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on the border line between the US and Mexico
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Thursday, October 5, 2017

Dispelling Mexican Narconarratives: Why Most Fiction Gets It All Wrong

Republished by El Profe for Borderland Beat from Remezcla

by Freddy Martinez
When Oswaldo Zavala talks about the US-Mexico drug trade, he does so with a desperation common to those who study it. Zavala, who was born in Ciudad Juárez and is an associate professor at CUNY Graduate Center, understands that most people may never read any of his ideas, published mostly in academia, and may also never take the time to investigate narcotráfico as much as he does. But that doesn’t stop him from trying to counter popular depictions of the US-Mexico drug trade whenever he can. Spend enough time with him, talk about the drug trade long enough, and, more likely than not, you’ll come to realize that most of what you know about it is a myth.
Roberto Bolaño_Culture
Roberto Bolaño

I met Zavala recently at Caffe Reggio in Greenwich Village to talk about 2666, a posthumous, sprawling novel written by Robert Bolaño, the Chilean novelist many consider to be the greatest Latin American writer since Jorge Luis Borges. Divided into five parts, 2666 centers around Santa Teresa, a fictionalized Mexican city based on Ciudad Juárez. Published in the years before the 2006-12 surge in the city’s murder rate – when more than 100,000 people died – the novel connects five interrelated stories that riff on a central theme of violence. At its heart is an investigation into the femicide occurring in Santa Teresa, killings which were inspired by Ciudad Juárez’s own decade-long history of unsolved murders of women. Bolaño’s realistic depiction of narcos in 2666 gave Zavala a way to pick apart what he calls “narcocultura”— a string of sensationalist novels, telenovelas, music, and movies that imagine the narcos’ powers too broadly.

Like Bolaño, whom he met one day in Paris, Zavala thinks narcos are misunderstood. The charismatic anti-hero – like Netflix’s Pablo Escobar – a macho man who keeps the state under his thumb, is written to entertain. There are more powerful criminals than Pablo, and they’re being overlooked because they seem ordinary. These men don’t carry around gold-plated AKs. Instead of showing chest, they button up, trading in snake-skin cowboy boots for freshly-shined Oxfords. They’re not caricatures of evil portrayed in movies like Sicario. Instead, he argues, the true jefes, those responsible for all the violence and in charge of the drug trade, are the politicians and businessmen of Mexico, who corrupt from the inside. “The myth is to believe that El Chapo, an uneducated farmer from Sinaloa, rules the world,” he told me. “I want people who hold real power to be in the most critical light.”
“The myth is to believe that El Chapo, an uneducated farmer from Sinaloa, rules the world.”
At the cafe, before we begin talking about 2666 and his own new book, La Modernidad Insufrible, Zavala tells me that the previous day he got a migraine so bad he was left bedridden. He considers these migraines to be a form of self-preservation, a way of forcing him to slow down and reflect. It makes you wonder about his health: is he too busy for his own good? There’s a natural authority in him that belies his age. He’s able to race through a long list of names and ideas, writers and philosophies to bolster any given argument. He speaks English just as confidently as Spanish and seems willing to learn any language it takes to make sure you’re not missing his point. After enough time, you get the feeling that he’s letting you in on a secret, pointing out a little-known truth of the drug trade that you shouldn’t have missed. It’s an idea that very few people believe, one that goes against nearly all the books, movies, and stories written before. But when he says it, nothing else seems plausible.

I talked with Zavala about the drug trade and about how the novel 2666 depicts narcos. This interview has been edited and condensed from that conversation.
Bolaño wrote 2666 in Spain as he was dying. He didn’t finish it completely, but it’s still considered a masterpiece — nowhere else is his brilliance so obvious. It depressed me to read him: here was clear evidence of genius, here were levels of poetry and story that I could never reach.It can depress me too in that same way, but I also feel very lucky to have read it. 2666 was a daring novel. It must have been a crazy thing to write. Imagine writing page 990 while knowing, as Bolaño did, that you’re fatally ill and that you don’t have much time. You’d want to spend time with your children, but the world is closing in on you. I don’t think most living writers in the 21st century would be capable of writing it. Not only because 2666 is an amazing piece of work, but also because of what it takes to write this when you’re dying. Think of all the time you’re neglecting your family. I have two children. I don’t think I could do it. I’d imagine that I’d want to spend every single second with my family, not writing a book — even if it’s a masterpiece. Writing it entails a commitment to art, to literature, to telling something about the world that you’re certain only you can tell. It required a tremendous sacrifice of time and love for Bolaño. It’s amazing to me, and it comes perfectly embedded in the actual writing.

