and locked up but they're still human beings with parents, children, families.

and we need to try to understand who they are and not simply to say who drug use, drug trafficking, bad coming u.s. government, good. as if we control this very sharp line between the good and evil when it comes to the drug issue. it's much more complicated than that. >> i would like to tell if you can how you went about selecting the individuals that hold to their stories. it appears you spent hours with them probably and possibly multiple meetings, and it's quite a range of the cast of characters including a scuba diving instructor. tell us about the range of folks in your book and how they all have these connections to the same subject of interest. >> what i tried to do is show the different layers of the trafficking business from the highest levels to the lowest levels. the lowest levels where you find the most people and the most easy to come by but when i had access to middle and upper level people that is when i got

tenser. there's one woman i interviewed in the book i interviewed her twice and each interview took five hours and i remember after the interviews drinking large amounts of wine and to study my nerves and wondering now what's going to happen? what i tried to this show also in law enforcement people at the lowest levels undercover agents and border patrol agents as well as intelligence officers working to break up drug cartels to show the depth of the drug cartel organization as well as the complicated lives of people in law enforcement and here i am not trying to choose sides and say okay law enforcement is good and drug traffickers are bad. the reason i see it as more uncomplicated is because most of the people in the drug-trafficking whittled our everyday smugglers trying to put food on the table and pay their bills and many of my law enforcement people i interviewed were actually quite critical of the u.s. war on drugs policy. they were doing this work as a

job so i think we need to get beyond the sort of a one dimensional or two dimensional idea that we can simply say the good guys are here and the bad guys of course or in mexico. none of this would be happening if it wasn't for the u.s. drug consumption. >> something i really enjoy about the book is how you allow people to speak in their own words. i imagine it took quite a bit of editing but the richness of detail present in this book is wonderful. it tells itself and it's a very complicated story and i would like you can to be read a few paragraphs from of the profiles to get the audience a sense of the kind of information and insight you gain by reading these stories. i also like, you mention in the introduction there are a lot of facts and stories. there's interplay between fact

and stories and it's difficult if not impossible to corroborate everything and i think one strong element of the book is you allow people to tell the stories and you are not sitting entirely this is true or not true that you allow the reader to get the information directly. >> i'm going to read a paragraph from female drug lord. this is the interview i drank the wine to recover from the interview. [laughter] but early on in the interview she talked to me about how she liked especially doing heroin deals because negative seat -- as she says it is a very direct deal. pardon me this involves spanish and obscenity. i like your rentals because you cover like this and say [speaking in spanish] and you make a quick transaction and that's it and those were in her words because this woman, i don't know if you're familiar

with the mexican singer [speaking in spanish] , she is sort of this woman that embodies a kind of female [inaudible] part in the oxymoronic she is a very tough woman. so this is part of her story. this happened in juarez to read this is actually about 20 years ago. one day the federal this can to the house and called me while i was taking a dump. romilly i didn't stick around that long since as soon as i like the truck and i would leave the premises. i saw as much as 1,000 or 1,500 kilos of cocaine stored at one time. as far as crossing the stuff into the united states there were arrangements. people, that is u.s. customs agents and immigration officers were paid off at the international bridges. when the federal place called me i told them i was just the made of the house that the notice i was wearing a brand new pair of converse tissues and retorted oh yeah then why are you wearing new converse? we are going to torture you with electric shock and everything else. so they took me to jail. i was 17 at that time.

and that is a sort of story how people get involved in the drug-trafficking business at an early age to make money and they are exposed to these amazing circumstances. huge amounts of drugs, heavily armed people and a very dangerous lifestyle. so this is my friend the female drug lord. >> as a journalist and anthropologist i appreciate the power of the story, and this book is full of stories, which makes extremely rich in in detail. i wonder if you can tell sort of some of the most surprising findings that you gleamed from speaking to both traffickers and agents or something you didn't expect or no already about the group's. >> i guess on the drug trafficking sight i didn't realize how extensive the mexican drug cartels were in the united states. the u.s. government has already announced that the mexican

cartels have people in 240 cities in the united states. in other words all american cities by the drug trade is controlled by mexican drug cartels and then there are associates, this all the trucks to american gangs were other dealers might be white, black or mexican that the drug cartels have people to deliver the drugs in every part of the united states including hawaii, alaska, idaho where i'm from and puerto rico. doesn't matter. as i was amazed how pervasive the drug cartels work and el paso especially to realize my neighbors and people i knew really well of a sudden told me they were involved in the drug trade, just the extent of it is tremendous. as far as law enforcement side of what i was surprised by bus i would go to parties and meet people at the border patrol agents or the dea or something like that how often they would tell me basically they didn't agree with [alarm sounding] on drugs policy. they said look, we are losing this war.

