compared to just ten in el paso. the 2100 this year have died in just ten in el paso. my daughter goes to el paso to high school, told her classmates about relatives murdered in juarez this year. so you're talking about a serious tragedy. the juarez murders have included 100 women more than any year during the searching by spiritualistic deepness imprimis as distortion activities burgundy come october 29 was at first industry with no homicide. think about this. every day leap in the the paper

five, ten, 15 people murdered to october 29 listing a celebration of what is because no one was murdered and every other day including yesterday included murders. the violence as a result of a war between the cartel and the juarez cartel and attempting to take control of the lucrative plats from the juarez. the mexican military said 10,000 troops in 2000 federal police to training purposes only worsen the violence. the military has alleged to create human rights abuses in 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 the cultural dimensions of drug trafficking. the book is my last turkel spoke working critics put the lives of drug traffickers and enforcement officials in our own words. so that's what a babe reefed statement about the mexican drug war and the purpose of my book to try to put a human face on this really bloody tragedy

that's going on throughout mexico. >> i should add that this is the first academic book published about your trafficking world on the us-mexico border. so it's extremely valuable, especially no recovery now to read our news accounts, which are very helpful, but at the same time promote some false assumptions about this issue. so he very, very useful book and also a very accessible book. there is actually only a small section in the introduction that addresses the social science theoretical issues. the rest is mostly told in the words of the individuals that collaborated with him on this boat. so is a collection of stories essentially is and they're very, very fascinating. so i'd like for you to tell us a little bit about how you came upon the subject. i think we have this notion of the anthropologist as someone who runs off to a country very,

very far away from home and it comes off and does his writing. i think the way this project developed is quite different from that and it almost seems reading it like the topic chose you. so, can you tell us a bit about that? >> i think that's right. where to live in mexico nearly 80 zildjian mexico city and i was fascinated by the sort of underworld of subterranean drug traffickers that was both underworld and seem to be so much information in an newspapers allotted never seem to be arrested, they function so officially make all this money. i later lived in oaxaca in southern mexico. i remember that my friends that use use to go by from the military barracks. it just seemed like the drug issue is starting to emerge and there was knowledge about it, but no one was stopping this drug cartels from functioning for me to el paso in 1991 and my first class, first semester as a young professor there was a student in the u.s. immigration

authorities. as an immigration agent for the u.s. government come used to come to class in his uniform. i found interesting or gold necklace with this huge gold anchor on it all the time. but he was not a very good students. but all of a sudden i saw his name and photograph in the paper and he had been arrested for collaborating with the cartel and the look what juarez. and why are busted in los angeles and 1991 but it was the largest confiscation of drugs in world history. all of those strikes came 138 and el paso amendment to other places. the reason i wrote this book is basically the book fell in to my lap, in my neighborhood, in my classes, in the stores. everywhere i went to my people were involved in drug trafficking or law enforcement. and especially my students started opening up to me when i would talk about these issues and tell me, my dad or my mom and so-and-so and the cartel.

at some point realize i had to take on these stories and make some sense of it. at the drug issue is so pervasive. in fact, even referred to the cartel as the cartel to a juarez is absolutely permeates both cities in every neighborhood, rich and poor about tax. mid-level lieutenants lieutenant was murdered in live two houses away from the police chief of el paso. i saw enforcement knew about this guy. they didn't even tell the police chief of el paso about it. and then of course my wife's cousin lived three houses away. and so the point here is that the drug trafficking on the issue, those of you are porter is a very incestuous business involves people on both sides and is a very lucrative trade. but especially now does become a violent struggle to control and when laredo had to run for three years ago, it was really bad.

