Cocaina – stories from the workplace

BLOGGTEXT | Publicerad 2010-01-21 05:20   2 kommentarer

My next book Cocaina is a project I have been working on reluctantly since 1989 when I first set foot in Colombia and had a ringside seat at Pablo Escobar's all-out assault on the state. Escobar and his henchman killed thousands of innocent people, but 20 years later, after the US spending $15 billion dollar on its drug war, Colombia produces five times as much cocaine as during the Escobar era, and consumption worldwide is on the rise. A drug-fuelled civil war has forced four million people from their homes, making Colombia the seat of one of the world's gravest humanitarian crises. Guerrilla forces tear the country apart, and a third of Colombia's congress is under investigation for collaborating with death squads.

What happened between Escobar's death in a rooftop shootout in 1993 and the present? What will happen in the politicized world of cocaine and the drug war in the years to come? Colombia still produces 70 percent of all the world's coke and is the perfect laboratory for producing illegal drugs. But why? How is this truly global industry affecting poor peasant families on the run from armed groups financed by drug money? Military tension between Colombia's right-wing government and socialist Venezuela has become a security threat for the entire hemisphere - how does cocaine and the US war on drugs play into this unsettling geopolitical game? What, in the end, is the future of cocaine?

The book tackles these questions by following coca growers, drug traffickers, refugees, hit men, anti-drug police, cocaine processors, politicians, intellectuals, DEA-directors, cocaine tourists, guerrilla fighters, death squads and the many victims of violence. It is based on three years of research and more than 100 interviews. When I began my love affair with this deeply-scarred and deeply-beautiful country, I promised myself that I would never add another book to the already lengthy row of journalistic tomes on Colombia and cocaine. But I slowly realized there was something missing in what I read. I'm not sure, but I hope this one gets it right.

Cocaina will be published first in Swedish (August 2010). If you work for a publishing house that might be interested in translating the book into other languages - English or Spanish, but other languages as well - please contact my Swedish publisher at Atlas, Richard Herold (richard.herold@arenagruppen.se). Cocaina, a follow-up to my last book, Americanos, is a work of personal and political journalism from the Latin America that never makes it into the dominant US and European media. Here are some extracts from the reviews that Americanos received in the Swedish press:

"Masterly written reports, well researched and with a tangible physical presence. Linton's book is the best in the genre since the Third World was "discovered" by Swedish writers in the 1960s ... He handles the difficulties in these gigantic transitional processes, including the centralist system in Venezuela, by analytical reasoning without falling into the pessimist trap. An observer with an agile intellect. As a political documentary, this book is a pioneering work."
Aftonbladet

"Neo-liberalism has both conquered and lost during the years between Sven Lindqvist [1960s] and Magnus Linton. The IMF:s structural reforms have failed, the old cold war has ended, and the recent war against drugs has been lost. The results are new movements in the crust of the earth, barely discernible motions. But Linton uses his sixth seismic sense to help us imagine some of the new terrain inside this social volcano and we get to accompany him on a breathtaking journey from Argentina all the way to California, the northernmost foothold of Latin America ... A magnificent account of a journey, where close-ups and analysis are seamlessly placed on a leveled plain."
Expressen

"Magnus Linton has written an important, deeply committed and intellectually honest book without blinders or fix ideas, opening up for renewed knowledge about Latin America, beyond salvation theories. I hope this book will contribute to a rekindling of the interest in Latin America and to a continued discussion which may deepen our understanding and expand the cultural and economic exchange. This is a continent which today is also situated in Europe - just outside Stockholm!"
Dagens Nyheter

"The book is as much an ideological as a geographic road trip... Its strength is Linton's way of placing his concrete encounters in an abstract context - actually succeeding in creating some kind of order in this abundance of ideologies. It is a breathtakingly dramatic process which Magnus Linton, precisely due to his sober approach, manages to explain in such an impressive way."
Sydsvenskan

"Linton layers big and small; sailing like a condor, overlooking politics, history and globalization. Then diving down, striking his talons into gripping reality; with his sharp eye describing the struggle for survival and for a decent life - in the factory, in the shanty-towns and in the abortion clinics. He has ploughed through stacks of books and interviewed more than a hundred people. Americanos is a well written and very readable book, providing a balanced and updated view of the situation, right now, in Las Americas."
Svenska Dagbladet