* 'A couple baggies, please.' Via Exiled.
Industrial, modern, forward-looking Monterrey in northern Mexico is Zetas territory. The L.A. Times's Tracy Wilkinson was recently there, reporting up close on the deep hold that the Gulf cartel's enforcement wing has on life in the city's roughest barrios.
You can get a first-person look at what that's like by checking out the work of Pancho Montana, the nom de plume of a guy who lives in Monterrey and has been writing these raw yet totally engrossing dispatches of the narco scene there for Exiled, an online magazine. From Montana's piece on the drug store (not drugstore) tienditas of his hood:
The inventory is simple, too. These aren’t boutique medical marijuana shops I hear you have in California that offer 50 types of weed. No, the main business of a tiendita is piedra, slang name for crack cocaine. But after a drug shop becomes more established, the management expands into powder cocaine and pot. The quality is not very good. They cut it too much. That’s why a bolsita (baggie) of zetas pase (blow) is usually called rabia (rabies). Imagine why.
The magazine itself makes a pretty confrontational case against what it terms "boring progressives who cover the War on Drugs" as if they were doing a "freshmen Chemistry paper on hydrogen bonds." Read the whole entry on "Pro-drug Journalists" over there. It makes an analogy to closeted gays. Of course, there is and always will be a space for a general-audience, mainstream narrative for this kind of story (we hope), but ... thoughts?
Here is Pancho Montana's description of a friend's kidnapping. The writing is assaultive and almost cruel -- but forgive me not doubting a single detail.