but the juarez one is the worst ever. but i decided to do was collect these stories from people i knew from neighbors, students in my classes, people and i casually, my wife's relatives, put together a kind of panorama of everyday dark traffickers and law enforcement on the border and they juarez and el paso area. >> and yet, once the book falls in your lap coming are faced with all these questions of how to handle such a tricky and delicate subject, considering that this is written in your communities that's going on in your home. so whether instances of where you have to evaluate, how do i handle this case? or do i write about it or not write about it? >> there are a lot of stories i couldn't put in the book because they just were too dangerous for me or to people i know. i mean, i don't know if many of you are familiar with this whole drug trafficking issue, but if you live in a border community,

everyone around you is affected by it. and so, when i started to collect the stories i thought i had this huge responsibility gives these are students in my classes, people who live for us as a way for me. had white tell their stories without getting them in trouble or me in trouble. and i try to disguise the names, details in the book, but i try to capture the essence of the stories and i hope that those of you who read the book will enjoy these stories because they're fascinating. one tried to say here is that the human drama. people are dying, people are getting murdered and locked up, but they're all human beings with parents, with children, with families. we need to try to understand who they are and i think they just say druggies, drug trafficking, bad, u.s. government, good as it were to draw sharp line between the good and evil when it comes to the drug issue. it's much more complicated than that. >> i'd like for you to tell us if you can argue once about selecting the individuals that told you their stories.

it appears he spent hours with them probably, possibly multiple meanings. and that's quite a range of test if your tears, including a scuba diver and structure. so, tell us about sort of the range of folks in her book and how they all have these connections to the same subject of interest to you. >> want to want to try to do was show the different layers of the drug trafficking business from the highest levels down to the lowest levels. and the lowest levels is where you find the most people and are the most easy to come by. when i have access to middle and upper level people that you got cancer. this is one woman i interviewed in the book. i interviewed her twice in each interview took five hours. and i remember after the interview i was drinking large amounts of wine to steady minors. and i wondered, now it's going to happen? so, what i tried to do was show also in law enforcement, people at the lowest levels, under

cover agents as well as intelligence officers working to break up drug cartels, just to show the doubt drug cartel organization as well as the complicated lives and people in my enforcement. and here, i'm not trying to choose sides exactly and say okay, law enforcement is that in drug traffickers are bad or the reason i see it as morally complicated is because most of the people with drug trafficking world were just everyday smugglers trying to put food on their table and pay their bills. in many of my law enforcement people that i interviewed were actually quite critical of u.s. war on drugs policy and were doing this work is a job. and so i think we need to get beyond the sword of one-dimensional or two-dimensional idea that you can simply say the good guys are here and the bad guys of course are in mexico. none of this would be happening if it wasn't for u.s. drug consumption. >> something i really enjoyed about the book is how you allow people to speak in their own words. i mean, i imagine it took some editing, quite a bit of editing.

but that level of richness and detail that is present in this book is just wonderful. i mean from the story kind of tells itself and is a very complicated story. and i would like for you, if you can, to maybe read a few paragraphs from one of these profiles and give our audience a sense of the kind of information and insights that you gleaned by reading these stories. i also like, you mention in the introduction, when you're dealing with the subjects there are a lot of facts and stories kind of an interplay between facts and stories that's difficult, if not impossible, to collaborate everything. and i think one very strong element of the book is that you just kind of allow people to tell their stories and you're not an entirely this is true or not true, as you allow the reader to get the information direct way. >> okay, i will read a paragraph in the interview called female drug lord. this is the one i interviewed

and then afterward strangle the wind to recover from the interview. early on in the interview, she talked about how she liked especially doing ecocide she said, it's a very direct kind of deal. this is how she said and pardon me this is in spanish and involves obscenity piercers does [speaking in spanish] and those weren't her words because this woman, i don't know if you're familiar with the mexican singer, she sort of this woman that embodies this kind of female machismo, partying the oxymoron, she's a very tough woman. so this is part of her story. this happened in juarez about 20 years ago. then one day the federales into the house and caught me while i was taking a dump. normally i didn't stick around

that long because as soon as i left the track and i would leave the premises. i saw as much as 1000 to 1500 kilos of cocaine stored there at one time. as far as crossing the stuff in the united states they were arrangements. people that is u.s. custom agents and immigration officers were paid off at the international bridges. in the federales colony i told them i was just the meat of the house but they noticed i was wearing a rainy pair of converse vanishes and retorted, why are you wearing new converse? we're going to torture you with electric shocks on everything else. so they took me to jail. i was 17 at the time. and that sort of a story about how people get involved in the drug trafficking business at an early age to make money and they're exposed to these amazing circumstances, huge amounts of drugs, heavily armed people in a very dangerous lifestyle. so this is my friend. >> as a journalist and an anthropologist, i really appreciate the power of a story in this book is full of stories.

