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Malia Politzer is the executive editor of piqd.com, and an award-winning long-form journalist based out of Spain. She specializes in reporting on migration, international development, human rights issues and investigative reporting.
Originally from California, she's lived in China, Spain, Mexico and India, and reported from various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Her primary beats relate to immigration, economics and international development. She has published articles in Huffington Post Highline, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue India, Mint, Far Eastern Economic Review, Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine, and the Phoenix New Times. She is also a regular contributor to Devex.
Her Huffington Post Highline series, "The 21st Century Gold Rush" won awards from the National Association of Magazine Editors, Overseas Press Club, and American Society of Newspaper Editors. She's also won multiple awards for feature writing in India and the United States.
Her reporting has been supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, The Institute For Current World Affairs, and the Global Migration Grant.
Degrees include a BA from Hampshire College and MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where was a Stabile Fellow at the Center for Investigative Journalism.
The Brutal Rise Of El Mencho: Sinaloa’s New Drug Lord
At times, it seems as though taking down violent, criminal networks is a bit like playing whack-a-mole: as soon as one kingpin gets put in jail, another takes his place. This is particularly true in the highly profitable business of drug trafficking.
In this fascinating piece, Josh Eells dives into the rise of the Mexican drug lord known as El Mencho—who has stepped into the vacuum left by cartel head El Chapo, now behind bars. A former Jalisco state policeman who once served three years in a US prison for selling heroin, he’s now the head of what experts are calling Mexico’s fastest growing, deadliest, and perhaps even wealthiest drug cartel, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generation, or CJNG.
Eells writes that “CJNG have been around for only about half a decade, but with their dizzyingly swift rise, they have already achieved what took Sinaloa a generation. The cartel has established trafficking routes in dozens of countries on six continents and controls territory spanning half of Mexico, including along both coasts and both borders ... [CJNG] have increased their operations like no other criminal organization to date."
Their rise to power comes at a time when other cartels have been getting weaker thanks to Mexico's ramped-up law enforcement and violent turf wars between existing cartels. But, while brutal violence is par for the course among Mexican drug lords, El Mencho appears to be on an entirely new level, displaying a “savagery that’s extreme even by narco standards ... killing that seems more like sadism as public spectacle” and includes “mass killings, such as the 35 bound and tortured bodies dumped into the streets of Veracruz during evening rush hour in 2011”. CJNG is also credited with raping, killing and setting a 10-year-old girl on fire, who they (mistakenly) believed was the daughter of a rival. “This is ISIS stuff,” one DEA agent tells Eells. “The manner in which they kill people, the sheer numbers—it’s unparalleled even in Mexico.”
