Interview with Howard Campbell, author of Drug War Zone: Frontline Dispatches from the Streets of El Paso and Juarez. Campbell: “The big Mexican cartels have been around roughly for 30 years, and for the first 20 years they operated freely and there was not really a high level of violence and public insecurity connected with drug trafficking. There were murders, but they were internal to the cartels; the people being killed tended to be part of the underworld. Mexico had been controlled by PRI, a well-connected populist party well organized at every level of Mexican society, but very corrupt. It lost favor among the people and PRI lost power in 2000 to PAN, a more free-market American-style party, but PAN lacked the political skills to keep a lid on drug problem.” (11/06/09)