Amexica: war along the borderline (Rev. and updated ed.)

Amexica is the harrowing story of the extraordinary terror unfolding along the U.S.-Mexico border-"e;a country in its own right, which belongs to both the United States and Mexico, yet neither"e;-as the narco-war escalates to a fever pitch there.In 2009, after reporting from the border for many years, Ed Vulliamy traveled the frontier from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, from Tijuana to Matamoros, a journey through a kaleidoscopic landscape of corruption and all-out civil war, but also of beauty and joy and resilience.

He describes in revelatory detail how the narco gangs work; the smuggling of people, weapons, and drugs back and forth across the border; middle-class flight from Mexico and an American celebrity culture that is feeding the violence; the interrelated economies of drugs and the maquiladora factories; the ruthless, systematic murder of young women in Ciudad Juarez.

Heroes, villains, and victims-the brave and rogue police, priests, women, and journalists fighting the violence; the gangs and their freelance killers; the dead and the devastated-all come to life in this singular book.Amexica takes us far beyond today's headlines.

It is a street-level portrait, by turns horrific and sublime, of a place and people in a time of war as much as of the war itself.