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xi During my visits to Culiacán, Mexico, and Medellín, Colombia, I was deeply moved by the courage, the integrity, and the commitment of the intellectuals, artists, cultural promoters, professors, and university students I met. They work to transform cultural venues into alternative ways to help and integrate local youth. Their work is targeted toward a population that is considered high-risk, usually located in local shantytowns and poor areas. Medellín and Culiacán have endured situations of extreme violence that go far beyond the thousands of disappeared, the massacred, and the displaced; this violence has to do with the ubiquity of the perpetrator and the impunity of the powerful. In the intellectual and cultural scenes of both cities, I have met people dedicated to improving their communities. These are the people I interviewed, who showed me around, and who explained to me the real meaning of living in a narco city and carrying that stigma. Their generosity was an inspiration, and I would not have been able to write this book without their help. Much of my knowledge about their hometowns, I owe to them, although in no way should they be held responsible for the ideas expressed in this book. I want to thank Luis Astorga, who helped me find the right people in Sinaloa; Juan Esmerio Navarro, Élmer Mendoza, Elizabeth Moreno, and the late Alvaro Rendón Moreno, “El Feroz,” whose intelligence and humor filled my days in Culiacán. I want to give a special mention to my friend Javier Valdez for his profound generosity. Nery Córdoba and Juan José Rodríguez, who treated me to a delicious lunch in Mazatlán. Thanks also to Cristian Alarcón, who helped me find the right people in Medellín; Sergio Valencia, Pájara Pérez Mejía, Luis Alberto Arango, and La Zarca Uribe, who treated me to more than a beer in Medellín. Juan Fernando Ospina deserves a special place, because it was through his eyes that I got to know Medellín. His contribution to my work is not only Acknowledgments symbolic; I also thank Juan Fernando for his generosity in allowing me to reproduce the image that serves as the cover of this book. My gratitude also goes to my friends and colleagues who patiently and generously read portions of this book at its different stages—Jason Borge, Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, and Rachel Price. María Helena Rueda has been an extraordinary interlocutor who more than once helped me refine my ideas; I am very grateful that the intellectual concerns we share have built an invaluable friendship. Monica Sanning, Gabriela Redwine, Joseph Pierce, and Andrew Bennett merit special acknowledgment for their patience when dealing with my English . Amy Smith Bell and Pamela Newmann were especially helpful, and I am grateful. From all of them I learned to be a different person, as is demanded by the bittersweet experience of writing in a language that is not your own. I want to thank the people from the University of Pittsburgh Press—Alex Wolfe and my former fellow student and friend Joshua Shanholtzer—for their incredible support. Several versions of this work were presented at different institutions and meetings to very diverse audiences, including those at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Brown University, the Instituto Mora in Mexico City, San Luis Potosi, FLACSO (Facultad Latinoamericanda de Ciencias Sociales)–Quito, UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) in Mexico City, and UAM (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana)–Ixtapalapa. All of these interactions helped me refine my argument. My trips to Culiacán and Medellín were possible thanks to the generous support of FAHSS (Faculty in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences)–Stony Brook. I received funding from several sources at my home institution, the University of Texas at Austin: the Mellow Summer Research fund of LILLAS (Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies), the Humanities Research Award, and the Summer Research Assignment from the College of Liberal Arts. The very first stage of this book took form during my Dean Research Leave in the fall of 2009. Sections of this book have been published in different versions in several professional journals, and I want to thank them all for granting me the rights to reproduce them in this book: “On Reading about Violence, Drug Dealers, and Interpreting a Field of Literary Production amidst the Din of Gunfire: Culiacán–Sinaloa, 2007” originally appeared...

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