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Latin American Perspectives
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Drug Trafficking and Literature
Dangerous Liaisons
h
Cecilia Lopez Bada.no
Translated by Mariana Ortega Brena
Una exploraciôn de la relaciôn entre ética y estética literaria basado en un texto inter
genérica argentina construido sobre técnicas modernas de narrativa y reportaje policial
realista-Si me querés, quereme transa, de Cristiân Alarcôn-revela las redes de migration
sudamericana que sustentan el trâfico de drogas urbano y alteran el perfil de la ciudad. Al
igual que otras narrativas recientes sobre el narcotrâfico, el libro présenta un género literario
contemporâneo globalizado que diluye conceptos como naciôn, estética literaria yficciôn.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 195, Vol. 41 No. 2, March 2014 130-143
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X13509788
© 2013 Latin American Perspectives
130
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Lopez I DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 131
The answer to these questions becomes more complex when, for the sake of
sales, bad manufactured narratives— "ready-made products"—are rewarded
(Herrero-Olaizola, 2007:45). Books are sometimes marketed via sensationalism
and dependent on the "fetishization of catastrophic realities ... that can easily
fit the circuits of the global market" (Rueda, 2009:71). This can be accomplished
through the sometimes crude eroticization of the protagonists—a strategy that,
mixed with violence, connects divergent social sectors "to make the characters
move across, without resolving them, the gaps created by aggression and
trauma" (Rueda, 2009:75). In many cases these books are the products of medi
ocre but effective writers who become established through the doubtful distinc
tion of their thematic pertinence to the "market" for violence or a poorly
understood "regionalism" (e.g., "writers from the North" or "from the Mexican
border," when there are writers in that area who do not necessarily write about
drug trafficking).
Despite the difficulty of finding valid answers (for some of these narratives
do contain a degree of social criticism, albeit only as much as an audience reluc
tant to tackle complex texts will accept), José Ovejero (2012: 86) establishes a
distinction between responsible narrative and what is "in the service of a dif
fuse and exploitative marketing of reality." He defines "ethical cruelty" as "that
which, rather than adapt to the expectations of the reader, disillusions him and
confronts him with those expectations. It is ethical in the sense that it intends a
transformation of the reader, promoting a change in his values, his beliefs, his
way of life" (61).
What, then, are the criteria for a "good" narrative, when in many cases the
aesthetic (and formal) autonomy that until a few years ago characterized
auratic belles-lettres has been lost without causing current production to cease
being called literary? As Mabel Morana (2004: 182) points out, "the 'quality
criterion' maintained by bourgeois belles-lettres is giving way to the need to
highlight and understand a production—canonical or not—that begins by chal
lenging, in increasingly evident ways, the representational and interpretive
models of a decaying 'order.'" This is evident in this type of literature, which is
sometimes very close to the documentation of everyday facts.
This posits differences between narratives ready-made for the market and
those that combine ethical wisdom with everyday aesthetics far from formal
refinements in presenting critical reflections on the phenomenon at hand. I
intend to address one of these recent fictional narratives on the trauma of drug
trafficking, since, as Maria Helena Rueda (2009: 69) says,
when we talk about works that include in their thematic some kind of violence,
the literature market seems to be, instead of a more or less neutral ground on
which expressive proposals are negotiated, a field of contention that is part of the
processing of multiple and substantial alterations that cause violent conflict in
the social fabric. Commercial demands intersect in this case with ethical, politi
cal, and aesthetic ones to determine which books are written, published, read.
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132 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
In Narrar el mal (Rethinking Evil), Maria Pia Lara (2009:16), citing Hannah
Arendt, posits that narratives open us to the understanding of the past (and,
obviously, the present) on a moral dimension that deepens with its social dis
cussion. In addition, "our sense of moral understanding of what has happened
. . . can serve as a reason for building political and legal institutions." What
intelligent, aestheticized narratives such as the one I have chosen facilitate is an
understanding of the moral dimension (in a normative and non-"moralistic"
sense) of the facts that frequently escapes us in superficial and pseudo-objective
media representation, highlighting a mode of informing via literature. "Reality
itself is worthless; it must be transformed into culture," says Pablo Villalobos,
author of the novel Fiesta en la madriguera (Down the Rabbit Hole, 2010), which
is written from the point of view of the only son of a drug lord. Iris Garcia,
another writer, adds, "We must create awareness of the reasons for evil. If there
is something in which fiction can go beyond reality it is in its ability to offer us
at least a hypothesis of how the world and human beings work, even at their
darkest" (quoted by Febén, 2010).
