Set on the Texas/Mexico border during the early years of Reagans War on Drugs, Mariguano tells the story of contrabandisto Don Julio Cortinas ill-fated attempt to secure the Plaza at a national level by fixing the 1988 Mexican Presidential elections. The story is told through the eyes of Cortinas son, El Johnny, who bears witness to his fathers cocaine-fueled transformation from devoted head of family to self-destructive head of a criminal organization that is rife with betrayal and deceit. Anyone who wants to understand the tragedy of modern-day Mexico and Americas complicity in the Mexican drug wars will want to read Mariguano, a novel that recalls classic crime narratives such as Nicholas Pileggis or William S. Burroughss but also reads like the work of the best Mexican and Latin American novelists such as Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garca Mrquez.