El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency is a non-fiction book of the Mexican drug war written by Ioan Grillo.

[4] The book takes a critical stance on the unsuccessful efforts made by the Mexican government and the United States to confront the violence and its causes.

[6] For the author, the criminal organizations in Mexico are not gangs; they are a "movement and an industry drawing in hundreds of thousands from bullet-ridden barrios to marijuana-growing mountains".

The book explains how the cartels have created paramilitary death squads with tens of thousands of armed men from the country of Guatemala to the Texan border.

[6] It contains testimonies from members inside of the cartels; and while El Narco shows that the "devastation" of the Mexican drug war may be south of the U.S. border, Grillo pinpoints that the United States "is knee-deep in this conflict".

[10] Moreover, Grillo began working as a drug war journalist after being fascinated "by the riddle of these ghost-like figures" who make more than $30 billion a year and are idolized in popular songs known as narcocorridos and chased by the Mexican and U.S.

[10] For over a decade, Grillo has followed the end-less murder scenes in "bullet-ridden streets, mountains where drugs are born as pretty flowers, and scarred criminals from prison cells to luxury condos".

The cadavers are twisted and contorted in the unnatural poses of the dead; arms arch backward over spines, legs spread out sideways; the pattern of bodies that fall like rag dolls when bullets strike.

After arriving at too many murder scenes, I often felt numb staring at the lead-filled flesh spread out on the concrete, dirt roads and car seats.

He had smoked crack cocaine and drunk whisky every day, had enjoyed power in a country where the poor are so powerless, had a latest model truck and could pay for houses in cash, had four wives and children scattered all over ... had no God.

[13]The Global Post published a portion of the book where Grillo interviews an American agent who infiltrates a drug cartel:[14] Alongside other veterans, Daniel would buzz around the state in a helicopter carrying an M16 automatic rifle and raiding marijuana plantations.

[1] Dudley Althaus of the Houston Chronicle stated that Grillo "traces the beast's footprints with meticulous research" and with "courageous reporting on some of [Mexico's] meanest streets".

[16] Publishers Weekly, while noting that the book was a "propulsive account of the blood-soaked machinery", concluded that Grillo pinpoints that "America's hard-line rhetoric has failed.

[18] The West Australian said that El Narco is an essential reading for those wishing to understand "how a violent criminal insurgency can take root in an advanced country with a trillion-dollar economy".

According to the newspaper, the book engulfs an account of the "rivers of blood in which its citizens are drowning", since Mexico's drug war "is a case study in the way brutal mafia capitalism has morphed into a criminal insurgency, the like of which is spreading 'like bushfire' in the Americas".

[22] The Globe Corner Bookstore said that El Narco "draws the first definitive portrait of Mexico's drug cartels and how they have radically transformed in the last decade".

[24] And, the author shows how the Mexican drug cartels originated in the western state of Sinaloa, where the conditions for growing opium poppy were ideal, in the late 19th century.

[25] The magazine noted that Grillo has spent years traveling to Mexico's drug war hotspots: "Sinaloa, Michoacán, Ciudad Juárez—recording interviews with cops and narcos, visiting grave sites and murder scenes".

[25] Mother Jones magazine mentioned that the book's "graphic and fast-paced history covers south-of-the-border trafficking from '60s-era shipments of Acapulco Gold to the decapitation-filled headlines wrought by the likes of kingpin (and alleged billionaire) Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán and his rivals, the Zetas—special ops soldiers turned criminals".

[26] The progressive online magazine Salon reported that the drug war violence in Mexico "seldom makes the front page in the U.S." newspapers.

[27] The Salon noted that Grillo's book "lays out the history of drug smuggling in the region over the past 100 years or so, and then homes in on the rise of the Northern Mexican cartels during the 2000s".

[28] She said that Grillo also did an incredible job navigating Mexican politics and explaining the role of how the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) "[negotiated] and [played] along with the cartels, and how the transition to real democracy in 2000 dramatically altered that delicate balance".

[18] According to Beith, Grillo grants the readers "access to the soul and mind of El Narco, as well as deftly explaining and providing new insight into this hemispheric war on drugs".

[18] CNNMéxico stated that Grillo has been in "more crime scenes than he can remember", and that his book includes "interviews with hitmen, members of the cartels, politicians and police officers, and people trapped in the crossfire".

"[29] Goodreads said that Grillo did an "incredible job" for his book, where he "synthesized traditional interviews, academic research, pop culture and WikiLeaks to create a powerful and alarming picture of the cartels of Mexico".