which makes it extremely rich in detail. i wonder if you can tell us sort out some of the most icing findings that you gleaned from speaking both to drug traffickers and drug agents or something you didn't expect or didn't know already about these groups. >> i guess i'm a drug trafficking inside it just didn't realize how extensive the mexican drug cartels were in the united states. the u.s. government is already announced that the mexican cartels of people in 230 cities in the united states. in other words, all american cities now that the drug trade is controlled by mexican drug cartels and their associates. they sell the drugs to american gangs or other dealers who may be white, black, or mexican. in any case, the mexican cartels of people to deliver the drugs in every part of the united states including hawaii, alaska,

idaho, where i'm from, and puerto rico. it doesn't matter. this was just amazed about how pervasive the cartels were and in el paso especially to realize that my neighbors and people i knew really well all of a sudden told me they were involved in the drug trade. just the extent of it is tremendous. as far as the law enforcement side of it, what i was surprised by was i would go to parties and the people who were agents are dea agents or something like that how often they would tell me that basically they didn't agree with the war on drugs policy. he said look, we're losing this war. it's not a war anyway because it's not a solid battleground of the good guys and bad days are easily identified. as so many of them have a cynical view of the whole thing and they were doing this work mainly as a job. so i think those are two things that i learned during the process of research. >> one of the profiles i found interesting is the one that features a mexican-american male and he talks about the critical

role that the mexican-americans can play on the side of the border because they can relate to the folks from the mexican cartels and i can also relate to, in his case? who lived in baytown and were passing on distributing the drugs after. so we acted as a cultural and business intermedia which i found very interesting. we don't really talk about the groups on the side and also not just a business relationships, but the whole culture around it and the kinds of relationships that are required for this to work. so very, very interesting profile. what did you learn about the cartels that you think defies some of the myths or stereotypes? i think right now about the news stories if you read them, they just -- this just references to these big, bad cartels and i think the audience can get an

erroneous understanding of what cartels really dark, how they operate. can you tell us a bit about that? >> the most distinctive finding i had about how cartels function is these days most of the people smuggling drugs and selling the drugs in the united states don't even know which cartel they work for. most of the work is far and out, essentially to like day laborers. and so, the big couples are sitting back in the mountains around the beach or something, enjoy this lavish lifestyle. the most of the people that work in this trade had no connection to them at all. 90% of the people in the cartels are just the speed workers that are most like slaves anyway. they may be paid very well, but they are totally expendable. these are the people dying in the streets of juarez. these are the people that risked their lives and basically get the drugs to the market, but then they're just completely expendable. now how could the united states win this war on drugs against organizations that are this carefully organized in such a

way that the people are actually doing the work don't even know who they work for. we could bust all these drug smuggling meals in the world and never stop the organizers of the leaders of the cartels. that to me what's scary about how cartels are set up. the mexican government sent 10,000 soldiers to juarez. it made a difference. in fact, it made things worse. the mexican government has her own war on drugs. is very comparable to an iraq war for the afghanistan war and the mexican military is losing. okay, so what is the strategy? i really don't have the answer. of course we need to cut down on a drug consumption in the u.s. mexico needs to clean up the corruption within his government. be en masse, 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 intelligent in a traditional way into take-out the tough guys and

suddenly we want to think if we take out the top guys it's all gone. i think sort of my own commentary in observing what's been happening in juarez, zesty say the mexican government is targeting very low level traffickers. and they'll give numbers so we've arrested this many members of the cartel and yet we don't see a difference. we don't see any change. in dangerously, this leads us to the idea that you should just kill them all off. i think that's kind of the philosophy or the mentality that is spreading on the border, just round them all up, kill them all off, and then at some point it's over. >> in juarez, the standard explanation is that the military is in bed with the cartel. now it's frightening to think that that is true, but if you follow this in the newspapers, for the last two months the military has been rounding up members of the cartel waters and put in their papers including

