Abstract
This chapter fast-forwards to the contemporary era, examining, through the “Zurdo” Mendieta novels of Élmer Mendoza, a Mexico that at first glance appears to be the scene of violence that can only be considered “sobering,” but is in fact shown to be rife with psychotropic influences. From the textual rock soundtrack inherited from the Onda authors but now accompanying the gritty details of homicide investigations to a regime of addictive behaviors aimed at coping with the stresses of a violent reality; from the incursions of a narcossist mentality emanating from the North to the intoxicating climate of fear that maintains a corrupt status quo, these novels portray complex networks of power and violence interlaced with everyday forms of psychotropy. At the same time, the texts themselves reflexively engage with and enact structures of addiction, juxtaposing practices of reading, investigation, narcotics, and the compulsive behaviors to which people resort just to get through the day.
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Notes
- 1.
I use terms like “criminal organization” for clarity, but it should be understood that no hard line can be drawn between these organizations, governmental entities, or indeed licit business interests, as discussed in Chap. 1 and later in this chapter.
- 2.
Also see Luis Prados, who quotes novelist Emiliano Monge: “Hay dos narcoliteraturas: la policiaca y la literaria” (“Más allá de la narcoliteratura”). Gabriela Polit Dueñas, for her part, sees the Zurdo series as a retreat from the accurate and challenging representation of local culture achieved in his previous work and a concession to the demands and expectations of transnational publishing (in a sense a shift from the “literary” toward the “popular”) (77–78). To the extent that I refer in this chapter to a distinction between “popular” and “literary” fiction, my intention is to refer to common perceptions rather than to accept the legitimacy of these as stable aesthetic categories.
- 3.
This judgment is in resonance with Mendoza’s own assessment of his work’s relevance, as relayed by Prados: they are “novelas que restituyen la verdad en toda su complejidad social” (“Élmer Mendoza”).
- 4.
It should be noted that Mendoza’s own statements on the question of labels and genres within fiction are somewhat contradictory. On one hand, according to Gabriela Polit Dueñas, Mendoza does not believe his work to adhere to a “formula” defined by the literature of narco-trafficking, nor does he see such literature as a distinct sub-genre: “Literature … is simply literature” (11). Later, she quotes him saying that he essentially plays along with the categorization undertaken by the public or critics (64–5). However, in his 2012 interview with Prados, he seems to take ownership of the “narcoliteratura” label: “Es una estética de la violencia. … Me gusta la palabra narcoliteratura porque los que estamos comprometidos con este registro estético de novela social tenemos las pelotas para escribir sobre ello porque crecimos allí y sabemos de qué hablamos” (“Élmer Mendoza”).
- 5.
While Jameson characterizes Barthes’s literary jouissance as an apolitical response to the sublime object of capital (383–84), I argue that its challenge to the ego means it may be compatible with my concept of xenotropy, making it potentially subversive of the subjective foundations of capitalist culture.
- 6.
For the psychotropic action of foods, see Hoebel. For that of music, see Salimpoor et al. (257–62). Perhaps the best example of the psychotropy of pure pleasure in the Zurdo novels is the gastronomic zeal often displayed by the characters in passages that make it clear that food maintains a prominent place in the psychotropic landscape of Mendoza’s Culiacán. In these instances, the narration is clearly infected by the characters’ culinary enthusiasm, and the sense of euphoria is palpable: Nombre de perro goes into detail enumerating various ways to serve pescado zarandeado al horno including, of course, alcohol pairings (87). Even the formidable capo Samantha Valdés is seen cooking with her mother, and we are privy to the mouth-watering details (129–30). While one might simply chalk this up to a realist attention to detail, this level of description is actually rare in the Zurdo novels, which focus more on dialog, psychology, and the dynamics of investigation.
- 7.
Fernández Rojas y Ramírez Gil have cataloged and commented on many of the musical references from Balas de plata and La prueba del ácido (37–40).
