Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 111 - Heart of Darkness
Welcome to Issue 111 of Deep Life Reflections, where each week I share my thoughts on what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.
This week, we journey into a river of darkness through two works that expose the worst of humankind. First, Don Winslow’s The Cartel, an epic that lays bare the wreckage of the Mexican-American drug wars. Then, a manhunt through the dust-blown landscapes of No Country For Old Men, where the Coen brothers deliver one of the most chilling sociopaths in cinema. But there’s a counterpoint. Courage. Integrity. Light. We close with a testimony to those who stood against the dark, and paid the price.
Join me as we explore this week’s Friday Five.
1. What I’m Reading
The Cartel. By Don Winslow.
“This is the War and Peace of dope-war books.” — James Ellroy
Books are often dedicated to a writer’s family—a solitary line thanking a loved one simply for being there. In The Cartel, author Don Winslow opens with two pages of names, listed side by side. More than two hundred people. Journalists murdered or ‘disappeared’ in Mexico during the period the novel covers.
At the bottom, a final line: “There were others.”
The Cartel is a sprawling, violent, painful, engrossing and brilliant read. A modern tragedy, it charts the Mexican-American drug wars and their devastating impact on Mexican society—and indirectly, on America, the primary market (for there is no product without a market). It’s the second in a trilogy by Winslow, an acclaimed and prolific writer of contemporary crime fiction. I read The Power of the Dog, the first in the series, about a decade ago. One particular scene is still burned in my mind for its sheer horror.
Recently, I tore through the 600-plus pages of The Cartel in just a couple of weeks. (You don’t need to have read the first book to be gripped by the second.)
At the centre of the novel are two men locked in a decades-long blood feud: Art Keller, a Mexican-American DEA agent who’s spent thirty years fighting the drug war; and Adán Barrera, his former friend, now head of El Federación—the most powerful cartel in the world. Keller is a good man forced to do terrible things. Barrera is a monster disguised as a statesman. Keller’s dogged, ten-year pursuit of Barrera drags him deeper into the darkness he’s trying to destroy.
What makes The Cartel so good is Winslow’s meticulous research and understanding of politics, policy, and power. Many of the events are drawn from real-life, such as the 2008 Mérida Initiative, a $1.4 billion bilateral aid agreement designed to support Mexico’s efforts against the drug cartels. It was controversial—seen by many as a militarised response that escalated violence rather than containing it.
Winslow weaves this complexity through the narrative: the corruption, conflicting agendas, and the sense of hopelessness: if one kingpin falls, another is waiting to take his place. The violence when it comes is sickening. Most organised crime keeps its brutality within its own world of rival factions or law enforcement. Not here. With the Mexican cartels, no one is spared—children, mothers, the elderly. Journalists, doctors, bakers, teachers. Ordinary people trying to live their lives. These are the most brutal passages in the book. Winslow doesn’t look away. And he makes sure we don’t either.
And yet, Winslow also shows us something else: the courage of ordinary people who choose to stand up to what is, in effect, a savage, armed, and unchecked militia. Many of these ordinary people are women.
Characters like Erika, a 19-year-old who becomes the local sheriff—because no one else will, or they’re already dead. Ana, a journalist who creates an anonymous blog called Esta Vida—'This Life’—to expose and humiliate the cartels. And Marisol, a principled, media-savvy doctor who returns to her hometown to run for City Council and open a free medical clinic. For her troubles, she is shot multiple times, leaving her permanently injured. But she returns, defiant.
“To those who did this to me, know that you have lost. I, and other brave women, will not let their sacrifice be in vain. If you kill me, others will step up to take my place. You will never defeat us.”
Through these characters, Winslow provides an antidote to the brutality and senselessness of the cartels: the courage of the ordinary.
There were others.
2. What I’m Watching
No Country For Old Men. 2007. A film by the Coen brothers.
I once read that a team of forensic psychiatrists, led by Dr. Samuel Leistedt, spent three years watching over 400 films to diagnose the most realistic psychopath ever depicted on film. Their winner: Anton Chigurh, the cold-blooded assassin played by Javier Bardem in the Coen brothers’ multiple Oscar-winner, No Country For Old Men.