What made Bolaño want to sacrifice so much to write it?
I think Bolaño was hoping to intervene with 2666, to bring forth his own take on not only the murders of women in Ciudad Juárez but also our own entire understanding of violence from slavery in the US to World War II. 2666 moves around the US, Latin America, and Europe as a way to pose the challenge to writers. “Will you take care of it all?,” Lotte asks Archimboldi at the end of the novel. What are you going to do about evil? Are you just going to write your stories, or are you going to intervene somehow? There’s a clear, direct challenge to intellectuals, writers, and readers to embrace a political, ethical attitude toward reality, meaning do not read this simply for fun, try to face the questions Bolaño’s putting forth: what are you to going to do about violence, about prejudice, about injustice, what are you going to do about the horrors of the 20th and now the 21st century? He doesn’t want you to end the novel entertained or rested or distracted by the writing but to end it forming a clear political, ethical consciousness.
Politicians aren’t being corrupted by the narcos. Politicians assimilate narcos within official power.

What political, ethical consciousness is Bolaño putting forth? What political meaning do you think a reader can find in 2666?
Bolaño understood that drug trafficking in Mexico is not a matter of drug cartels threatening the Mexican state, meaning the government, but a matter of the state controlling the drug organizations. These organizations are built into the state, and many times they are indistinguishable from the state, not because these drug organizations buy the state and corrupt it from the outside as many people believe, but because the state contains the drug trafficking. Without the state, these drug organizations wouldn’t exist. We tend to believe the opposite: drug organizations come and penetrate and corrupt politicians, creating a narco-state. I think that’s an absurdity. The state, especially the Mexican state that’s been powerful historically and still very powerful today, has always been the superior force. So politicians aren’t being corrupted by the narcos. Politicians assimilate narcos within official power.


What are the literary tools that Bolaño uses to show us this?
One example is how he characterizes drug traffickers. There’s not a single character in 2666 who resembles the typical drug lord or narco trafficker that shows up in most other Mexican novels, ones like La reina del sur. There’s not a single drug trafficker who’s exotic or powerful. None of them display money or are violent bandits living outside civil society, challenging everybody, subduing police officers. None of that. Drug traffickers in Bolaño’s novels are either completely familiar to society or fully integrated into society — businessmen, politicians, people inside civil society, never outside.

They’re harder to pin down because they look and seem just like us. Evil is invisible, more ambiguous.
Yes, they’re invisible because most people wouldn’t suspect Bolaño’s narcos to be drug traffickers. If you imagine a drug trafficker, you tend to imagine somebody who looks like a criminal, not businessmen like 2666’s Pedro Rengifo, who has a lot of money and owns a milk company, a lechería, while distributing drugs. The drug trade is only a part of what these businessmen do.
[In real life] evil is invisible, more ambiguous.
Drugs traffickers are the most visible faces, easier to blame.
Sure, they’re people who have a name and a face that we all want to condemn. They’re the only ones visible in the clandestine economy of drugs. But it’s also an economy that necessitates police and traffic schemes. For drugs to come across the border they need a way in. That usually involves bribing the police, Border Patrol, the military. And even when they get in, the drugs still need to continue to the cities of mass consumption like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago. The drugs don’t just evaporate and suddenly show up in New York. There are larger schemes and traffic routes within the U.S. And nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody wants to talk about how is it that you can get high in New York when there’s mass surveillance done by the NSA and others. We all want to talk about the drug lords in Mexico. We want to talk about El Chapo, a guy who didn’t finish elementary school, who doesn’t even know how to send a video message from his cell phone, but suddenly he’s the guy we need to blame. It’s absurd. My agenda is to say that we’re choosing the wrong criminals.

So how do telenovelas like ‘La reina del sur’ get it wrong? Are they trusting what they read in newspapers? Is most of what we read there untrustworthy?
Yes, exactly, because most of what we know comes directly from the state. Most of the working knowledge journalists transmit to us comes from the state. Official sources have been effective in imposing a meaning and a sense of understanding about drug organizations. Just look at the simple fact that we all believe in cartels and that cartels are fighting for the plaza, for control of their territory, and that they’re immensely powerful and that they’re skilled and have intelligence capabilities that surpasses state intelligence agencies such as the NSA, or Centro de Investigación y Seguridad (CISEN) in Mexico. We believe this because it comes from the state. It didn’t come from original work of journalists in the field validating this information. It all comes from the state. Journalists apply official knowledge to what they see. They’re already conditioned by the state. The state has been successful in dominating and subduing our critical understanding of the drug trade.

