From Publishers Weekly
Although others have written of the mass killings in Matamoros, Mexico, between 1985 and 1988, Pulitzer Prize winner Humes of the Orange County Register in California offers here the definitive study. Cult leader Adolfo Constanzo, a bisexual Cuban-American devoted to the Afro-Caribbean religion of Santeria and its black-magic offshoot Palo Mayombe, set himself up as a magician and fortune teller in Mexico City in the mid-'80s. Constanzo soon attracted disciples, who obeyed him out of either fear or love, and he saw that more money was to be made from drugs than from reading cards. As his involvement with the drug trade increased, so did the torture-murders he asserted were necessary to sustain his power. The kidnapping and ritual murder of American student Mark Kilroy eventually brought about his downfall; Constanzo was killed in a shoot-out and most of his chief followers sentenced to prison. Humes provides an extensive background examining Caribbean religions and pseudo-religions, the feuds between federal and local police in Mexico and between the DEA and customs officials in the U.S., and, most intriguingly, the power of superstition south of the border. One of the best true-crime tales in recent time. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
When Mark Kilroy, an American student on his spring break, disappeared in 1988 in the Mexican border town of Matamoros, an intensive search for him proved fruitless. However, a roadblock set up to catch drug smugglers led to the discovery of his mutilated body on an isolated ranch. He had been killed by a small group of believers in Palo Mayombe, an offshoot of the Santeria religion that merges Christianity and African magic. Believing that human sacrifice gave him a magical invincibility, Adolpho Constanzo, the cult's leader, used his malevolent magnetism to manipulate his followers into committing murder 24 times. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Humes, with access to the records of the principals involved, Drug Enforcement Agency materials, and extensive interviews, has written a chilling story of murder and religous mania. Although extremely grisly in detail, this book will be in demand. Recommended.
- Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Sandra K. Lindheimer, Middlesex Law Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