three guys who killed 211 people. a week ago, those guys were replaced or if there no evidence because these people were rounded up and tortured them and they said i killed 70 and one other guy killed 40 and another ied. it's all these round numbers like that. [laughter] but am starting to believe that maybe yes the military is cooperating with the guzmán cartel because they never bust anyone. they've taken over the juarez valley, which is one of the main smuggling corridors in the u.s. for smuggling cocaine. it's like a boxing match. i watched last night the replay of mike tyson and buster douglas. the referee is on the side of buster douglas, so buster douglas wins, except no one knows that the referee is on the side of buster douglas. and you have the mexican military seemingly on the side of the tropical guzmán cartel

what can the united states ever do about that? i really don't know. >> and another disturbing trend for those of us who are from the border and it's a very long time is something that marks, i think, quite a difference in what's going on today is the growing role and spectacle in this very public use of violence and terror to ask. >> believe it or not, there are extensive numbers of narco blogs. there are hundreds of youtube videos they buy drug cartel that you can access. go over to the austin public library and look up cartel take one lares and to see pictures of members in the cartels. ill see -- oftentimes these youtube's and narco blogs and are commoditized. after people are killed in the streets, the group that did the killing will put up a banner explaining why they were killed.

and threatening the opposite hertel. it's a very scary situation. what you have then is the propaganda arm of the drug cartels. they see this as a qualified political struggle. they need to control public opinion. and that shows you how powerful drug cartels are. it's not just money him and not just drugs, also control of territory and people in 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 and it irks me when i read some of these news stories and the use of terms like these folks went to the dark side or, you know, evil lurks in the border. and i think if we demonize people who are involved in these activities as terrible as they are, we lose understanding of how things got to be this way and how they are rooted in

social, economic, political, cultural structures and practices. >> absolutely. i mean, the details of these murders are incredibly shocking. decapitation, people boiled and stewpot, there was someone into one of the killed 300 people. if we only focus on the grim horror story we don't do a social order that the logical analysis and look at who benefits and who is harmed. essentially, the kind of class war in which certain groups of people in mexican society are controlling vast amount of resources, paying smugglers small amount of money to risk their lives and go to prison and so on and the united states benefits because we want these drugs. we farm out all the blame in the death to mexico. so all of this is a product of the unequal relationships between the u.s. and mexico and the unequal relationships with in mexican society. >> which takes effect of something we mentioned earlier in which i appreciate about this

book is a really disrupts the notion of the side and outside on the good guys and bad guys. and i must every store in your profile here involves people who moved from one side of the border to the other, a number of on the side of the border. in 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 occupied as an informant. he was working as an informant for ice, for the u.s. government. but he was still involved in the drug dismissed. and so, he was the news accounts anyway saying he was shot by other individuals in the drug trade who i found out that he was working as an informant. and so, they shot him. one of the two young men that they hired to carry out the head with a mexican american young men in the military on the u.s. side and so he had training in weapons used.

and in that case, for me, it may be an aberration or a more extreme case, but it really shows us how they are not these clean lines all the time between anti-drug agencies and individuals involved in the drug trade or folks who work on the mexican side of the border and on the side of the border. so it's a very complicated picture in the book is organized and two sections we train individuals in the drug trade anti-drug agents. but all the stories point to the point that it is not that clear-cut. >> just to add to that, some of the top hickman are from el paso and are american citizens. more than 50 americans have died this year. why don't you know about or what is in a larger audience know about it? because they are mexican. they are mexican americans. if three-way people were murdered in the drug war it

would be all over cnn and the people in tokyo would know about it. because these people/things are gómez or martinez, they're mexican, they don't matter. so there's a real racist dimension to this. obviously it's a setting of constant border crossing. >> in d.c. in the book that you're writing the book that neither side in the drug war commands in moral high ground. and yet, you do disclose in the introductions were to some of your sympathies given what you learned from working on this book. and you say, i opposed the u.s. war on drugs for reasons i will be discussed in detail below. moreover, i have more compassion for, workers in the drug trade who above all work to make a living and provide for their families. then for washington policy are well-paid drug. to our often insulated from the dirty work in streets of whose actions and decisions a negatively affect hundreds of thousands of families, especially those whose members