Mechanisms of fictionalization, through their expressiveness, uncover net
works of cruelty and reveal their nuances, and from this representation they can
be judged with greater freedom because things like this should not happen given
that "no fiction addresses merely the intellect Using characters ... immedi
ately generates identification, rejection, desire, curiosity, which go beyond rea
son" (Ovejero, 2012:68). As Lara (2009:31) says: "Words or concepts are created
[in these representations] to produce revealing perspectives that can enlighten us
about what was at stake in the experience of calculated cruelty. These aesthetic
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Lopez I DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 133
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134 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
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Lopez / DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 135
The author was born in Chile in 1970 and grew up in Argentina, where he
studied journalism and worked with prestigious local media. Before this book
he had written the well-received Cuando me muera quiero que me toquen cumbia:
Vida de pibes chorros (When I Die I Want Them to Play Cumbia: The Lives of
Young Crooks [reprinted several times since 2003]). As both witness and par
ticipant, the author avoids socio-anthropological digressions and forges an
emotional narrative, a melodramatic "nonfiction" the title of which refers to a
kind of Latin popular music. He appeals to cumbia not only for the social class
of the subjects/characters, but also for increasing the value of melodrama,
because he thinks that cumbia, in spite of its zest of happiness, hides the sadness
of bolero. This text was awarded the Samuel Chavkin Prize for journalistic integ
rity in Latin America by the North American Congress on Latin America.
Both texts show the literary influence of the South American canon—certainly
of the work of Rodolfo Walsh (1927-1977, murdered by the dictatorship) in
texts such as Operation masacre (Operation Massacre, 1957), published eight
years before the appearance of what critics consider the first manifestation of
this genre, Tom Wolfe's The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1964),
and introducing to literature "dirt, uncertainty, and fear, the chosen aspects of
an era that had a wealth of all three" (Pron, 2010), as well as iQuién mato a
Rosendo? (Who Killed Rosendo?, 1968) and the masterful "Esa mujer" (That
Woman, 1965), about Eva Peron's corpse and considered by many Argentina's
best political narrative. In all of these, political and police elements are com
bined. Walsh, as Alarcon acknowledges, influenced the deconstruction and
reconstruction of a political event to make it more literary by applying narra
tive techniques from fiction. This revolutionized the Latin American journalis
tic genre before Truman Capote's (1966) In Cold Blood. Alarcon does the same as
Walsh without losing respect for the "truth" (which is not the same as "verisi
militude") of what his "characters" said. He considers the literary construction
more "real" than a transcript and reinterprets events in a melodramatic key
inspired by Manuel Puig's use of orality and popular genres.
This use of popular genres and departure from traditional genres such as the
chronicle also echoes the work of the Chilean Pedro Lemebel, another urban
chronicler of a chaotic world who distrusts straight testimonies and aseptic
objectivity. Alarcon (2003) says:
In that process I left melodrama in the subtext, perhaps because I was involved
in the melodrama: I attended the baptisms, birthdays, and funerals of the
book's protagonists. I guess the title has to do with that. It's from a Colombian
cumbia, El Frente's [his protagonist's] favorite song. I established this with
Pedro Lemebel: we talked for two hours about why one may seek a title in a
song as he did in Tengo miedo torero [2001].
Loco afân (Mad Desire, 1996), also by Lemebel, is named after a tango.
The first book started as research on the so-called trigger-happy policemen
who, in the late 1990s, were killing poor youths in the Buenos Aires provincial
area. The second is derived from it and reflects the journalist's becoming aware
of the ways in which "terror and systematic elimination have survived [after
the dictatorship] hidden behind police structures and drugs 'for the poor.' The
truth behind the death squads and the ravages of paco3 among the poorest sec
tors" (Alarcon, quoted by Garcia, 2006). At the same time, he realized that the
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136 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
The boys from Twenty-five4 and ... the Toritos de Santa Rosa had know
other for a while. They exchanged no shots, but this was not merely b
any kind of benevolence between them but because of the mismatch b
them, one group being thieves and the other dealers, local merca distr
This is a strange antinomy founded on the resentment of the consume
puts his body and life at risk to get the money he needs to buy drugs, th
from which benefits only the dealer and the police protecting him. That
several of these structural rivalries played out when Cabezon stoo
shack door and heard them saying inside that they would not sell t
thing. "The Toritos were always dealers, and there is no respect for
They could make money stealing, with guns, but they sit there selling c
ruins the life of other people. I'm not saying anything—let each do wh
do—but it's not something I'd do because that'd be changing sides, b
another person," says Javi, who has kept away from crime since he lef
and who survives as a cartonero5 like his mother.
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Lopez / DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 137
collaborate with the courts or the police: "Locations and time and space coor
dinates have been modified or omitted. The identities of the witnesses of the
crimes have been protected: in some cases, a single individual has been split
into one or more pseudonyms or two people have been covered by a single
one" (Alarcon, 2010:13). After the publication of the book, he acknowledged:
"I made a literary and journalistic bet, broke with certain rules of journalism
and the place of literature in journalism" (Bourgois and Alarcon, 2010: 363).
Through those fictionalizing narrative procedures, combined with techniques
from other fields (such as TV "testimonials" and historical or anthropological
documentary), Alarcon presents a deep and real narrative linked to urban mar
ginality and narco crime, with its mafia-style vendettas. It betrays no one and
moves between the vertigo of noir, with its crudity and cruelty, and popular
melodrama, both in the feelings aroused by the crimes and the journalist's vis
ceral involvement with the protagonists, whose parties and funerals he ended
up attending. As he says (quoted by Enriquez, 2003),
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138 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
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Lopez / DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 139
a late name. Porfirio Reyes received it when he was already thirty-eight years
old, in Villa del Senor.... He had left Lima in the midst of his country's great
est diaspora Like thousands of Peruvians, he had filed before the Office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be granted asylum. He
tried to enter Buenos Aires as a refugee. His neighbors Aranda, Marlon, and
Cali [other dealers], as well as Teodoro, the brother with whom he would rec
oncile after 11 years, were already there He was the only trafficker in Villa
del Senor charged with judicial evidence of being a former Shining Path sol
dier. This was confirmed by a fax from Interpol that reached the Federal
Police's Antiterrorism Bureau. Although it seemed more of a myth than truth,
for six months I investigated whether this was real, whether it was at least
plausible that a member of the Maoist guerrilla had been recycled as a narco
thug. The Shining Path was in Argentina. Several of its leaders and intermedi
ate members had gone into exile, and many had gotten in as refugees with the
assistance of the Church and the United Nations. Niki Lauda was the only
narco from Villa del Senor who came to Buenos Aires as a political refugee.
In his quest, Alarcön first contacts the elder brother, who confirms the story
of militancy (50). He talks to other exiled guerrillas; one, a survivor of the 1992
massacre of 42 Maoist youths in the Castro Castro jail and a street hawker,
denies knowing him from the Shining Path (145). The author then receives
information from a colleague who had interviewed him that Niki denied
belonging to the Shining Path and rejected their methods (146). He travels to
Peru and, after an Odyssey through the Lima courts, finds Niki's "terrorist" file,
which ends with a 1986 statement by Reyes against his fellow group members
(including his erstwhile partner)—a document whose features, some of them
invalid, he describes (148-159). The story comes to a conclusion thus: "He was
killed in April 2006 by some Peruvians who wanted to take over the Villa Padre
Mugica corridor where Niki Lauda controlled the sale of cocaine" (159).
