El Zar de la Droga: La Vida y la Muerte de un Narcotraficante Mexicano Book

Pablo Acosta was a man whose life needs no embellishment! His rise to prominence and subsequent tenure as the head drug trafficker in the Mexican border town of Ojinaga was a wild rollercoaster ride of backroom business deals with government agencies, cross-border smuggling operations, and wild gunfights.

Terrence Poppa's retelling of Acosta's life is imbued with the type of drama that whole movies and television shows are built around. His well-paced writing and vivid descriptions go a long way in placing the reader directly in the midst of the action. Particularly vivid encounters in the book include the assassination attempt on Acosta (in the presence of a bus full of children), Acosta's confrontation with Fermin Arevalo at Arevalo's ranch, and the final standoff between Acosta and Calderoni.

What I additionally enjoyed about Poppa's biography is that he took the care to provide the context for Acosta's drug operation and also to delve more deeply into the characters that surrounded and made up Acosta's organization. For example, the discussion of prior Ojinaga drug lords felt critical to understanding how such drug smuggling operations worked in cooperation with government agencies while also providing a good comparison between Acosta's approach to the business and that of his predecessors.

Poppa's more recent updates to the book (the Introduction and Epilogue were both written and added to the book in 2010) are also welcome expansions. They give new life to a book that is turning 30 years old this year. I especially appreciated the epilogue note on Calderoni. His role in the context of Acosta's life was of persecutor and hunter of the drug lord and hero to drug enforcement agencies in the United States, but his ultimate legacy was not much different than that of his more openly corrupt colleagues.

Where the book comes a bit short is in terms of the sequencing of events. The through-line is not chronological and I was therefore confused at times when a previously incarcerated character was once again taking action in an operation. Additionally, the book could have benefitted from a diagram to explain characters' associations with one another. Towards the end of the book, when about 10 primary characters and dozens of secondary characters have been introduced, it was hard to keep track of everyones' interests and associations.

(As an aside, this book and my subsequent internet searches led me to discover that Pablo Acosta is a prominent character in the second season of Narcos: Mexico. I have started watching the show as a result and am disappointed with their portrayal of Acosta, despite having Poppa on the show as a consultant. The version represented on that show is so diluted and separated from the version presented in Poppa's book that they may as well have just renamed him altogether.)