it's not a war any way because it isn't is all but battleground with these guys and easily identified but so many of them have a cynical view of the whole thing and they were doing this work as a job. so i think those are my sort of two things i learned through the process. >> one of the profiles i felt really interesting is one that features a mexican-american male, and he talks about that critical role that chicanos or mexican-americans can play on this side of the border because they can relate to the folks on the mexican cartels, and they can also relate to, in his case, blacks who live in the town passing on and distributing drugs after. so he acted as a cultural and business intermediary which i found interesting. we don't really talk about the groups on this side and also not as a business relationship, but the whole culture, the kind of

relationships required for this to work. very interesting profile. what did you learn about the cartel that you think decided some of the myths are stereotypes especially right now in the news stories there's references to these big that cartels and i think the audience can get an erroneous understanding of what the cartel's really are and how they operate. can you tell it about that? >> i guess i find it interesting how the cartel's function these days most of the people smuggling and selling the drug is in the united states don't even know which cartel the work force. most of the workers farm out, essentially to day laborers and so the big cobbles are sitting back up the mountains or on the beach or something enjoying this lavish life style but most of the people that work in this trade have no connection to them at all. 90% of the people in the cartels

are paid workers almost like slaves in a way. they may be paid very well but they're totally expendable. these are the people dying in the streets of largesse de pecos juarez gereed people at risk their lives and basically get the drugs to the markets but then they are just completely expendable. now, how could the united states when this war on drugs against organizations that are this carefully organized in such a way that people are actually doing the work don't even know who they work for. we could cost of the drug smuggling in the world and never stop the organizers and leaders of the cartels. that is to me what is scary how they are set up. the mexican government sent to thousands soldiers to juarez. i made no difference in fact made things worse. the mexican government has their own war on drugs. it's very comparable to the iraq war or afghanistan war in the mexican military is losing. okay? so what is the strategy.

i don't have the answer. of course we need to cut down on the drug consumption in the united states. mexico needs to clean up the corruption within its government. beyond that, i'm not sure i have an answer and that scares me. >> you talk in the book about the constantly shifting alliances which would make it hard for these agencies to do intelligence in a traditional way and take out the top guys and we want to think of a take on the top guys is all gone, it? i think sort of my own commentary in observing what has been happening in juarez is as you say the mexican government is targeting very low level traffickers and they will give numbers. weaver is to this many members of the cartel and yet we don't see a difference. we don't see any change, and dangerously this i think leads us into the idea that you should just kill them all off, that's kind of the philosophy or the mentality that is spreading on the border.

just around them all, tell them all off and then at some point it is over, right? .. >> maybe, yes, the military is cooperating with the doesman cartel because they never bust anyone from that cartel. it's taken over the war ez

valley. how is that possible? it's like a boxing match. i watched last night a replay of mike tyson and buster douglas. see what it is is the referee's on the side of buster douglas. except no one knows that, and here you have the mexican military seemingly on the side of the guzman cartel. so what does the united states ever do about that? i really done know. >> and another disturbing trend for those of us who are from the border and have lived there a long time, something that marks, i think, quite a difference in what's going on today is the growing role of spectacle and the very public use of violence and of terror tactics. >> believe it or not, there are extensive numbers of narco blogs. there are hundreds of youtube videos made by drug cartel people that you can access, go over to the austin public

library and you'll see the pictures of members of the cartel. you'll get to hear a nice narco credo in the background. and a lot of times after people are killed in the streets of juarez, let's say, the group that did the killing will put up a banner explaining why they were killed, okay? and threatening the opposite cartel. it's a very scary situation. what you have is sort of the propaganda arm of the drug cartels. they see this as a quasipolitical struggle. they need to control public opinion. so that shows you how powerful drug cartels are. it's not just money and drugs, it's also control of territory and people and control of information. >> and yet i think something your book shows us is that these are tactics and practices that are picked up along the way. it irks me when i read some of these news stories and they use the terms like, these folks went

