Just days after Mexican Marines arrested the brutal leader of the Zetas cartel, Ricardo Ainslie will discuss the challenges that President Enrique Peña Nieto's administration faces in confronting Mexico's drug cartels. Ainslie, a native of Mexico City, is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, a psychoanalyst, a filmmaker, and an author. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley and his doctoral work at the University of Michigan.
Since 2008, his research has focused on the Mexican drug war. He has interviewed many members of former president Felipe Calderón’s security cabinet, as well as American law enforcement, including the DEA, FBI, and Homeland Security. In 2009 and 2010, Ainslie made more than a dozen trips to Ciudad Juárez, the epicenter of Mexico's drug war at the time, in order to understand the impact of the violence and to study the relationship between the government's strategy and what was actually taking place on the ground.
His recent book, The Fight to Save Juárez: Life in the Heart of Mexico's Drug War (University of Texas Press, 2013), offers an unprecedented look inside Mexico's drug war and chronicles the three most violent years in the border city of Ciudad Juárez. A recognized expert, Ainslie gives talks all over the country on a variety of issues related to the Mexican drug war. His op-ed pieces have appeared in a variety of newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Houston Chronicle, and the Austin American Statesman. In April of 2011, Ainslie testified before the U.S. Congress' Homeland Security Subcommittee Hearing on "The U.S. Homeland Security Role in the Mexican War Against Drug Cartels."
For more information, please go to:
http://www.iamericas.org/events/upcoming-events/1975-tequila-talk-the-changing-face-of-mexico-s-drug-war-with-author-ricardo-ainslie
