The Fight to Save Juárez

The Fight to Save Juárez is the book we’ve been waiting for that deconstructs a major Mexican city’s descent into agony. Ainslie documents how a perfect storm of marauding drug cartels, corrupt police forces, and unprepared city officials left citizens helpless and terrorized in what became the world’s most murderous city. Significantly, he hammers the prepotent truth that organized crime could not and would not have run amok in Mexico were it not for the collusion of the mobsters’ trusted acolytes—the police, at every level. John Burnett, National Public Radio

This is a deeply reported, razor smart, up-close account of the Great Drug War. This book is absolutely courageous in its fairness and search for answers. Ricardo Ainslie’s story has room for both angels and demons. He finds noble characters struggling under incredible strain—and threat of death—to do the right thing, to try to save Ciudad Juárez from itself. And he finds evil and the corruption and incompetence that lets the bad bury the good. If you want to begin to understand the violence and chaos that have laid siege to our neighbor’s house, this is the book. William Booth, Washington Post Bureau Chief for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean

Ricardo Ainslie’s The Fight to Save Juárez couldn’t be more timely. It is also of vital relevance: headlines of beheadings and massacres in Ciudad Juárez have captured the world’s attention, but Ainslie deftly goes deeper into the story and helps us understand what makes Ciudad Juárez tick. Through interviews with Mexican officials, citizens, and even some drug traffickers, Ainslie offers an insightful view into what has occurred in Ciudad Juárez as the drug war has devolved in the border city. The interviews are strong and intimacy with the characters ever apparent. Malcolm Beith, author of The Last Narco: Inside the Hunt for El Chapo, The World’s Most-Wanted Drug Lord