to the dark side or, you know, evil lurks in the border. and i think that if we demonize people who are involved in these activities, as terrible as they are, we lose understanding how things got to be this way. and how they are rooted in social, economic, political, cultural structures and practices. >> oh, absolutely. i mean, the details of these murders are incredibly shocking. decapitations, people boiled in stew pots, there was a person in tijuana who killed 300 people this way, but if we only focus on that grim horror story, we don't do a social or an to lodge call analysis and look at who benefits and who is harmed. certainly, it's a class war in which certain groups of people in mexican society are controlling vast amount of resources, paying smugglers

small amounts of money to risk their lives and go to prison, and the united states benefits because we want these drugs, we farm out all the blame and can the debt to mexico, so all of this is a product between the unequal relationships between the u.s. and mexico and within mexican society. >> which takes us back to something you mentioned earlier and which i appreciate about this book is, is it really disrupts the notion of this side and that side, good guys and bad guys. almost every story, every profile in here involves people who moved from one side of the border to the other. and this case you were talking about in september where an individual was murdered a couple houses away from the police chief, just to give you a little more detail, he was, he was occupied as an informant, he was working as an informant for i.c.e. for the u.s. government, but he was still involved in the drug business. the news accounts say he was

shot by other individuals in the drug trade who had found out that he was working as an informant. and so for snitching, right? they shot him. now, one of the two young men they that hired to carry out the hit was a mexican-american young man in the military on the u.s. side, so he had training in weapons use. and so in that case, for me, it may be an aberration or a more extreme case, but it really shows us how there are not these clean lines all the time between antidrug agencies and individuals involved in the drug trade or folks who work on the mexican side of the border and on this side of the border. the book is organized into two sections featuring individuals in the drug trade and then antidrug agents. but all of the stories point to the fact that it's not that clear cut. >> just to add to that, some of the top hitmen are from el paso,

and they're american citizen ises. more than 50 americans have died this year in juarez in the drug wars. why don't you know about it, or why doesn't a larger audience know about it? because they're mexican. they're mexican-americans, okay? if three white people were murdered, it would be all over cnn, and people in tokyo would know about it. but because their last name is gomez or martinez, well, they're mexicans, they don't matter. so there's a real racist dimension to this. but, obviously, it's a setting of constant border crossing. >> and you say in the book, you write in the book that neither side in the drug war commands the moral high ground. and yet you do disclose in the introduction sort of some of your sympathies given what you learned from working on this book, and you say i oppose the u.s. war on drugs for reasons that will be discussed in details below.

moreover, i have more compassion for common workers in the drug trade who, above all, work to make a living and provide for their families than for washington policy wonks or well-paid drug war bureaucrats who are often insulated from the dirty work in the streets but whose actions and decisions may negatively affect hundreds or thousands of families, especially those whose members have been incarcerated for selling drugs. so any comments on sort of morality in politics and the kind of sympathies that emerge for one or both sides after doing this work? >> well, of course, my sympathies are with people in general, especially with people who have suffered, and that's the point of this quote here is that those that are suffering are basically poor people, and those that are promoting this policy of prohibition are generally comfort and well-to-do. prohibition has never been a very successful policy except in, say, communist china or in countries where you can

absolutely dictate what every person does, authoritarian regimes. we need to re-examine this policy of prohibition. i think that the obama administration is starting to shift on it. they should at least as far as medical marijuana is concerned, but certainly i think it's time to decriminalize marijuana in this country and for very practical reasons. the state of california looks like it's moving in that direction so that they can pay their bills because this is a big business. so it's beyond just the health issues and morality issues. i mean, my brother died of cancer, and when he had the last 125eu7b8gs of his cancer, the thing that helped him the most was not oxycontin, it was smoking good california weed. so, you know, there are practical reasons why it'd be good to have decriminalization of marijuana. >> how about some of the stronger drugs like cocaine and heroin? there that's a lot trickier. but i think all these policies should be re-examined because obviously -- mexico is suffering badly. the worst problem caused by drugs is the violence in mexico. 14,000 people murdered in three