Considering the history of violence committed to journalists in Mexico, would you say you’re afraid? You’re giving people a closer view to the truth than most other writers and journalists.
No, I’m not afraid at all. What I’m doing has to do more with conceptualizing power, violence, and drug trafficking in a more general way. When you do that, power doesn’t care because it’s told in a limited way. I write for academia for the most part. And when I write journalistically — for Proceso magazine, for instance — I don’t get in trouble because I don’t name names, even though I say important things about violence. It’s not that I shy away from accusing anybody in particular. It’s just that I don’t know that much. If I named names, then I would be in danger.
“Most of the working knowledge journalists transmit to us comes from the state.”
Bolaño also contradicts this official narrative. How was he able to look past it?
What Bolaño did that I think is very original and innovative is that he broke away from this official narrative intuitively. I think a lot has to do with being outside, being in exile, living in Spain, and taking a distance from what was going on. I don’t think he had the literature to understand it completely. He didn’t have the right tools when he was finishing 2666 in 2001-02. He didn’t have access to the right books, ones written by people who are working critically on this issue. These books are fairly difficult to obtain, many of them written by sociologists whose books don’t circulate beyond Mexico. And, back then, many of the journalists who were challenging this official narrative weren’t well-known. Sociologists like Luis Astorga from UNAM and Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo from Colegio de México. Journalists like Ignacio Alvarado and Julian Cardona from Juárez, who are both brave and valiant. They truly challenge this official imaginary of drug cartels. But there are just a handful of people who truly understand the drug trade — against a vast majority of consensus. It’s amazing that Bolaño was able to conceive a different narrative all alone in Spain — simply by reading newspaper articles. The guy must have had a tremendous critical imagination to break from this official narrative. He tells a different story. In 2666, drug traffickers are businessmen, men who are the closest intimate friends of policemen and politicians in Santa Teresa, as he calls Ciudad Juárez. The drug trade is never a matter of drug cartels fighting for territory. The drug lords who appear in Santa Teresa are respected businessmen like Pedro Rengifo, compadre of Pedro Negrete who’s the chief of police. They’re completely inside the state, inside the government structures, inside the business elites. As opposed to the vast number of Mexican novels, telenovelas, and movies that show drug cartels fighting and killing each other, depicting narcos as terrible and able to subdue police and politicians, able to create a narco-state. The word narco-state pisses me off. It’s circulated everywhere. Is Mexico a narco-state? It’s a stupid question. Of course, it’s not a narco-state. It’s a fucking powerful state. It’s an evil, terrible political machine, not a narco machine. It’s a political machine that, among many other fucked things that it does, has control of the drug trade. To the point that it has made the drug trade its political servant, and it has given it political use and value. This idea that drug lords control Mexico only favors the state. If you believe that, then you’re doing a favor to the governing elites of Mexico who are the actual rulers of this shit that they unleashed.

51 comments:

  1. Well, these writers and commenters and Roberto bolaño could have been my disciples, glad to meet, profe,
    But I only started reading on drug trafficking around 2010, and that after meeting Chivis Martinez about something NOT related to the drug trade on BB; that this book was being written around 2000 further reivindicates what i've been telling youses for the last 7 years...
    --No narcos were inhumanely sacrificed to make this comment

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    1. Jaja. I like that.
      There is so much misconception by Americans. The smart ones like Azul and Mayo are unknown for many many years. Like who is moving the most thru Nuevo Laredo...know one even knows who. People will guess zeta but nobody knows.

      Awesome piece. Thank you

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    2. What about El 3 Dedos En El Chiquelo??

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    3. 7:46 pos dice que de una vez te metas toda la mano güey.

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    4. 7:42 that could be a hairy situation.

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  2. Try vision of a the definition of a Narco. As I stated in your recent post of narco tienditas.
    Those who are visibly incognito and prominent members of government and society.
    All the others are puppets for their true masters,
    expendable and prosecutable!

    E42

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    1. Correction! True vision!

