Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy [Paperback]

Don Henry Ford Jr. (Author), Charles Bowden (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 2006

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060883103
• ISBN-13: 978-0060883102
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #861,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( F ) > Ford, Henry

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Live to tell the tale, January 20, 2005

By 

Molly Molloy (Las Cruces, New Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy (Hardcover)

In Contrabando, Don Henry Ford tells the story of his 10 years as a marijuana smuggler on the Texas-Coahuila border. He recounts a period of his life that reveals the prehistory of the border drug trade. As a freelancer, Ford brushed up against the likes of Pablo Acosta and Amado Carrillo, but in contrast to their star power, he remained in the shadows.

This book does not pussyfoot around the hard facts of the drug business and the economic ruin that forces so many into it, in both Mexico and the United States. Some will say that the things in this book can't be true, but that is because they don't go there. Some people DO go there, but Don Henry Ford is the only one to come back to write about it.

And he can really write! Like earth smells--beans frying in lard over a wood fire, coffee under crystal stars, green-sweet stickiness as he pinches seed heads on a crop, dank ruin as storms strip $600,000 of ripe cotton from its stalks, the hard rush of ozone and adrenalin as he pulls his daughters from an angry river in flood, blood-in-the-mouth fear in a dealer's motel room or a Mexican cave or a federal prison cell. And the warmth of caring for people and horses and making things grow. He's a writer who lives and breathes grit and blood and life itself.

And it's hard to argue with a witness like Don Henry Ford, a man who spent years enmeshed in the dark entrails of the business. And lived to tell the tale.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enlightening and entertaining without being heavy., March 13, 2005

By 

Tony Nobles (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy (Hardcover)

Contrabando is a real life account of a Texas cowboy/farmer who began smuggling to save the farm. It escalates quickly into tales of murder, danger, corruption, and hilarity. There are many characters that settle in the badlands and their stories are told without judgement or prejudice here. The book is an easy read yet precisely descriptive. The author paints beautiful pictures of the almost uninhabitable deserts and mountains of Texas and Mexico. Throughout the book are incredible tales of survival and an informal philosophical commentary which really helps one to understand the mechanics of the drug trade. This book offers a perspective seldom heard which is the true force of human nature. This natural human survival is pointedly at odds with societal and governmental policies concrning the drug trade. That conflict is addressed honestly and without moral judgement in the book.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a true account, December 13, 2005

By 

Philip Holman Ford (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Contrabando: Confessions of a Drug-Smuggling Texas Cowboy (Hardcover)

I was witness to part of what Don wrote and having read Contrabandos, can testify to its accuracy. Any errors are only those of perspective, because we all see events in a slightly different light. Ms. Kirkpatrick reviews the book as fiction. I can assure you that it is not. A 'Mule' only recieves a fee for his services and is notinvolved in any other part of the business. If anything, this book lacked space to tell much more of the story as it happened.