years, okay? that's a lot. and so we need to think about the consequences of our consumer habits in the united states. >> and i would add, also, that the consequence of the erosion of political and civic institutions in mexico and throughout latin america, the kind of weakening of the state and also civil society that is too fearful to speak up. >> and also the fact we spend $20 billion on the war on drugs, but what are the results? okay? and the drug traffickers, their revenues are about 40 billion. so who's winning this? [laughter] >> before we open up for questions, can you just -- if you were to give any advice to the audience in terms of when they read these daily news accounts in the "dallas morning news" and new york times, the houston chronicle and we try to understand from a distance what's going on in juarez and other cities in mexico, what would you say are some of the

discourses to watch for, myths even that the press is kind of putting out there and that might mislead us in terms of understanding what's really happening on the ground? >> i guess this idea that people involve inside the drug world deserve to die and it doesn't really matter because they're criminals. i mean, mexico is a great country, a wonderful country. it's our ally, it's our neighbor, you know? and when we see these numbers, 20 people massacred, 15 there, we should be just as concerned as when we hear about american soldiers dying in afghanistan and iraq. these are people of the americas. we are of the americas. we're all one people in some sense, and we need to get beyond the sort of historical conflict between mexico and the united states. >> thank you. with that, we are going to let you -- i know there's a lot of questions here. one, two, three, four, five, six. so can we come up and -- okay. can we bring the microphone up,

or can they just speak up? >> [inaudible] >> just call on someone. okay. back there. >> hi. i have read quite a bit about colombia in the '80s, and it seems like juarez is kind of of a replacement for medellin in many ways. have you done much research from colombia to see why it seems to have transferred from medellin to juarez, and does american foreign policy play into it in particular with colombia? >> no, absolutely. good question. the dea and the u.s. government shut down most of the flow of cocaine from colombia into florida and the east coast of the united states, so naturally, the colombian traffickers then brought it up to mexico. the mexican cartels actually became a lot more powerful than the colombian cartels because it's much easier to get those drugs across the 2,000-mile border between the u.s. and mexico than it was to bring it up through florida. so, clearly, this is connected to foreign policy issues. now, the u.s. had colombia, and

this worked fairly effectively at breaking up the's cobar, calli and medellin cartels, but after that now they have hundreds of mini cartels, and the flow of drugs is roughly the same as it was. the amount of profits is roughly the same, the consumption in the u.s. is the same. in other words, plan colombia failed. now, the u.s. is trying to use the same model in mexico. will sending billions of dollars to the mexican army and heavy weaponry work in fighting the war on drugs? i think it'll produce more violence. if it didn't work in colombia, is it likely to work in mexico, a much bigger, more complicated country? i don't think so. so i'm worried about that. and you're right, it is a foreign policy issue as well as domestic. >> we've seen in history where we have prohibition alcohol and post-prohibition alcohol.

>> yes. >> do people that you've talked to talk about post-prohibition drugs? >> well, we had a conference a month ago in el paso to discuss the politics of the war on drugs policy, and there were many advocates there saying we need to decriminalize marijuana, we need to change things. but there wasn't much discussion about what comes next if we decriminalize or legalize marijuana. it's not clear exactly what would happen. but once we legalize alcohol in this country after prohibition, did the country can fall apart? i don't think so, and i think it was good for business and good for the government to tax those profits. i think the best thing you can do is bring things in to the legal, formal public sphere instead of having it controlled by vicious cartels. >> [inaudible] >> certainly there are drug cartels in various countries throughout the world. >> right. >> why do you think the ones from mexico are particularly brutal and gruesome?

>> well, they weren't so terribly brutal and gruesome up until about three years ago when pratt calderon sent 45,000 troops into cartel territory and started hassling them. i mean, prior to to them there were certain arrangements such that the cartels made a lot of money, the government seemed to be happy, there wasn't as much violence. okay? but now after 9/11 and so on, the u.s. has been strengthening its border, it's harder to get drugs into the country, mexican military's pressing the cartels, and there's a lot of competition among the cartels to control this lucrative market. mexico's economy is really in bad shape. so it's all about money. and the violence is for control of markets, and they've copied a lot of the tactics from the middle east as far as decapitations and doing these videos and so on. but this is all ultimately about control, power, money. it's not kill canning -- often times the people that do the killings don't know the person

