In the 1960s, Alfredo Corchado’s parents left Mexico for the U.S. Two decades later, Alfredo Corchado left the U.S. for Mexico. As a young El Paso Herald-Post reporter, he relished the excitement and hope he felt throughout Mexico in the 1980s. Corchado got to know four Mexican presidents, covered the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, and watched seven decades of one-party rule come to an end in the year 2000. He also found himself on the front lines of Mexico’s increasingly violent drug wars. Assigned to the Dallas Morning News cartel beat, Corchado risked his life to cover murders and bribery, corruption and horrific violence. In 2007, after breaking a story on a peace pact between government officials and the country’s two most powerful cartels, Corchado was told by a source that he was a likely target for assassination within 24 hours. Why is Corchado still living and working in Mexico, and why does he hold on to a sense of hope for what comes next for the country? Corchado, author of Midnight in Mexico: A Reporter’s Journey Through a Country’s Descent into Darkness, visits Zócalo to tell his tales of Mexico’s drug wars.

Books will be available through Skylight Books.