Dr. Mireles Valverde, a tall, mustachioed man in a wide-brimmed Stetson hat, is our ostensible hero, the founder and leader of Autodefensas, a people’s police that sprung up in the Mexican state of Michoácan to combat violent drug cartels. We track Valverde’s fairy-tale ascent as he recruits vigilantes to his side in town squares, and we witness Autodefensas’s methods, including a jaw-dropping car chase followed by the abduction of a family man that ends in a Gitmo-style warehouse. A parallel through line involves an armed vigilante leader named Tim “Nailer” Foley of the Arizona Border Recon, sure to be played by Sam Shepard in the fiction adaptation. Upending the simplistic black hat/white hat themes of literature, film, and political discourse, Cartel Land shows that the days of heroes and villains are long over. We are all implicated, all culpable. (PS)