have been incarcerated for selling drugs. so, any, in some sort of morality in politics in the sympathies that emerge for one or both sides after doing this work? >> of course my sympathies are with you pull in general, especially with people who have suffered enough the point of this quote here. those that are suffering are basically poor people and those promoting this policy of prohibition are generally pretty comfortable and well-to-do. prohibition has never been a very successful policy vis-à-vis drugs, except as a communist china or countries where you can absolutely dictate what every person does an authoritarian regimes. we need to re-examine this policy of prohibition. i think the obama administration is starting to shift on this issue, at least as far as medical marijuana is concerned. it certainly is time to decriminalize marijuana in this country and for very practical reasons for the state of california looks against moving in that direction so they can

pay their bills because this is a big business good and so, it's beyond just the health issues and morality issues. my brother died of cancer and when he had the last stages of his cancer, the thing that helped in the most was not oxycontin, it was smoking good california we are your there are practical reasons we cannot the legalization of marijuana. >> what about the stronger drugs like cocaine and heroin? >> that's a lot trickier but all this policy should be re-examined because mexico is suffering badly. the worst problem caused by drugs is the violence in mexico. 14,000 people murdered in three years. that's a lot. and so, we need to think of the consequences of our consumer habits in the united states. >> and i would add also the consequence of the erosion of political and civic institutions in mexico and throughout latin america, the kind of weakening of the states 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, in the drug traffickers revenues are about $40 billion. so who's winning this? >> before we open up for questions, can you just -- if he 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 was going on and juarez and other cities in mexico. what would you say are some of the discourses to watch for, and it's even the press is kind of putting out there that my kind of mislead us in terms of understanding what's really happening on the ground facts >> i guess this idea to people involved in the drug world deserve to die and that doesn't really matter because they're criminals. mexico is a great country, a

wonderful country. it's our ally, it's our neighbor. and when we see these numbers, 20 people massacred, 15 minute, we should be just as concerned as an earbud american soldiers dying in afghanistan or iraq. we are all one people in some sense. we need to get beyond this 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? just call on someone, okay. back there. >> hi, i have read quite a bit about colombia in the 80's and it seems like juarez is kind of a replacement in many ways. have you done much research in colombia, from colombia to see why it seems to transfer from

nadine to war as an does american-born policy plan to it in particular, plan colombia. >> absolutely. good question. the dea and the u.s. government shut down most of the flow of cocaine from colombia into florida, east coast united states so naturally the columbia traffic was then brought it up to mexico. mexican cartels actually became a lot more powerful in colombian cartels because it is much easier to get those drugs across the 2000-mile border between 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. side columbia and this worked fairly effectively a breaking of the pablo escobar and the cartels. but after that, the colombians very smartly regrouped and now they have hundreds of many cartels and the flow of drugs is roughly the same as it was. the amount of profits is roughly the same. the consumption of the u.s. is

the same. in other words plan colombia field here at the u.s. is using the same model in mexico. ..

>> once we legalize alcohol in a country after prohibition, did the country fall apart? i don't think so. i think it was good for business and good for the government to tax those profit. the best thing you can do is bring things in to the legal, formal public sphere instead of having a it controlled by vicious cartel. >> certainly there are drug cartels in various countries throughout the world. 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 president sent 45000 troops into cartel territory, start hassling them. prior to that time there were certain arrangements such the cartels made a lot of money. the government seemed to be happy. there wasn't as much violence.

but now after 9/11 and so on the u.s. has been strengthening its border. it's hard to get drugs into the country. mexican military is pressing the cartel. there is a lot of competition among the cartel to control its lucrative market. mexico's economy is really in bad shape that it's all about money. and the violence is for control of markets and they have covered a lot of the tactics from the middle east as far the middle east task force decapitations and doing these videos and someone. but this is all ultimately about control, power, money. it's not killing -- oftentimes the people who do the killing don't know the person they are killing. it's a job. so violence is related to this intense struggle that's become more acute because of the u.s. tightening of border and because of mexico's economic propaganda government trying to take on the cartels.

