Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy - Softcover

Don Henry Ford Jr.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060883103 ISBN 13: 9780060883102

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2006

Synopsis

Don Henry Ford, Jr., is an unapologetic outlaw. For seven years he made his living smuggling marijuana across the U.S.-Mexico border in the Big Bend region of Texas. His business partners were some of the era's biggest narcotraficantes like Pablo Acosta and Amado Carrillo Fuentes. After Ford was arrested and imprisoned, he escaped and lived for a year in rural Mexico, raising a bumper crop of weed and hiding out from the federales, before his recapture and return to the penitentiary.

Contrabando is the extraordinary, unabashed memoir of a rebel -- a warrior on the other side of the War on Drugs who lived to tell the tale. But more than a riveting and remarkable true crime confession, Contrabando is an ode to the beauty of the dry, dusty West Texas plains and the lonely hills of Mexico -- and a tribute to Ford's friends, protectors, and fellow outlaws who stood by him during the dangerous smuggling years.

About this title

About the Author:

p>Don Henry Ford, Jr., served five years in a maximum security federal penitentiary. He now lives with his wife, Leah, in Seguin, Texas, farming, raising racehorses, and writing.

Review:

"Don Henry is a warrior; and he's the real deal. He's a wonderful writer; and he carries some secrets in his back pocket some people wish he wouldn't bring out. Bring it, Mr. Ford." —Luis Alberto Urrea

"Don Ford snaps out, 'I thought [the drug smuggling] was a way to break the chains. I didn't want to shoot or kill anyone or have a violent overthrow of the government. I just wanted to steal a little wealth.' " —Charles Bowden

"[Ford] sees that continuing war as a farce, a squandering of tax dollars and human lives. That, Ford says, is why he’s speaking out about his experiences...The book is an unflinching document of high times and high terror in the dope trade, of getting caught just after Congress passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 the opening shot in the war on drugs but before that act was implemented." —Austin-American Statesman

"The really remarkable thing about Ford and his book isn’t so much the experiences he’s had...but rather the humanity and philosophical distance he maintains while having them. His sympathy for the plight of the working poor and disenfranchised, regardless of class, color, or country; his distaste for the indifference of the rich and the laws that favor them; his ability to step back and view the larger universe of the war on drugs, and his role in it, through the lens of a class-conscious, homegrown philosophy: They all mark him as a decent man." —The Austin Chronicle

"Don Henry Ford, author of Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy, said Mexico's drug economy has multiplied since the 1980s, when he smuggled marijuana. 'The money is just too big now,' he said." —Dallas Morning News

"Ford persevered for a number of reasons. 'I knew most of the people involved would not like what I had to say. The thought occurred that I might endanger myself and others. But I knew all of us had been damaged from our involvement in this business and that others are now in similar situations and must know the reality of this business,' he wrote. Ford thinks his story is worth telling in light of the ever-increasing war on drugs." —The Monitor

"Don Henry Ford, Jr. shows us first-hand what it was like smuggling dope across the Rio Grande. Lucky he's not dead. Reading this book will make you so high, you'll need a stepladder to scratch your ass." —Kinky Friedman

"Macho adventures aside, Ford also describes a life of double-crosses and dead friends, of battered whores and dirty cops, of ruined marriages and lost kids...He writes with remorse, loss and sadness...Contrabando is the real thing, a drug book by a smuggler who lived to tell the tale." —San Antonio Express-News

"Ford, 48, retraces his life as a marijuana smuggler in the Big Bend region in Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy. Ford describes Contrabando as a story about victims and survivors in the multibillion-dollar illicit drug trade, a story about ordinary people along the border who often get squeezed into smuggling or dealing drugs in poor towns like Balmorhea, Texas." —El Paso Times

"Contrabando is not written in the erudite prose of a commercial-media slickster who observes life from a perch. But it is a gritty work of nonfiction drawn from the gut of a cowboy who has lived his story."—Narco News

"All in all, I’m glad I know his story, since if I didn’t get it for Ford, from the voice on the edge, I-we- on the inside wouldn’t get it all, and this story 'about a world gone mad' is one we need to know." —Outlander's Voice

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0060883103
• ISBN 13: 9780060883102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240