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Ioan Grillo

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http://www.ioangrillo.com/

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I’m a journalist, writer and TV producer based in Mexico City. I’ve been covering Latin America since 2001 for news media including Time Magazine, CNN, The Associated Press, Global Post, The Houston Chronicle, PBS NewsHour, Al Jazeera English, France 24, CBC, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, Gatopardo, The San Francisco Chronicle and many others. El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency is my first book.

I started covering drug cartels from my early days here. I was always fascinated by the riddle of these ghost like figures who made $30 billion a year, were idolized in popular songs and miraculously escaped the Mexican army and DEA. Over the decade I followed the mystery to endless murder scenes on bullet-ridden streets, mountai...more I’m a journalist, writer and TV producer based in Mexico City. I’ve been covering Latin America since 2001 for news media including Time Magazine, CNN, The Associated Press, Global Post, The Houston Chronicle, PBS NewsHour, Al Jazeera English, France 24, CBC, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, Gatopardo, The San Francisco Chronicle and many others. El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency is my first book.

I started covering drug cartels from my early days here. I was always fascinated by the riddle of these ghost like figures who made $30 billion a year, were idolized in popular songs and miraculously escaped the Mexican army and DEA. Over the decade I followed the mystery to endless murder scenes on bullet-ridden streets, mountains where drugs are born as pretty flowers, and scarred criminals from prison cells to luxury condos.

During the same time, Mexico’s drug war morphed into a horrific conflict with brutal beheadings, massacres and mass graves. Journalists here found ourselves reporting on a human tragedy of epic proportions – with a never-ending trail of grieving parents and atrocities comparable to brutal civil wars. The need for better understanding to help find a way out of this hole has become more important than ever.

We foreign journalists all have to turn to our homelands for part of that solution. I grew up in sunny England, near the seaside city of Brighton – famous for its pink candy, pebble beaches, colleges and bubbling night clubs. It is also one of Britain’s top places for drug consumption, switching with the fashions from Moroccan hashish to Turkish heroin to Colombian cocaine. Few there ever think about where the mind-bending substances come from or what they might give or takeaway from those countries. In Europe and the United States a hard discussion on our drug habits and policy is long overdue.

As well as following drug trafficking empires, I cover the other major issues of Latin America such as natural disasters (including the Haiti earthquake), the battle between left and right (including the Honduras coup), and the vast human wave of emigration to El Norte. I also love music and cover it whenever I get a chance. I co-directed a series of three short films with John Dickie, which all include a good dose of Latin American hip hop. They are Barrios Beats and Blood, Bajamar Ballad, and The Gangsters’ Granny.(less)

12 posts
Ioan Grillo's Blog

Ioan Grillo isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but he does have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from his feed.

San Antonio Express News reviews El Narco

El Narco reveals the criminal insurgency from the inside out

John MacCormack, San Antonio Express News

Over the past five years, the unspeakably brutal drug violence in Mexico has produced an estimated 40,000 deaths as well as a wave of books, newspaper and magazine articles, and breathless televisionspecials.

And while it's not hard to make gripping news of beheadings, mass murders of innocents a...

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Published on November 13, 2011 08:54 • 14 views

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combine editions
Books by Ioan Grillo

Average rating: 3.86 · 152 ratings · 45 reviews · 4 distinct works

	El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency 3.86 avg rating — 152 ratings — published 2011 — 2 editions	My rating:
	El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — expected publication 2012	My rating:
	El Narco 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	My rating:
	Narco 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2011	My rating: