Narrating Narcos: Culiacan and Medellin

摘要

This book is a fascinating read, even for someone like myself who comes at Latin American drugs from a non-literary angle, and who is not even that familiar with the sort of novelistic chronicles about drugs that it considers. The central problem for Gabriela Polit is the 'representation' of violence - that is, the complex of moral dilemmas faced by Latin American writers who are increasingly engaged in writing about drugs and drug violence. The book is anything but a facile paean to the popular social phenomenon of 'narco-culture' that has gained notoriety in recent years, and it avoids the sensationalistic writing usually seen about drugs. Indeed, the ethical struggle of these writers is precisely to contest the glorification of blood and violence, without replicating it, in their process of narrating an inescapable part of the recent history of countries like Mexico and Colombia. Another artistic challenge is to address as public memory the authentic pain of the victims of this wave of violence, going beyond traditional cults of victimhood. I liked the author's novelty in closely comparing the two vibrant regional capitals of literary drug culture, the paisas of Medellin in Colombia and the culichis of Culiacan in Mexico. While the book draws on literary and cultural debates, it is also strongly informed by an ethnographic process of engaging many of the writers in their own social fields. Polit shares her first-hand experiences and reflections with readers, without fanfare or self-promotion.