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The Final Book of the Trilogy

The Border is the final concluding chapter to Winslow’s magnum opus, his trilogy about the long-running drug war. Like the first two lengthy chapters in the trilogy, The Power the Dog and the Cartel, The Border is a broad, sweeping epic telling multiple storylines. However, unlike the first two books, along with the glorious rich characters and history, Winslow included thinly-veiled political smear attacks which were unnecessary to the story and cheapened his art.

In any event, the Border continues the decades-long sweeping epic begun in the first two books. It is the story of the drug cartels, their formation, their evolution, and the seemingly insurmountable and insidious problem they have become, eating away at both American life and life south of the border. If anything, the rise of the drug cartels has had a far more devastating effect in Mexico and Guatemala than here in the States as wars between the different factions have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, brutality on a scale barely imaginable, corruption, and devastation.

What Winslow does so skillfully in this book and the previous two is he personalizes the drug war both in the person of Art Keller, the DEA agent and the that of the warring drug kingpins.

Adan Barrera is now dead and gone and the young Turks, the young Hijos are now rising. It’s a new generation born in drug wealth and power who all party together and are best friends. But, power and money corrupt. And, there’s no way out. They either have to claw their way up or go down in a blaze of glory. The young princes are trapped no different than the kid in the Barrio. And eventually even Art Keller sees that taking out one drug kingpin, even Adan Barrera, only leaves an empty seat for another to fill. Taking down one cartel only leaves an opening for another cartel to move in. The result is an endless war with no end in sight.

Winslow is a master at diagnosing the problem but not much at prescribing a solution. He uses the trilogy to argue that meeting the cartels with force will not work and that legalization of drugs - not just marijuana- will take the profit motive out it. And he argues that a wall will not stem the tide. But, he offers no solutions to why so many want to drown themselves in drugs. Why so many want to drop out of modern life. And, in places where hard drugs are legal, don’t we just end up with an army of zombies? Surrendering to despair is no Solution. And, the extraordinary violence coming over the border - no matter its ultimate roots - is unacceptable.