Winslow’s novel is primarily concerned with the covert mechanisms that world powers like the United States employ in order to destabilize the social order in neighboring countries or assert soft power over a larger geopolitical region. In the case of the United States, Winslow draws from historical events, using the Cold War and the anti-drug policies of the country in the latter half of the 20th century to inform the events of his novel.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon officially declared a “War on Drugs,” launching a militarized campaign focused on eradicating drug sources abroad. Don Winslow’s novel dramatizes this initiative as a series of violent and counterproductive operations. A prime example is Operation Condor, a historical 1975 Mexican military offensive supported by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to destroy opium poppy fields in the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. As detailed by journalist Elaine Shannon, the campaign saw the U.S. State Department financing a new air fleet for the Mexican Attorney General’s office, allowing the latter to execute a widescale aerial spraying program that achieved the operation’s stated objectives (Shannon, Elaine. Desperados: Latin Druglords, U.S. Lawmen, and the War America Can’t Win. Viking, 1988). This drove strong publicity for the Mexican government while also encouraging other countries to design similar initiatives with the support of the United States.

By the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s foreign policy was dominated by the Cold War, particularly the effort to undermine the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Winslow uses this geopolitical struggle to explore how the War on Drugs became entangled with covert anti-communist operations. The U.S. covertly supported the Contras, a collection of rebel groups fighting the Sandinistas. When Congress passed the Boland Amendment, a series of acts between 1982 and 1986 that restricted official funding for the Contras, some CIA-connected operatives and supporters turned to alternative funding. A 1998 CIA Inspector General report acknowledged that individuals and organizations linked to the Contra program were involved in drug trafficking and that the agency did not always sever these connections or report them to law enforcement (Central Intelligence Agency Office of Inspector General. “Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General Report of Investigation Allegations of Connections Between CIA and the Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States (96-0143-IG) Volume II: The Contra Story.” October 1998). This underscores the role the United States government played in leveraging the same criminal industry they publicly opposed to undermine ideological opponents within the region.

Winslow uses Operation Condor as the novel’s inciting incident, where DEA agent Art Keller participates as an “adviser” (10). The narrative depicts the operation’s brutality, as soldiers burn villages and poison crops, which Keller grimly compares to the Vietnam War. The novel argues that while Operation Condor devastated small peasant growers (gomeros), it inadvertently consolidated the drug trade. By eliminating competition, the offensive allowed survivors to form a more centralized organization, the Federación. “Operation Condor,” Art reflects, “was intended to cut the Sinaloan cancer out of Mexico, but what it did instead was spread it through the entire body” (103). Thus, the novel uses this historical context to illustrate how the War on Drugs strengthened the cartels it aimed to destroy. The novel also fictionalizes the history of the Contra program as “Operation Cerberus,” a clandestine mission where CIA officials facilitate cocaine trafficking to arm the Contras. This plotline highlights the hypocrisy of American policy, where one government agency fought traffickers while another collaborated with them to achieve political objectives. Winslow uses this shadow alliance to explore a central theme: The War on Drugs was often a secondary priority, corrupted by geopolitical expediency that empowered international traffickers and preferred ideologies.