      E42

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    2. There is always room for allucinations, and alucines, map ache president vice te.fox himself is now a prominent promoter of guilt free grifa for all, he hails for guanajuato, where a few narcos have been cogidos by the so called "law enforcers"
      Namely el benja y el H

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    3. A narco in mexico is a drug trafficker, any size.
      On the US a narc is a law enforcement agent,

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  3. Actually this way of thinking that politicians and businessmen control the drug trade doesn't surprise me nor I'm sure others on here as well.It's very likely.Would make a good Hollywood story no changing the stereotype?The stereotypical drug trafficker violent and uneducated I think is just on the lower level of the drug trade and they can conveniently to used by the state as pawns when it's convenient for them to 'take down a drug trafficker.'Meanwhile it's business as usual but in the public's eye the state is 'doing it's job'.I will bet Chapo knows a lot more than we think,then again maybe he only knows the tip of the iceberg.I'm sure Mexico's drug trade is a very well oiled machine most of which we will never know but maybe in the future some of the state's involvement will come to light.Right now though they are still the 'untouchables.'

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    1. Untouchables..not at all. Yarrington.the mayor and his wife of Iguala..the mayor brothers from Coahuila..Gortari de Salinas brother an company..and many more the problem is as one goes down many are up to the task of replacing the last..just like the tienditas they bust one two or three more pop up..never-ending story with the same sad ending.

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    2. So what that Chapo might now a thing or two about dirty dealings with politicians and shit like that??? Nobody is going to take Chapos word even if he where to name in detail every person he personally has bribed be it in Mexico and more so in the States! The world of corruption lies far beyond a single individual name calling and pointing fingers. It is a beast without a head. Chop one block off and their is still more of it left.

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    3. 4:17 mexican governments only touch some of the degenerate criminals they generate for show and tell, but in reality don't do ANYTHING against them, because tomarra they may need some help too, they LOVE TO SAY 'dog doesn't eat dog', but od course, they will fack each other in secret and stab each other on the back, but in secret, whe in pu lic it is all only make believe, a glaring example, in Nuevo Leon, governor "la Mula Bronca" was going to incarcerate and prosecute former governor Rodrigo "el pretty boy del padre marcial maciel" Medina, but he ain't doing anything since he took power, same with la marrana duarte, borges, femat, "el capulina" duarte or "el gober precioso", impunity is the order of the day, for all

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    4. Obviously someone is afraid of what he knows. The case against him is rock solid. A rookie asst DA could win this case. There's no reason to jeapordize a slam dunk, life without parole conviction to be overturned in appeal because he was denied basic rights. Someone is making sure he can't talk to anyone. The gov has tapes and video, and I'm sure his lawyers have his too. My gut says he never goes to trial. He makes a deal to get his family protected, and he won't name anyone. If not, one way or another, he never testifies. He can take big wigs down with him. Not his partners or even his enemies. He's gonna take big boys down. And he has proof. If not, he'd still be in Mexico.

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    5. @ ElGrandRojo
      Can agree with some of your points here.
      He definitely can rattle the cage for US courts.
      Quite sure he obtains incriminating evidence of those involved on both sides of the country.
      Something that any government would not want exposed.
      Despite the expected governments deniability of such to suppress media and newspapers. The damage control of theories and suspicions would be an unwanted distraction to any government.
      A plea deal by all means will transcend.
      A life sentence with an agreement of immunity for his children from any prosecution. Furthermore, a fine which the US government is truly interested in.

      E42

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    6. The fine is definitely what they want...

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    7. Don’t forget the twin chicagoite snitches

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    8. 2:21 they paid their dues, they cute, they will keep paying for it, ganna have a great life after they get free, hiding and hiding from their own shady shades.
      --Back on the day, FRANK COSTELLO was famous for being the "suave man" that fixed shit for the Mob with City Hall, who just happened to be La Cosa Nostra's puppets, but the only lasting pieces of shet were the billionaires whose billionaire famis s live off the moneys accrued by their 'forebears', but the Kennedys and Howard Hugues who were true huge geniuses were never accepted or tolerated, specially H Hugues, whose fortune got stolen but not disappeared, his investments still pay off for the wise asses that stole it and still milk government contracts, but he took from the mobsters, like he knew where the closets were.

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    9. 4:17 the mayor and his wife from iguala, maria de los angeles pineda villa "de abarca" (la que mucho abarca pero poco aprieta) was a lover of the former governor and has been blamed and accused and demonized of the disappearances of the Ayotzinapos, are just being scapegoats by the mexican federal government, but they are patsies and not guilty of any of it.

