Mexican drug cartels were ISIS before ISIS was ISIS. Mexicans beheaded people and showed videos a decade before ISIS-NPR interview, "The Cartel," author Don Winslow

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7/15/15, "'Cartel' Author Spins A Grand Tale Of Mexico's Drug Wars," wnyc.org, npr

"Novelist Don Winslow has spent 10 years immersed in the Mexican drug wars. He has studied all the players, from the lowly traffickers to the kingpins who head up the cartels. One of the characters in his new novel, The Cartel, is based on drug kingpin Joaquin Guzman, known as El Chapo, who escaped from a Mexican prison over the weekend....

Interview highlights...

"On the new generation of cartel leaders and how they are similiar to the self-proclaimed Islamic State:"
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"It's not like the cartels are like ISIS; ISIS is like the cartels. Ten years before ISIS was releasing beheading videos the cartels were doing it. They're very sophisticated. They know that they need, not only to control the action on the ground, but also the narrative, [to] control the story. I think ISIS is just taking a page from their playbook....The problem, similarly to ISIS, is they use these videos as recruiting tools. They're attractive to people who feel themselves to be powerless, they see these examples of ultimate power and it's quite attractive to them.""...



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