Society Growing Inured to Violence, Author Says
Carlos Gosch - EFE
Mar 03, 2008
Madrid -- As a narrator of the drug-trafficking culture, Mexico's Elmer Mendoza says in his new book that "violence surprises us less and less."
"Balas de Plata" (Silver Bullets), with which he won last November the 3rd Tusquets Publishers Prize for the Novel, begins with the following reflection of its leading character, Edgar "El Zurdo" (Lefty) Mendieta, a detective suffering depression who hails from Mendoza's native region of Sinaloa: "The modernity of a city is measured by the guns that thunder in its streets."
Menieta's therapy for his psychological problems is interrupted by the murder of Bruno Canizales, a prestigious attorney who was a transvestite by night and who is found shot dead with a silver bullet.
"El Zurdo" has to unravel a complicated plot involving politicians, drug traffickers, police, an old love and other murders also committed with silver bullets, in an atmosphere of suffocating violencia and corruption.
The Mexican author says he is "terrified" to learn the degree of degradation reached by modern society in general and says it is very difficult to do away with "genetic" evil like corruption and violence, because "we would have to kill people and that is something we should not do."
Mendoza takes on the label of "narco-writer" thanks to the subject of his novels - among which figure other titles like "Efecto Tequila" (The Tequila Effect) and "Cobraselo Caro" (Charge a Lot) - because he believes it is a way for readers to identify him, although he does say that his books contain a lot of other things besides references to drug trafficking.
Writing about violence still hasn't caused him problems, says Mendoza, who uses the news in the papers as a reference for his plots and has discovered that among his readers there are more and more police, judges and members of the military.
Music is a resource that he uses to "connect" his story with reality, and "Balas de Plata" has an extensive soundtrack featuring the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Tigres del Norte and Rocio Durcal, among many others.
In fact, the novel was going to be called "Who Wants to Live Forever?," the name of a song by the British rock group Queen.
He says that since he won the Tusquets Prize he receives more telephone calls and more e-mails, and he perceives greater respect among "some sectors of Mexican and Latin American writers."
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