You know how Mariguano will end, whether or not you do your due diligence and preread like a good boy. It's got all your basic food groups. Drugs. Sex. Lots of bullets. And enough blood to wash it all down good. It's important for a growing boy to get enough to eat. And this is bildungsroman, after all. So how do we get to that inevitable end and do we believe that they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids?
The book is written from Don Julio's son El Johnny's point of view and we are not privy to any of the permutations or vicissitudes of the Mexican drug trade that the narrator does not witness firsthand. This is effective in believably establishing the romanticized mysteriousness that often surrounds criminal paterfamilias such as Don Julio. He is never a literal presence in the narrator or his family's life for very long. But he casts a long shadow. El Johnny frequently has to wait by the phone, on either side of the border, for his father to call with marching orders. We never know if the ringing will herald a bundle of cash, drugs, or news of a deal gone wrong, of money owed, of the call to war.
When he is home, Don Julio is henpecked by his wife for more of his ill-gotten gains and there's never enough and it's always something. It'd feel like a sitcom if Don Julio was going to a bar instead of a shake down. But even when their ship comes in (or truck, rather, that has to make it past the scrutiny of the secured border as well as the Border Patrol's checkpoints fifty or so miles in), Don Julio always takes whatever cash has been paid or tipped to El Johnny to show him who's in charge. At first, Don Julio's success can justify this as a sort of apprenticeship in the underworld for El Johnny, a tough love reminder of who's the boss and what El Jonny will be able to do when it's his turn. If it gets to be his turn.
As a fan of and writer of speculative fiction, I can't help but analogize the figurative monsters of organized crime to the literal ones. One trope that doesn't get examined enough is the society of monsters. I don't care about the solitary, invulnerable, and indiscriminate killers who are alone in their neighborhood or campground. I like it when I see a world that's a reflection of ours and alive, but for those things that live in the shadows. Vastly powerful, ancient, and evil creatures rarely engage one another. They jealously guard their domains, holding sway over business or the law, and grow fat off the misery and suffering of their victims until someone's had enough. Or a younger monster tries to take what he wants with this new found power. Hubris brings down these fiends within striking distance of those mere god-fearing mortals, like us. Or the monsters win. Or we join them.
Mariguano answers the questions raised by critical fans of such work clamoring for the next Freddy Vs. Jason, Godzilla, or Pacific Rim movie: Why do the monsters hide? Why don't they fight? Although we never see Don Julio have the piles of money that Heisenberg had locked away in a storage unit on Breaking Bad, and even though he's always hustling for the next payday or driving around and doling out the necessary bluster and beatings (to support his increasingly affluent family's lifestyle as well as fuel his growing appetites for women and drugs); Don Julio reaches the height of power and influence in the criminal underworld.
Despite this he must stay in the shadows because, like the mafiosos of The Sopranos or Scorsese's films, they are monsters and sociopaths who cannot kill whomever they want whenever they want even though they take whatever they want and can and do kill. They are bound by their own secret society's rules and restrictions, just like vampires can't go out in the sun or take sustenance from anything but blood and human suffering (even if the predation feels euphoric and orgasmic until it degenerates into the desperate necessity of addiction). The rules keep everyone in line until someone thinks they're powerful enough to ignore them and make a play at becoming top banana. Someone with a shorter fuse or more bullets or less apprehension about what everyone thinks of his reputation. Most of them fail and die. But those ancient monsters are ultimately no different than their would-be successors or replacements, and so the reset button gets pressed and the game restarts with some new players and some old.
The misogyny and racism in other tales of organized crime is represented in Mariguano and this is not surprising. Sons are still heirs to their father's holdings and expected to seek vengeance when those fathers meet their expected end. Women are sex objects and commodities or piece of designer furniture if they have the good sense to preserve their virtue until they can transform into the Holy Mary. Machismo and Marianismo taint Mexican culture and it'd be naive to expect a criminal subculture built on violence and exploitation to be anything remotely resembling progressive.
Warranted or not (in a novel focusing on the exploits of a crime boss and his family, not real life), as a Mexican El Johnny faces suspicion and exclusion on this side of the border. They have their place no doubt El Johnny's experiences mirror many minorities even today. On the other side Mexicans wear their national and racial identity as badges of honor and pride. They are only inferior to their most important neighbor to the north when it comes to hypocrisy.
I binged The Sopranos recently and these attitudes were striking when you consider that the show represents the world of just fifteen years ago, even to one who vehemently rejects the notion of a post racial America. But it is no less troublesome when one realizes that Mariguano is set thirty and not fifty or sixty years ago. The lesson to take from these issues is not to conceal these attitudes or censor them from art, but to never forget them lest we find ourselves at risk of taking a step back.
Were its insight merely historical and political, Mariguano would warrant reading and placement on the shelf among similar works of art and literature that focus on the various modern criminal subcultures. Easily overlooked while one joneses for understanding of the world of organized crime in Mexico (which by nature of the narrative is limited, but Breaking Bad didn't tell you exactly how to make meth) is El Johnny's pursuit of Mexcian law and the price of freedom in Mexico's legal system. He learns how much crime costs and to whom to send the check. Like in America, freedom isn't free.
The tone would be comparable to Burroughs' Junkie but Ole' Bill cooks his detached, scientific curiosity and strung out augury into a synthesis that's more journalistic up until it gets outright freaky. We are always right besides El Johnny, thrilled until we're terrified. Then numb. Don Julio's rise, at first, does not seem entirely Shakespearean because we don't know how he got so high (except when we see him getting high). But his fall.
Rating:
[√]BOOK IT. [ ]eBook it. [ ]Check it out. [ ]Skip it. [ ]Burn it.
(Disclaimer: I know the author and he is a friend of mine.)
No comments:
Post a Comment