In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs and reveals why the violence that now defines the American-Mexican border will only worsen.
He is the truth no one wants to hear..
He is the future - there are thousands of men like him in Mexico and there will be more in other places.
He is a lonely voice - no one with his background has ever come forward and talked.
He speaks as a free man and of his own free will - there are no charges against him.
Another cartel is trying to recruit him.
One cartel has a quarter million dollar contract on his head.
Now he lives in the United States as a fugitive.
When he was killing people for money in Juarez, he was sharpening his marksmanship at the Federal Police range.
When he headed the state police anti-kidnapping squad in Juarez, he was also running a kidnapping ring in Juarez.
He is the state.
And he is not an outlaw or a rebel.
But he can explain in detail not only torture and murder, but how power is distributed and used in the arrangement between the public Mexican state and law enforcement on the ground - where terror and slaughter are simply tools in implementing policy for both the police and the cartels.
He is not boastful, he claims no major standing in organized crime.
The well-spoken man that emerges from the pages of El Sicario is one who has been groomed by poverty and driven by a refusal to be one more statistic in the failure of Mexico.
As trust between the two men developed, Bowden bore witness to the Sicario\'s unfolding confession, and decided to tell his story.
Charles Bowden first encountered El Sicario while reporting for the book Murder City.
And then he decided to tell the story of his life and work.
He left the business and turned to Christ.
He is a hit man who came off the killing fields alive.
He is a contract killer who functioned as a commandante in the Chihuahuan State police, who was trained in the US by the FBI, and who for twenty years kidnapped, tortured and murdered people for the drug industry at the behest of Mexican drug cartels.
El Sicario is the hidden face of America\'s war on drugs.
In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs on the American.
In this unprecedented and chilling monologue, a repentant Mexican hitman tells the unvarnished truth about the war on drugs and reveals why the violence that now defines the American-Mexican border will only worsen
