Dreamland: Part 1: Smack Clans in the Sanctuary Summary & Analysis

Jim Kuykendall, a DEA agent, works out of  Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1998, around the time that the Xalisco Boys set up shop in the small town of Chimayo, New Mexico. Chimayo boasts the highest rate of heroin addiction in the country. For years, Chimayo addicts fed their habit with weak powder heroin. However, by 1997, Mexican dealers started distributing cheaper and more potent black tar heroin. Users who’d grown accustomed to Chimayo’s weak powder heroin begin to die of overdoses. In Chimayo, heroin is sold by three clans: the Barela clan, the Gallegos clan, and the Martinez clan.

In the late 1990s, as more addicts die, family members organize “protest processions.” Kuykendall is moved by this, but he still feels that Chimayo’s heroin problem is a local one, and thus outside of the DEA’s jurisdiction. However, when Kuykendall attends a meeting organized by the Chimayo Crime Prevention Organization, he is surprised to find that political figures, such as congressmen and the head of the New Mexico State Police, are in attendance. People are upset at local and federal law enforcement’s inaction on heroin. Kuykendall takes on the Chimayo case the next day.