>> i had a very minor role in tracing stolen weapons in southern california. one of the things that happened is there were increased burglaries of arms warehouses that was successful, which is unusual. because breaking into an armed warehouse, you have to be either a moron or an electronic expert. the one thing that surprises, these guns were not showing up on the streets of los angeles. we couldn't figure out what they were going. one of the other people on this task force, they found out they were being shipped, not one piece at a time. they were being trucked into tijuana across the border. so naïve me, i said what's the american government doing about this? he said, well, they came back later on and said, this is a mexican problem. so this is where i left. and it was unbelievable to me that this massive amounts of -- one guy, he had photographs of

the trucks going across the border from stolen arms from the los angeles area. has that changed at all? has there been any more concerned with american government with the arms all coming from the u.s.? >> it's gotten worse. 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. so the rich people of mexico come to the u.s. and invest their money in our country. low unemployment, it's hard to get an apartment, fancy houses, forget. they're all sold. 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 problem. we get stronger as they get we do. there's this kind of perverse relationship there. and yet the united states feel so wounded by all these mexican drug cartels and baiting our country. but it's all part of this long, complicated, i would say

incestuous history between the u.s. and mexico. >> you keep talking about mexico and not talking about demand. 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 all these drugs going? what is that demand? i'm asking whether you cover that, and why it's not being covered. if it's not. >> well, my research in my book was 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, the u.s. does have very high levels of consumption of marijuana, of course, but cocaine as well. and math and heroin are a big problem.

the numbers are in the hundreds of thousands or millions for all of those drugs. ecstasy is booming as well. that comes often from mexico. so yeah, i'm not trying to whitewash that issue at all. [inaudible] >> fighting drug in such? >> first of all understanding why there is such a demand for the drugs, and second all, what the reason for that is, and then trying to find a solution to that rather than trying to find a way to kill some other human, which all you've done, which is important, is to give sort of the stories the hind -- 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 is not toggling that issue, whether it's -- >> i agree with you 100%. i think we should be focusing more on our own drug use that on interdictions in foreign countries. because we have more control of what goes on within our country. we can change our habits are it's hard for us to change other people in mexico, iraq, afghanistan, vietnam, ad infinitum. >> a follow-up on solutions. have you had the opportunity to be consulted by president calderon, what advice would you give them, given the political reality has to do with it, including pressure from the u.s. government? >> i would encourage him to resign. [laughter] >> and then -- then secondly, i would encourage him to send the soldiers back to the barracks

and take them out of the city. they're making things worse. and i think the gentleman behind you, his point about attacking and such, mexico now has a serious problem with cocaine, heroin and marijuana consumption. i don't want to say marijuana is such a bad thing, but cocaine and heroin consumption and meth. they need to fight their own consumption. they need to fix their economy so people will not go into these illegal businesses. i don't think that president calderon has been successful. this is the main banner he wove, has waged since he came into office. crimefighting the cartel. but clearly he is losing. he needs to rethink that strategy. >> they're still questioned that the united states is the biggest consumer of drugs. i live in el paso. i lived in tijuana. and i just got back from a real.

this week they've got a submarine with 10000 tons of cocaine. to colombians and two mexicans. it is still coming from a lot of areas in colombia. and bolivia, ecuador and peru, they have the coca leaves. mexico doesn't have the. >> right. but this talk about them starting to grow cocoa, seriously. >> coke is big, very big in mexico. comes from south america. >> but they don't have the trees that grow it. >> what's your point though exactly? >> well, i mean, they are getting the raw stuff from wherever. and south america, central america, or south america mostly. because it's all over the place in peru. and i think 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. sebelius. the problem there is with the arms thing. all the arms go from here over there. i did a lot of charity work, and i don't anymore. i don't live there. i know all these areas because i hung out supposedly with the wrong people. and we might be here with, because america is the biggest consumer of drugs. >> no question. >> because of the money. it's easier to get to. they are trying to legalize marijuana in mexico. for what? they can't afford it. >> i'm going to allow him to respond to that's a few more words, but we are out of time.

do you want to respond to that? >> i just think we need to consider the foreign policy implications of this drug issue, especially with afghanistan. if the united states can somehow cut down our consumption we would make the world better in afghanistan, mexico and here. 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 kansas press enter america series. for more information visit utp.edu.