- 8.
For a broad consideration of the history and social function of narcocorridos , see Juan Carlos Ramírez-Pimienta, Cantar a los narcos.
- 9.
For Mendieta, for example, alcohol is an indispensable medicine for getting through the day as well as for ending it: at one point, he realizes with a sense of shock, “Uta es tardísimo y no he tomado ni una cerveza” (Prueba 96). His free indirect speech calls whiskey “esa brujería escocesa que lo hacía dormir lo justo” (Nombre 54). In the deadly context of detective work in Culiacán, Mendieta’s use of alcohol functions not as an index of his moral character, as it does in much of the “hard-boiled” tradition of detective fiction (Rippetoe 24), but as a crude treatment for anxiety and a sleeping aid. The detective also uses tobacco to cope with stress: waiting at Susana Luján’s door for his long-awaited reencuentro with her, he thinks, frantically “¿[Q]ué pretende, que me infarte por los nervios? Se recargó en el carro y sacó un cigarrillo. … Fuego, aroma. ¿Los que prohibieron fumar pensarían en esta situación? Deben haber sido personas muy seguras de sí mismas … ¿cómo vivirían esta circunstancia?” (Nombre 48).
- 10.
The inclusion of Mendieta’s body as a character in Nombre de perro also suggests an interesting sense of corporeal protagonism in which the body is apparently not “simply” an object (14, 30, 49–50, 91, 133, 143). This is important in light of the apparent objectification of women as intoxicants in the narration, which does seem to feature a male gaze that sometimes unduly focuses on physical aspects of female characters (see, e.g., Nombre 133). This analysis seeks to characterize the psychotropy of sex and love as a complex, intersubjective interaction of teletropy (which involves agency on the part of the “intoxicant”) and autotropy (which implies self-intoxication through one’s own image of the object of desire).
- 11.
This phenomenology of thrownness and addiction has observable correlates inside the brain. Neurophysiological research has corroborated the intoxicating and addictive properties of romantic attraction, indicating that intense romantic love—as well as its loss—has been shown to activate dopamine-rich areas of the brain associated with motivation and reward (Fisher et al. 56). Dopamine, then, is associated with reward but also with craving, and Helen Fisher and colleagues found that rejected lovers show activation in the same parts of the dopaminergic system that is implicated in both the cocaine high and the craving for cocaine (57). This fact may go a long way toward explaining the lengths of depravity reached by many a spurned lover, and Fisher’s definition of romantic love as an emotional-motivational structure that evolved from a mammalian drive to “pursue preferred mates” (51) is broad enough to apply to the kind of obsessive, sexual, quasi-romantic attraction provoked in Mayra Cabral de Melo’s clients.
- 12.
“Intoxication names a method of mental labor that is responsible for making phantoms appear. It was a manner of treating the phantom, either by making it emerge—or vanish. It was by working on Edgar Allan Poe that Baudelaire recognized the logic of the tomb, to which he attached the stomach. The stomach became the tomb. At one point Baudelaire seems to ask: whom are you preserving in alcohol?” (Ronell Crack Wars 5).
- 13.
Also “denoting a substance that stimulates the secretion of something: galactagogue,” lining up interestingly with the way psychotropic substances and practices affect neurotransmitter activity (“-agogue,” Collins English Dictionary).
- 14.
“< Greek -agōgos, -ē, -on, akin to ágein to lead” (“-agogue,” Dictionary.com).
- 15.
See Couppis on how the dopamine reward system reinforces aggression.
- 16.
See Lusane for a broad consideration of the relationship between race and drug prohibition.
- 17.
For examples of alleged nonfiction laundering of drug money by major banks, see Fitzpatrick, Smith, and Silver-Greenberg and Protess.
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Patteson, J. (2021). High Crimes: Élmer Mendoza’s “Zurdo” Mendieta Series and the Psychotropic Economy. In: Drugs, Violence and Latin America . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68924-7_5
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