Searching for Justice in the Midst of Mexico’s Drug War

Azam Ahmed, Class of 2022 National Fellow, is an international investigative correspondent for the New York Times. In this extended Q&A from The Fifth Draft — the National Fellows Program’s newsletter featuring exclusive content about and from our Fellows — Azam Ahmed gave us insight into his Fellows project: the recently published Fear Is Just A Word, a riveting true story of a mother who fought back against the drug cartels in Mexico.

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Your Fellow’s project, Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance, began as an article for the New York Times. Why did you decide to expand this story into a book?

For most of my time in Mexico, I wrote about violence and corruption as though they were facts of life, an assumed part of life for the more than 120 million people that required no context or explanation. And they are, to some extent. But I always struggled with how Mexico came to be so broken, the sort of place where horrific murders and brazen acts of corruption just came with the territory. The kind of place where a mother can be killed for the act of seeking justice for her disappeared daughter.

Miriam’s story was a way to offer readers an intimate look at the social cost of the drug war. But it also felt compelling enough to sustain an exploration of how things got to be so bad in Mexico, which required a dive into the nation’s historical archives. In the end the hope was to take this story and use it to explain what had happened to Mexico in the last several decades, and how an empowered criminal class had come to dominate the nation.

The power and corruption wielded by the cartels and government in Mexico creates a backdrop of intense fear in the narrative. How did you approach writing about this fear and violence while also protecting the people whose stories you told?

When I speak with politicians or businessmen, almost anyone with means and power, the assumption is on the record. When I am speaking with traumatized populations, victims of violence, or people who don’t really understand the media or how it works, I take the opposite approach. That means that literally dozens of people I spoke to were too afraid to share their stories publicly. But I was fortunate in that Miriam’s family, and her friends, wanted their stories told — they wanted those moments recorded, and their names along with them. Without that, the book would have been impossible to write.

You write about Miriam Rodriguez and her quest for vengeance while also illuminating the lives of the people who commit, or are party to, brutal acts. What do you think these webs of violence mean for the future of Mexico’s war on drugs?

There is an intimacy to violence in so many parts of Mexico. The cartels often hail from the communities they terrorize, and prey on their own neighbors. It speaks to the process of dehumanization that happens in places of sustained conflict, where violence becomes normalized and combatants are trapped in a cycle of escalating acts. It is hard to untangle that web when there is little to no rule of law. And when the drivers of that conflict — U.S. demand for illicit drugs — remain unchanged.

You reported for nearly three years from Afghanistan covering the conflict there. Do you see any parallels in your reporting from Afghanistan and Mexico?

I didn’t go to Mexico looking for parallels, and the societies and contexts are so fundamentally different. There are in broad strokes similarities — for instance, the endemic corruption that affects everyone, the acts of violence that terrorize populations, the problematic, and fundamental, role of the United States in both nations. But Mexico is a conflict born of economic opportunity, whereas the war in Afghanistan was about religion and ideology. I suppose any similarity in my reporting would say more about me than those nations, or their conflicts.

What draws you to a story? Do you feel a sense of responsibility to cover something difficult others might shy away from?

The narrative. I’m drawn to stories of people in transition, often facing immense odds, the sort of stories that offer readers a chance to understand complex issues through the prism of an individual. There are so many journalists and writers who cover immensely difficult issues, lots of them associated with New America. And while I do feel a sense of responsibility to cover the issues with the greatest stakes, especially within my own beat or coverage patch, I’m not sure that makes me any different from any other reporter out there.

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