THIS IS HELL: Since 2000, one hundred thousand people have been killed in the US-Mexico drug war. We have tens of thousands of people who have disappeared. Also, I believe in your book, you talk about roughly two thousand people who have been decapitated. As you know, here in the US when the Islamic state decapitates somebody, that gets a ton of press. Yet I only discover from your book that thousands of people have been decapitated within Mexico.

CARMEN BOULLOSA: More than two thousand.

THIS IS HELL: What explains to you that kind of disconnect here in the United States? Sure, we’ll report on the brutality of what the Islamic state might be doing, but even when that occurs to a much larger degree within Mexico we’re not reporting on it.

MIKE WALLACE: It’s a terrific question and it goes to the heart of your larger question about the relations between the U.S. and Mexico. I teach a course on the history of crime in New York City, and in one session I was offering some comparison with the drug war in Mexico and what has happened in the U.S. in earlier days. And I said, you know, it really is remarkable that we’re at war again, because there are true atrocities, and there were a handful of people who were decapitated. How do we account for this? Maybe people just don’t know. And then one kid raised his hand, hadn’t said a word all semester, clearly Hispanic, and said “no, professor, it’s not true. They know, they just don’t care.”

To listen to the rest of the interview, visit This Is Hell.