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    10. El güero palma, el benja, juan garcia abrego who was even made an instant american citizen to "express extradite" his ass to the US, are undergoing the same same same, shame! Covfefe.
      Even the first crime that made La Chapa an international capo-calebrity and a Hollywood star is a blatant falsehood, but the true part is false and pendeja...
      If Ramon Arellano Felix and HIS GANG killed cardinal Posadas Ocampo "while trying to kill la chapa" why did la chapa got lersecuted and imprisoned for more than 5 years?
      La chapa is a victim there!
      But the mexican government is a bunch of pendejos and imbeciles "and justice must be carried away" I mean "done"

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    11. @4:17 the Moreira brothers have not suffered at all, the iguala mayor and wife were actually innocent of the crimes against the 43 are are pawns...although they are complicit in many other crimes I doubt if they will be found guilty infact the wife' charges were dropped in the case of the 43. for the culprits look to the military officers who help dispose the bodies and the governors office for calling for their abductions.

      Yes pawns are used to satisfy the public wanting blood. But even in the case of the 43 95% of those arrested were given their freedom. The leader of GU was released because his constitutional rights were tampered with says the court.

      and Maria ...well I don't know about the governor but she did have a fling with Arturo Beltran Leyva.

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    12. 8:13 dicen que puede mas las nalgas de una vieja que una yunta de güeyes, y pos le salió caro al barbas, EPN and aguirre go a long way since the Butcher of Aguas Blancas y El Charco, governor ruben figueroa alcocer, for whom angel aguirre was a su plenty governor and from whom he inherited the governorship when ruben had to resign and Secretary of governance of la neta zedillo Emilio chuayfett chemor, eon's secretary if education who did not want ayotzinapos in mexico city protesting while celebrating OCT 2, day of Corpus CHRISTY when the government's hawks (halcones) killed themselves a few more mexicans and arrested a few others and tortured some more to keep fresh the practice, chuayffet chemor did not want to see protesters in hijacked busses in mexico city making trouble for his beloved "toy", epn. As governor again, angel aguirre had nothing to win from kidnapping and disappearing 43 more students", chuayfett could have generated one more night for himself with the man of his dreams, EPN, now a "president"

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  4. El GAFE de CDN said in a manta that he wasn't caught

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  5. Best post ever on BB. Thanks/gracias

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  6. Always it's the Politicos. Man steal everything and move to Texas. Believe me they r rich.

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    1. 2:50 if the politicos were put in prison they would sing, and name names from the international business and banking worlds, and "perhaps" a few mexicans...

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  7. chivis? would you weigh in please?

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  8. Excellente Post , El Profe
    Muchas Gracias !




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  9. the USA gov't is just as bad!

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  10. "Nobody wants to talk about how is it that you can get high in New York when there’s mass surveillance done by the NSA and others. We all want to talk about the drug lords in Mexico. We want to talk about El Chapo, a guy who didn’t finish elementary school, who doesn’t even know how to send a video message from his cell phone, but suddenly he’s the guy we need to blame. It’s absurd. My agenda is to say that we’re choosing the wrong criminals."

    THAT IS THE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH!

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  11. Finished reading 2666 a few months ago. I agree that Bolaño is a literary genius. One of the best novels I've ever read.

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    1. Thanks for your input and BB.
      Definitely looking forward to read his work
      Hopefully a version of it can be found on audio. Perfect with that cup of tea while enjoying fall weather.

      Great posting BB .
      Keep up the great work!

      E42

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    2. 9:10 Cup of tea or a mamila?
      No masques, aqui la bonita y de Inglaburra es el Otis

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  12. This is definitely the case today, but it didn't start that way. It really only occurred after the gap created by the visible "fall" of the major Colombian cartels. Escobar's idea of running for office probably sparked a thought in the minds of politicians who saw how much they could make, and how much power they could have, if they got involved AFTER they were in office; because nobody looks at the politicians to be involved in something so visible as the drug trade.

    The real reason those guys select their replacements. It's their reward for supporting the organization; I wouldn't be surprised if there is a kind of pyramid scheme going on where the retired politicians are still receiving a cut of the action while no longer being directly involved.

    KB

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    1. Interesting theory which makes a plausible sense of the reality.

