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This book is the product of a unique methodology-Ainslie's “psychoanalytic ethnography” shows us both the personalities of those caught up in, and the social forces behind, the “drug wars,” one of the most tragic and important social problems confronting both the United States and Mexico. The main value for psychoanalysts is in his keenly humanistic perspective, bringing to life these problems, as seen and experienced by his interviewees.
The “War on Drugs” is behind such issues and problems as the recent increased im-migration from Central America through Mexico; the gigantic increase in the US prison system, with over a million and a half people incarcerated for drug offenses, mostly cases of possession and use; and the waning of the middle class in Mexico and the United States. Ainslie's thoughtful, detailed description of how the drug cartels came to wield such political power over the last two decades in Mexico gives us the background to these and many social issues. As a versatile anthropologist, professor, and maker of movies, as well as a psychoanalyst, Ainslie is able to integrate many individual points of view with a blow-by-blow account of how events unfolded over time. The Fight to Save Juarez gives a human face to the disintegration of civil society in one city just over the border from the United States. Using his psychoanalytic insight, Ainslie is able to capture the points of view of people from all rungs of the social ladder. He tops it off with a comprehensive analysis of the social structural features that have made Mexico, like so many other emerging nations, so vulnerable to the failure of centralized authority needed to provide the secure framework that economic development requires.
Illegal drug consumption and trade inside the borders of the United States bear the responsibility for the rise of the cartels and the devastation they have brought to Mexico. Ainslie provides descriptive details of the devastation caused by Mexico becoming the prima