>> we are in section 27 of

arlington national cemetery. this is one of the oldest sections of the military cemetery at arlington. and it's worth the story of arlington national cemetery really begins. arlington has so much history tied up in the civil war. this section of the cemetery was begun in may, 1864. really before there was a cemetery. how did that happen? it happened that 1 going on for several years, and washington was really a hospital city at that time. there were as many as 50000 soldiers and sailors in the hospitals in washingtwashington, temporary hospitals set up all over town. and of course, those people started dying. and they had to be buried. so earlier in the war, the

national cemeteries were established at alexandria, virginia, and at the old soldiers home in northwest washington. they were planned to accommodate all those who died in the washington area hospitals. what happened was that the war went on much longer and was much bloodier than anybody expected. so we pretty soon filled up the graveyard, a national cemeteries at alexandria. and at the old soldiers home in washington. they needed new bl space. so the quartermasters office of the union army looked across the river and found this place, arlington, and thought it would be a good place to begin burying people. arlington happened to be the home of robert e. lee, the confederate general. so not only was it a convenient

place to begin military burials from the civil war, it was also felt to be a matter of justice, maybe even vindication if you want to call it that. the first military burials at arlington came in may of 1864, well into the civil war. the very first of those burials was a private, 67 pennsylvania infantry named william chrisman. he was a farmer. he was from a poor family. and he came to serve in the union army. unfortunate he ended up in a hospital in washington. he got a case of german measles, which killed many, many service members on both sides of the war. he developed peritonitis from his measles infection. and he died in a washington hospital. was brought across the potomac

river here to arlington as the first military burial. things were so desperate at that time in the civil war, there were so many people dying, that there wasn't much time for ceremony or ritual at arlington. they would bring people over for burial day after day after day. and they went into the ground as william christman did with no flags, flying, no bugles playing. all quite often not a chaplain to give him a sendoff. so basically we're just trying to keep up with the carnage from the civil war. when arlington began. during the war, things were so desperate that there wasn't any time for a tombstone. they had headboards. they were made out of pine or walnut. painted white with black lettering. those, of course, had to be maintained or they fell apart.

so that in the years after the civil war, we begin to clean up, we begin to make sense of things. someone came up with the design in the 18 '70s, late 1870s come early 1800s for the white marble tombstones you see at arlington today. it's a uniform design anyone who qualified for burial here, qualified for one of these tombstones. the earliest stones were like these you see here, which have the name, of the company, the state, and the data burial. and an incised shield. later, the design was simple by just include the name of the person, the date of birth and e data burial. that's the modern tombstone you see in other sections of the cemetery today.

the first military burial here, william christman was typical, and that like many soldiers who died in the civil war, on both sides, he wasn't killed by a bullet or a cannonball. he was killed by the disease. most of the people who died, and more of the people who died in the civil war died from infections, dysentery, yellow fever, measles, moms, then died from battle wounds. and most of the people you see in this section of the cemetery are in that category. william christman was buried in may 1864. arlington cemetery was not established until a month later, june of 1864. it was officially designated a national cemetery. it began to fill up very, very quickly. this part of the cemetery we are in, section 27, was called the lower cemetery.

as you can see, is at the edge of arlington. there's a road road just outside of the cemetery here. you can't see the lee mansion from this location. and that's the way the officers who were living and working in the lee mansion during the war wanted it. they didn't want to see the burials coming in. they didn't want to be living in a graveyard working in a graveyard. they want these grades out of sight and out of mind. the quartermaster general, brigadier general montgomery meigs, didn't like that idea. as a matter fact, he didn't have much use for robert e. lee picked it served together in the union army. meigs considered lee a traitor. and thought he should be hanged for his desertion of the union army and his leadership of the army of northern virginia. so meigs came to arlington on

the date it was officially begun as a cemetery, june 14, 1864. came to this part of the cemetery, looked around, and was upset that there were no graves around the lee mansion. so his next act was to go up the hill where we would go shortly, and to begin to put burials right up next to the mansion. he didn't want the least to be able to come back after the war was over. so you will see meigsat cemeter. up the hill and mrs. lee's garden. >> we are now up on a hill overlooking washington, d.c., at the lee mansion. and i am a meeting camera at mrs. lee's garden. >> this is the garden on the hill, the highest point at arlington national cemetery. this is the home of robert e. lee, mary custis lee. before the civil war.