During his research, Alarcön also interviews a former Antiterrorism Bureau
member who confirms the information (2010: 173-184): "We got the case
because of this issue of terrorists dealing drugs For us, who were so igno
rant of Peruvian reality at the beginning, the Shining Path and drugs appeared
a strange combination for Buenos Aires" (175). This informant also reveals
another Shining Path technique applied in drug distribution corridors: torture
with muriatic acid. "The Peruvian antiterrorism cops told us that this was no
news to them. Commissioner Manco Barranco, who followed them in their
country, told us that this was one of the practices used by Shining Path soldiers
in the war, meant to injure and terrify" (183).8
What becomes evident with the entry of all these characters into the narra
tive is a radical change in the conception of Argentine literature, which thus
becomes transnational. Formerly, it extended toward Europe or focused on the
national, hardly ever including neighboring Latin American popular world
views. Speaking of post-1990s narrative universes, Josefina Ludmer (2010:127)
states:
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140 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
They seem to have lost society or something that represents it in the form o
family, class, work, reason and law, and, sometimes, nation. They are defined
as a group and form a community that is not that of family, work, or social cla
but something different that can include all of these categories, synchronized
and fused, at the same time.
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Lopez I DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 141
The postulation of a type of writing that pushes the boundaries between what
is and what is not "literary" clearly opposes the use of literature as a mark of
distinction and dilettantism. More than by a series of procedures, this non
auratic writing is distinguished by proposing a differentiated role for art aimed
at defetishizing the object and an idea of art as support for experience.
The text, then, acts as a "factory of the present" (Ludmer, 2010:149), and this
gives it its meaning, whether it is literature or not. This battery of resources—
this genre ambiguity—is directed toward a kind of social problematization
demanded by a new readership that wants not formal games but (especially
with regard to drug trafficking) efficiently narrated up-to-date information.
NOTES
1.1 am deliberately excluding the much more widespread sicaresca fiction and the we
and highly praised work of Laura Restrepo to concentrate on works that are unknown
tionally.
2. Or, according to some Mexicans, the "nacocultura." The epithet naco means "rude," "vulgar,"
and "flamboyant." It has a strong ethnic connotation, since it is unlikely to be applied to a giiero
(white person) but is often used for mestizo or indigenous people who have improved their social
position and behave like upstarts without manners. Many drug traffickers fit that mold with their
flamboyant tastes and defiant attitudes.
3. Paco is the Argentine term for the cheap and highly addictive and toxic drug produced with
cocaine waste known in Colombia as bazuco and elsewhere as quete and Cjueirolo.
4. One of the Greater Buenos Aires villas miserias or shantytowns in which the story unfolds.
5. Cartoneros go through the trash from middle- and upper-class apartment buildings searching
for recyclable materials. Most of them come from nearby urban developments. They became so
plentiful under the Menem administration and its economic policies that old trains along the
urban network were set up to service them, leaving at an assigned time and returning late at night,
in exchange for a biweekly payment. The train seats were removed so that they could transport
bags with some comfort. For more see the 2003 documentary El tren bianco, by Nahuel and Ramiro
Garcia; for the conflicts caused by the gradual suspension of the service between 2006 and 2008,
see http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartonero (accessed January 3,2013).
6.1 use quotes to refer to the perverse use of the term in Latin America for socially disenfran
chised governments with little economic participation and partial to privatization and so-called
labor flexibilization. For a history of the use of the term, see Ghersi (2004).
7. Researchers like Eneas Biglione of the Hispanic American Center for Economics Research
have identified the Shining Path's links to drugs during the southern expansion of the group in the
coca-growing Huallaga region in 1985, which, according to him, helped fund their war (1988: 7).
8. It should be noted that, according to the book, former Peruvian guerrillas are not the only
ones who traffic drugs. In the Buenos Aires jail, Alarcön managed to interview another Peruvian
imprisoned for drug trafficking: one of the leaders of the Peasant Self-Defense Forces in the Valley
of the Rivers Apurimac and Ene blamed for the deaths of at least 100 Shining Path members, who
did not regret the massacre given that the group had killed part of his family (Alarcon, 2010:153).
While the Shining Path had violent methods, these produced state replicas and no less violent
peasant ones; obviously, both types of strategy shifted toward drug trafficking when the survivors
changed territories. Likewise, and maintaining objectivity insofar as this is possible, some former
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142 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
Shining Path interviewees deny links with the drag trade and claim that their philosophy is
of Revolution, not of individual salvation" (146).
REFERENCES
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Lopez I DRUG TRAFFICKING AND LITERATURE 143
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