According to Leistedt:
“Chigurh is a merciless killer who feels absolutely no remorse for blowing his victims apart with a shotgun. He has no empathy for his victims, and is incapable of emotions like love or shame.”
It’s hard to disagree.
No Country For Old Men is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy and won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (for Bardem) at the 2008 Academy Awards.
On one level, it’s a simple story: a Texas ex-welder and hunter (Josh Brolin) stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and walks off with a suitcase containing $2 million in cash. He’s pursued by the fearsome Chigurh across the Rio Grande into Mexico. Behind them is the world-weary Texas Sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones).
What follows is a slow-motion collision between fate, greed, and death.
But beneath the manhunt is something darker—a meditation on evil, and what it means to confront it too late. The Coen brothers are masterful storytellers. The film establishes its tone from the opening scene, with a melancholy voiceover from Sheriff Bell, recalling the murder of a 14-year-old girl by her boyfriend, who showed no remorse. Bell is baffled and shaken, not just by the violence, but by the absence of conscience. He’s the film’s moral witness: aware that things are falling apart in this world and nostalgic for a long-forgotten past.
He’s on the blood trail, but always a step behind. Evil is on the front foot.
Evil takes the form of Anton Chigurh, a sullen, spectral figure in black, with a pageboy haircut and a weapon as bizarre as it is clinical: a bolt pistol powered by an air tank he drags behind him. He’s not quite human, but he has rules—twisted, internal, and unbreakable. He doesn’t hunt so much as arrive.
There is a scene in a gas station where the owner is gradually forced to bet his life on a coin toss. The exchange is quiet, almost polite, yet it creates an impending sense of doom. Chigurh, described in the novel as a “true and living prophet of destruction,” appears unstoppable, moving with the compressed stillness of inevitability.
Roger Deakins, the film’s legendary cinematographer, frames West Texas as a barren, sun-blasted emptiness. His wide, silent shots add to the bleakness, suggesting a universe indifferent to our laws and ethics. No order. No justice. Evil may simply be part of the fabric. And if goodness is stitched into it, the thread is coming loose.
No Country For Old Men ends where it begins—with Sheriff Bell. He recounts two dreams about his late father: one where his father rides past him with his head down, carrying fire in a horn; the other, where he waits for Bell in the dark. The dreams are ambiguous.
They might reflect his longing for order—the strong, silent type—or his belief, however faint, that there is still something burning in this world, and worth protecting.
The film’s title, taken from W.B. Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium, signals as much. The poem describes a world where the old no longer belong, where the spiritual must outlast the physical:
“That is no country for old men.”
Bell is the aging conscience of the film, but goodness, in this world, may be no more than holding the line—with no reward.
No reward that we can see, anyway.
3. What I’m Contemplating
This week’s title ‘Heart of Darkness’ is a subtle nod to the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse by Eleanor Coppola, which chronicled her husband, Francis Ford Coppola’s descent into creative chaos while making Apocalypse Now—a film about man’s capacity to mine the depths of his own darkness.
The two featured works this week tell grim stories about human nature—but also give us glimpses of courage, conscience, moral integrity, and the fragile but persistent light inside all of us.
After finishing The Cartel, I wanted to learn more about the real people who stood up to the cartels. I found them—and wanted to highlight three.
Marisol Valles García was appointed the police chief of Práxedis G. Guerrero in 2010. She was 20. She lasted a few months before fleeing to the U.S. to seek asylum. Her life was in danger the moment she took the job.
María Santos Gorrostieta Salazar, mayor of Tiquicheo, survived multiple assassination attempts, including one that killed her husband. She kept appearing in public, bullet wounds visible, refusing to resign. In 2012, she was kidnapped and murdered.
Regina Martínez and Miroslava Breach were two valiant journalists who exposed ties between the cartels and the state. Both were assassinated for their reporting.
They didn’t have guns. Or armies. Or Swiss bank accounts.
Just a sense that someone had to draw the line.
4. A Quote to note
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.”
- Howard Zinn
5. A Question for you
What small acts of courage have you witnessed that still stay with you?
Thanks for reading and being part of the Deep Life Journey community. If you have any reflections on this issue, please leave a comment. Have a great weekend.
James
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