they're killing. it's a job. so the violence is related to this intense struggle that's become more acute because of the u.s. tightening the border and because of mexico's economic problems and because of the government trying to take on the cartels in a frontal way. >> that gentleman in the middle there. >> quite a few years ago i hit a very minor role in tracing stolen weapons in southern california. one of the things that happened is that there were increased burglaries of arms warehouses that were successful, which is unusual, because frequently you have to be a moron or an electronics expert. and they were successful. but one thing that surprised us, these guns weren't showing up on the streets of los angeles. we couldn't figure out where they were going. one of the other people on this task force looked around, they found out, well, they were being shipped not one piece at a time, they were being trucked into

tijuana across the border. so naive me i said, well, what's the american government doing about this? they came back later on and said this is a mexican problem. [laughter] so this is where i left. and it was, it was unbelievable to me that this massive amounts of -- one guy, he had photographs of the trucks going across the border with stolen arms from the los angeles area, a lot of arms warehouses. has that changed at all? is there any more concern with the american government with the arms all coming from the u.s.? >> it's gotten worse basically. [laughter] and, of course, the american government is aware of it, but the problem is all of this activity benefits the u.s. mexico's economy is in chaos and there's all this violence, so the rich people of mexico come to the u.s. and invest their money in our country. el paso has low unemployment, it's hard to get an participant. you know, fancy houses, forget it, they're all sold. so we make money through the

sale of guns, we get all this dope that we use and also sell, and we benefit from mexico's economic problems. we get stronger as they get weaker. so there's a kind of perverse relationship there. and yet the united states feels so wounded by all these mexican drug cartels invading our country. but it's all parent of this long -- part of this long, complicated i would say incestuous history between the u.s. and mexico. >> the gentleman in the back and then someone else over here. >> you keep talking about mexico and not talking about demand. and do you cover the demand with something quantifiable so that we all can know what, that all of us are on drugs in this room? where are all these drugs going? and what is that demand? so i'm asking whether you cover that and why it's not being covered,

if it's not. >> well, see, my research in my book is about drug trafficking, not drug consumption so much. but i think it's easy to get the statistics from the dea or the national institute on drug abuse, and the levels does have very high levels of consumption of marijuana, of course, but cocaine as well. and meth and heroin are big problems. the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands or millions for all of those drugs, ecstasy is booming as well, and that comes, often, from mexico. so, yeah, i'm not trying to whitewash that issue as well. >> yeah, but -- [inaudible] >> fighting drug consumption? >> well, you know, first of all, understanding why there's such a demand for the drugs, and second of all, what reason for that is and then trying to find a solution to that rather than trying to find a way to the kill some other human which all you've done, which is important, is to give sort of the stories

behind the trafficking which is very much needed, but solutions are not at the origin, at least from my understanding. it would be much more trying to find out what's wrong with this country if we're all on drugs? i just don't understand why somebody's not tackling that issue whether it's -- >> okay. i agree with you 100%. i think we should be focusing more on our own drug use than on interdiction in foreign countries. because we have more control over what goes on in our country. we can change our habits. it's very hard for us to change people in mexico, iraq, afghanistan, vietnam, add inmy my tunnel. >> there's two people who had their hand up for a while. in the blue shirt and then in the black. >> yeah, a follow up on solutions. if you had the opportunity to be

consulted by president calderon, what advice would you give him given the political realities he has to deal with including pressure from the u.s. government? >> i would actually encourage him to resign. [laughter] and then secondly, i would encourage him to send the soldiers back to the barracks and take them out of the cities because they're making things worse. and i think the gentleman behind you's point about attacking consumption, mexico now has a real serious problem with cocaine, heroin and marijuana consumption. i mean, i don't want to say marijuana's such a bad thing, but cocaine and heroin consumption and meth. so they need to fight their own consumption, they need to fix their economy so people won't go into these illegal businesses. i don't think that calderon's been very successful. this is the main wanner that he has -- banner since he came into office was i'm fighting the cartels. but clearly, he's losing, so he

