Are the Mexican Drug Wars a Kind of Disneyland for Teenage Boys?

Part mythology and part the result of the current Presidential campaign, we have this image of the US/Mexican border as divided territory.  We hear folks talking about it as if at one time north was north and south was south and never the twain would meet.

The truth is that this has never been the case.  The border has almost always been a porous membrane through which people, drugs, money, and crime could easily pass.  

The border is the kind of place that for poor teenage boys, was a kind of Disneyland. This is the world that Dan Slater takes us to in  Wolf Boys: Two American Teenagers and Mexico's Most Dangerous Drug Cartel.

My conversation with Dan Slater: