Review by Booklist Review
Cartels are usually seen as male-driven organizations, and men like El Chapo have become the popular faces of the illegal drug trade. Women are nearly invisible, and when they are revealed, they are perceived as subordinate to the men, offering support or enduring oppression. Journalist Bonello offers a more nuanced view of the places women, las narcas, hold in cartels. By conducting in-the-field investigations, visiting towns in Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, and interviewing women in the drug trade or those who knew them, Bonello profiles narcas who, for their own various reasons, have acquired influence and even power in cartels. Women like Digna Valle and Marllory Chacon Rossell, referred to as the "female El Chapo." They come from backgrounds that vary from privileged and educated to desperately poor. Hidden in the shadow of powerful men, the narcas make their own marks through alliances, appeals, and persuasion. Bonello presents a complex report on women's roles in a world of extreme machismo and an eye-opening challenge to the perception of women involved in the complicated and brutal world of cartels.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Bonello posits in her slender debut that there are many more female leaders of Latin American criminal cartels than the mainstream media has acknowledged or covered. One such "narca" is Guadalupe Fernández Valencia, who joined Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's Sinaloa drug cartel and worked her way up in its power structure for 30 years before her capture by U.S. authorities, which netted her a 10-year prison sentence in 2021. Digna Valle led a Honduran cartel associated with El Chapo, while Yaneth Vergara Hernández, Sebastiana Cottón Vásquez, and Marllory Chacón Rossell ran cocaine in Guatemala. Many of these women's backgrounds were similar: they grew up impoverished, regularly witnessed violence in their communities, and lacked education and legal job opportunities. They took up crime so they could earn large amounts of money and wield power, both of which proved fleeting, since most of them ended up in prison. In the book's strongest sections, Bonello recounts her investigations, including risks to her own safety, and explains how she tracked down sources that included criminals, members of law enforcement, and court documents. Readers fascinated by organized crime and the inner workings of investigative journalism will want to check it out. (July)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An evenhanded look at notorious women drug runners in Latin American cartels. As a feminist journalist, Bonello, Mexico City--based senior editor for Latin America at VICE World News, is acutely aware of gender stereotypes held by both the drug cartels as well as the mostly male journalists who cover the narcos and don't question those stereotypes. "The patriarchy of the cartels seems very real," she writes, "but to assume women don't have a capacity for violence or a thirst for power and status is just another narrow gender stereotype that grossly misunderstands and underestimates women and their role in the social order." Bonello finds that the women she profiles (mostly now in prison) largely come from poor backgrounds with few job opportunities. Most got involved in drug cartels because of male family members, and they found that they enjoyed the thrill of the work. In brief chapters, the author describes the lives of a variety of fascinating characters, including Honduran Digna Valle, the matriarch in the Valle family cocaine cartel, which moves drugs from Guatemala to the U.S. Arrested in 2018, she evidently informed on her family members and got a relatively light sentence. "Women have been movers and shakers in the narco business since the drug war began," writes the author, and she looks into new research into María Dolores Estévez Zuleta, aka Lola "La Chata," an early Mexican cartel leader; women involved in the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gangs; and Emma Coronel, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán's wife. "She must have known from the day in 2007," writes Bonello, "when she first met El Chapo on a dusty ranch dance floor in the tiny town of Canelas, when she was a seventeen-year-old aspiring beauty queen, that she might one day be the most famous woman in Sinaloa." Throughout this intriguing text, the author busts the myth that these narcas are mere victims. An eye-opening work of journalism that largely avoids glamorizing its subjects' criminal activity. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