need to rethink that strategy. >> the gentleman on this side had a question. yes, right there. he's got his hand up. had it up for a while. >> there's no question that the united states is the biggest consumer of drugs. i lived in el el paso, i lived n tijuana, and i just got back from peru. last week they got a submarine with 10,000 tons of cocaine. it's still coming from an area where the united states has some soldiers in colombia, and bolivia, ecuador and peru, they have the coca leaves. mexico doesn't have that. >> right. yeah, there's talk about them starting to grow coca, seriously. >> they're doing more with methamphetamines than they are with anything else. marijuana -- >> coke is big, very big in mexico. it comes from south america -- >> of course. but they don't have trees that

grow it. >> right. but what's your point, though, exactly? >> well, i mean, they're getting the raw stuff from wherever. >> right. >> from south america, central america or south america mostly because it's all over the place in peru. >> right. >> and i think that the soldiers are a big nuisance in mexico because the soldiers are hiring people from the city -- politicians are hiring people from the city to run the soldiers out. civilians. in and the problem there is with the arm thing. all the arms go from here over there. i used to -- i grew up in -- [inaudible] i did a lot of charity work, and i don't anymore, i don't live there, but i know all this areas because be i hung out supposedly with the wrong people. and we might be here with --

[inaudible] north america is the biggest consumer of drugs. >> no question. >> because of the money. it's easier to get to. they're trying to legalize marijuana in mexico. for what? they can't afford it. >> unfortunately, i'm going to let howard say a few, respond to this and say a few more words, but we're out of time. do you want to respond to that? >> well, i just think that we need to consider the foreign policy implications of this drug issue, especially vis-a-vis afghanistan which, i believe, produces 90% of the world's heroin. if the united states can somehow cut down our the world better in afghanistan, mexico and here. so let me end on that. thank you very much. [applause] >> howard campbell is a professor of anthropology at the university of texas at el paso. he's the co-editor of the university of texas press interamerica series. for more information visit

utep.edu. >> a name that might be familiar to cable news watchers, farai's just written a new novel, "kiss the sky." why a normal? >> -- novel? >> well, i am someone who's a creature of imagination. i love books. and when i started reading as a kid, i was reading science fiction and fantasy, i was reading things like the ring trilogy. and i only got into journalism later. i mean, i was sort of forced to read the newspaper, and i love journalism, but part of me has always wanted to write a novel, and this is about the music industry which i actually covered for a while. >> and you've written a couple of nonfictions. >> written three nonfiction books. "don't believe the hype," "the color of our future," and "trust." very serious. this one has serious themes, but it's about the influence of pop

culture in our lives and also about our ability to transform ourselves when we make stupid decisions. it's about a woman who's too smart to make dumb decisions, but she keeps doing it. >> which are more fun to write, the nonfiction or the fiction? >> i found the nonfiction much easier to write because it was, you know, when you're a reporter -- which i am -- you get facts, and those facts become the building blocks of your book whereas when you're a fiction writer, you have this swirl of chaos in your head. you have characters drifting in and out of your brain, and then you have to take that and write it in a way that is structured. so i found myself towards the end of the book -- it's written in 90 short chapters -- spread sheeting the entire book. i spread sheet the book, the characters, what happened, you know, i mean, i got very scientific towards the end of it because it was so chaotic toward the beginning. >> what's your day job? >> i'm now working at wnyc, i do

a multimedia series called the value which is about what matters to us more than money, you know? and these tough times we think about money, but we also have to think about things like ethics, giving back to people, the future, and so it's profiling people, some of them famous, some of them not famous who have made the choices about how to live their lives, what to do for money, usually taking less money to pursue a project like either the arts or environmentalism, religion. but i'm also developing a new show which i can't talk too much about now, but i'm developing a new public radio show, and it will have a musical guest. i will reveal that. it will be a news show with a musical guest at the end because why not? [laughter] >> do you miss the daily writing of journalism, of print journalism? >> you know, i'm someone who's also working on a new nonfiction book about the millennial

generation and their political comes of age, and so i'm someone who over time has -- i don't crave being in front of a microphone daily as much as i used to because i need time to organize these other projects, like the book i'm talking about, the nonfiction one, it's planned for 2012. so i'm planning way in advance because i need to do my research, you know, and so i want to do a weekly show so that i can pace myself with these different projects. but i read the newspaper every day. i watch tv, i watch c-span, you know, i'm plugged in. >> her first novel, "kiss the sky." >> this the weekend, tufts university history photographer on the 1965 voting rights act and how it paved the way for future african-american