Malcolm Beith's The Last Narco

Words: 1287
Pages: 6

The Last Narco explores many ideas and techniques of fearless, powerful men yet it lacks the ability to create an emotional connection with the reader. The reader may feel amazed, surprised, intrigued, disgusted, and even fascinated but, never does the reader empathize. By no means did the author intend to persuade the reader one way or another on the topic of drug cartels within Mexico but, the reader is unable to make an emotional connection to these men. The men are described in a curt way, never does Malcolm Beith say one of the men was 100% a regular joe. For this, the reader has a harder time relating therefore creating an inability to empathize. Personally, this emotional detachment was a huge weakness to the ground breaking book. The …show more content…
As explained in the novel, he was quite the womanizer; his imprisonment was no exception of this. He would seduce females within the prison, send roses to lovers, and at one point Chapo is depicted as vulnerable, he is at the hands of his lover. He was not literate, therefore he could not write love letters; Chapo always had a knack for overcoming barriers. He hired someone to write his words of fervent passion, he let only so few see this compassionate side of him. This interesting fact introduced an entirely new side to Chapo which I really enjoyed. Learning about Chapo’s personal life made my overall understanding of him more complete. Malcolm Beith did a wonderful job writing The Last Narco and I felt his strengths outweighed his weaknesses while writing this.
According to Inc. successfulness can be measured upon a couple qualities including: drive, connection, communication, self-confidence, and passion. These are all characteristics the leaders of Mexican cartels behold. The Last Narco does a fantastic job of highlighting the fact that success is not just on wall street trading stocks, but within the shams of tijuana peddling drugs too. Not only does this fast paced novel inform those on the reality
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The themes of these two are interchangeable and the knowledge builds upon one another. A huge similarity that stuck out for me was Las Zetas; in class we discussed the brutal tactics of this very brutally violent gang. The book only continued to reaffirm that, and gave more background into the creation of Las Zetas. Cardena Guillen, also known as the friend killer formed los zetas in 1997. This gang quickly became known for their ruthless tactics and brutal killings. The gang was originally formed by deserted soldiers with military history. Yet, there was a certain irony to them, they had dark ways and “scary” ink on their faces yet managed to go by the names of disney characters. “Some of the original Zetas had light-hearted names - ‘El Winnie Pooh’ and ‘The Little Mother’, for instance - but they were vicious (pg 181).” These gang members managed to instill fear upon many people yet had light hearted children's character names which is quite ironic. In class we also learned the war on drugs is technically perpetuated by the United States seeing we are the major consumers of these drugs.The book only only continued to reaffirm this idea, throughout the entire book it talks about the circulation of drugs from India, China, and Colombia, to Mexico, and to their final destination, the United States. In class we discussed that if the U.S could somehow minimize and manage its citizens drug