and at the height of the civil war in 1864, the first military burial in the lower cemetery, out of sight of the mansion. quartermaster general didn't think that the graves were close enough to the mansion. so he found officers who have died and in service and he had them buried around here and mrs. lee's garden to make it more difficult for the least to return to arlington after the war. >> if we walk along here we see these tombstones actually encircle the garden? >> yes. they do go all the way around it. they form a border around part of the garden. i think there's something like -- at the end of the war there was something like 40 graves of officers. and we don't know exactly what meigs is thinking was but i suspect he chose to bury

officers here rather than private, you don't enlisted men because it would makee them aftr the war was over. because there were more prominent. they were better known. it was a strategic move on meigs part. it proved pretty effective because by the end of the war, there were not only these grades here, but there were thousands of other graves at arlington. and it made it very difficult for the lee family to return here. >> did the lee family attempt to return? >> they never really attempted to return, but they wanted to get arlington back. they worked for years. robert e. lee after the war, quietly met with his lawyers in alexandria, and discussed with them a way to get arlington back. mrs. lee, who was more vociferous about it, went to congress after generally died and petitioned congress to get

arlington back. and basically, her petition was booted out of congress. they thought it was a ridiculous idea. at that time, radical republicans were in charge of congress. they didn't give her a very good hearing. she died in 1873. her son, their eldest son, custis lee went to congress, got voted down. then went to court and then my 1882, he won a famous case of the supreme court. the supreme court ruled arlington had been seized without just compensation during the civil war. and give arlington back to the lee family. it took a while, but my 1883, the lee's had arlington back. of course, the bad news for the lee's was there were 16000 tunes here at the time. as a practical matter, they couldn't come back to later. so they settled with the government for fair market

value, $150,000, 1100 acres of prime real estate, and 16000 tunes on the banks of the potomac river. the great irony is, that when custis lee signed the estate over, the title over to the federal government, custis lee on one side signing the title, on the other side was the secretary of war, robert todd lincoln, son of abraham lincoln. so that you had a son of lee and the son of lincoln agreeing on something. and i would say that that was the beginning of some hope that we could reunite north and south again. it took a while, but that was the beginning of the reunion. >> so we're going to walk back here to the first tomb of the unknown soldiers are. >> yes. one of the great traditions at arlington is honoring the unknown soldiers. lost in war.

the first instance of that came just after the civil war when quartermaster general montgomery meigs set a recovery teams out into the battlefields around washington. with a 30-mile radius of washington. to recover unknown soldiers from that war. they brought them here to this part of arlington. after the war, these teams recovered the dead, the unknowns, from chancellorsville, spotsylvania, the of the great battlefields, and meigs had a huge pit dug here at this spot and had been buried in a mass grave. in 1866. 2111 unknowns buried here at arlington. this is at the edge, the end of this is lee's garden.

so it's another instance of meigs, not only taking the opportunity to honor the war dead, but also to erect a barrier to the lee's return to arlington. >> this was a portion of a booktv program. you can view the entire program, and many other booktv programs online. go to booktv.org. type the name of the author or book into the search area in the upper left hand corner of the page. select the watch link. now you can view the entire program. you might also explore the recently on booktv box or the featured video box to find reason and feature programs. >> here's a look at some upcoming book fairs and festivals over the next few months.

>> what are you reading? >> now, i'm just now finishing dan brown's, which i have been reading by listening to it on cd. in the car.

and i, in terms of the book i am reading, it's, actually holding in my hand, is a book about running, that japanese lott novel is. and the title is, what i think about when i'm running. i'm not a runner, it's about what is going through his mind and all of that. it's nonfiction. i was trying to have a nonfiction and fiction thing going on at the same time. that's where i am. >> i fully expected to hear some public policy title from you. >> i read that public policy stuff, but that's for my job. i do that on company time. know, all of that is very important to me obviously. but i read for a living. and went my own time, i read for joy. >> jim lehrer of the news hour.