Mother courage

Anabel Hernandez’s book exposed Mexico’s bloody narco war, the corrupt state and its cartel bosses. David Kernek meets the mother who took on the drugs lords

IT’S loved for its funny sombreros and industrial strength tequila and known for the playboy playgrounds of Acapulco, Tijuana and Monterrey — and the honeymoon honeypot of Cancun — but there is something utterly rotten down Mexico way.

There can be few people as perilously familiar with the darkness at the heart of the Mexican state as the 41-year-old year-old journalist — and mother of two — who has chronicled the blood-drenched history of her country’s narcotics industry in gruesomely forensic detail.