      Nice KB

      E42

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    2. 7:04 Pablo Escobar Gaviria's employee was colombia's Areonautica Civil administrator "El Varito", alvaro uribe velez, who still calls the shots in colombia after milking his knowledge of drug trafficking to all over the world after his long political drug trafficking terrorist milico and friend of too many guerrillas career, he also took care of his guerria drug trafficking partners, but it was harder to control his paracos and milicos that escaped alive to sing about their institutional crimes.
      Mister alvaro uribe velez was an early visitor to Mar a Lago at the start of this year of 2017, yer welcome.

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    3. Present president of Culombia Juan Ramon Santos used to be a coordinator of Alvaro Uribe Velez "El Ubérrimo", he coordinated the guerrillas and the paracos and the milicos in colombia and with other countries, AND was a friend of fidel and raul castro AND a frequent visitor to Cuba, used to sport a Fidelista beard to absorb more of fidel communist crap and come back to "polinize" colombia, kind of like Moss and his ten commandments...he did wonderful by uribe vez, sti does, while appearing to be having bitch fights among las dos perras all the time...
      "necessitan que les den por la boca por maricones" a favorite phrase of $USD millionaire$ alvaro uribe velez, who also murdered his daddy and the pilot contractor that
      did the 'job' brother salvador, a former priest also headed the 12 apostes murdering gang of paracos members of the AUC and friends of the PEPES, their murdering made many new land owners and hacendados, and the children of "el varito", "blos chakys" millionaires too, and "vicepresident" former general de la polesia nazional Oscar Naranjo" EPN'S asesor in autodefensas must have a good fat war chest after so many years of serving, not the colombians but himself, even with the policia nacional cadets, some of which the "Altos mandos" rented out by the hour or by the day or the full night...

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  13. Of course the politicians, bureaucrats and cops are an integral part of the narco business. This is no revelation.
    But without drug thugs there would be no business.
    In reality, the drug business is not nuclear physics. It's pretty simple and right out in the open.

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    1. Exactly. Agreed. Intellectuals only exist because they love complicating the shit out of everything, especially things that don’t need complicating. Corruption + someone poor, desperate and crazy enough = drug trade, sometimes flashy, sometimes not

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    2. 11:37 how does pointing the lassers at "businessmen" behind the drug trafficking myths complicate the proposition?
      Is you ass too happy that with la chapa and la barbie and la zeta chorrienta in prison and el barbas dead, drug trafficking is done gone for good?

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  14. 4:52 the people that handle american politicians like the puppets they are, or some times like the dummy dumb facks they REALLY ARE, with a hand up their ass, they are not just like mexicans, they rob the public through in DOLLARS, and by the millions, about 20 peisos per dollar.

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  15. Great interview.

    “The myth is to believe that El Chapo, an uneducated farmer from Sinaloa, rules the world,” he told me. “I want people who hold real power to be in the most critical light.”

    Meet the new king, same as the old King = Mencho

    "Bolaño understood that drug trafficking in Mexico is not a matter of drug cartels threatening the Mexican state, meaning the government, but a matter of the state controlling the drug organizations. These organizations are built into the state, and many times they are indistinguishable from the state, not because these drug organizations buy the state and corrupt it from the outside as many people believe, but because the state contains the drug trafficking"

    Some good insights but the above does not make logical sense. The state, as powerful as it is, will not take action to weaken itself. Which is what is now occurring with war among different factions. The economy (one example is tourism) is greatly harmed. Not to mention international relations and being perceived as a weak corrupt state.

    So yes the state is corrupt and has pulled in the drug trade as an unofficial partner. But this partner is out of control.

    Oops who would have thought unpredictable partners would act unpredictably.

    ElCien

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    1. 10:40 si cientes cosquillas por el overthere, don't blame a narco, or the government, even the mexican businessmen, "Our Man In Mexico" ambassador Win Scott started it all for the US government, his puppets and dummies have passed the business on to their "scions", they also allow others to be the fall guys.

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  16. “Artsy fartsy intellectual types also interested in the narco world”

    “Water is wet”

    *turns up virlan garcia

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  17. Journalist killed in San Luis Potosi

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  18. Great writers write about what they know best and are sparse and fluid, writing, captivating and holding their reader through each written word. Of course, in 2666, his protaganists come from the literary world, his world which he knows best. Unfortunately, for Botano and the reader, his writing demonstrates his lack of knowledge of Mexico and the narco world which he attempts to portray.
    Botano's wordy(should've been edited to 400 words) 2666 is a rambling mish-mash of a desperate attempt by a dying man trying to enshrine his legacy and provide a future for his loved ones. He received some critical acclaim, due more to his untimely death than 2666, but failed in the monetary hope.

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