Narrating Narcos: Culiacán and Medellín

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LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES / CULTURAL STUDIES “Narrating Narcos succeeds admirably in explaining the origins of the ‘narco novels,’ as well as in offering trenchant close readings of works by Elmer Mendoza , Fernando Vallejo, and Héctor Abad Faciolince, and placing these fictions in a broader cultural and artistic context that includes painting, music, and film. It’s a must-read book about an urgently important phenomenon.” —Aníbal González-Pérez, Yale University “As Polit Dueñas posits, the phenomenon of narco trafficking expresses an overwhelming challenge of representation. In this sense the author has successfully met the challenge head on. The text brings a fresh interdisciplinary mix of archival work and ethnographic involvement that fruitfully explores the conundrums of Latin American narco culture. As such it is a genuine contribution for understanding the troubled historical narco legacies of our time.” —Oswaldo Benavides, Fordham University Narrating Narcos examines the prominent role of narcotics trafficking in contemporary Latin American cultural production. Gabriela Polit Dueñas juxtaposes two infamous narco regions, Culiacán, Mexico, and Medellín, Colombia , to demonstrate the powerful forces of violence, corruption, and avarice and their influence over locally based cultural texts. Polit Dueñas provides a theoretical basis for her methods, citing the work of Walter Benjamin, Pierre Bourdieu, and other cultural critics. She supplements this with extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing artists and writers, their confidants, relatives, and others, and documents their responses to the portrayal of narco culture. Polit Dueñas offers close readings of the characters, language, and milieu of popular works of literature and the visual arts and relates their ethical and thematic undercurrents to real life experiences . As such, Narrating Narcos offers an important resource for students and scholars of Latin American literature, history, culture, and contemporary issues. Gabriela Polit Dueñas is associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Cosas de hombres: Escritores y caudillos en la literatura latinoamericana del siglo XX and the coeditor of Meanings of Violence in Contemporary Latin America. ILLUMINATIONS: CULTURAL FORMATIONS OF THE AMERICAS University of Pittsburgh Press www.upress.pitt.edu Cover art: Juan Fernando Ospina, Sumas y restas, 2004. Cover design: Ann Walston 9 7 8 0 8 2 2 9 6 2 5 7 1 ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6257-1 ISBN 10: 0-8229-6257-8 ...