Narcotráfico, literatura y violencia, estética y gasto

Se trata de un examen de las distintas perspectivas desde las que se ha abordado el fenómeno del narcotráfico en la literatura colombiana y del proceso histórico que ha orientado dichas aproximaciones a la realidad nacional. Las novelas estudiadas son: Coca: novela de la mafia criolla (1977) de Hernán Hoyos, El cadáver de papá (1978) de Jaime Manrique Ardila, La mala hierba (1981) de Juan Gossaín, Divino (1986) de Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal, Leopardo al sol (1993) de Laura Restrepo, Cartas cruzadas (1995) de Darío Jaramillo Agudelo, El zar, el gran capo (1995) de Antonio Gallego Uribe, En voz baja (1999) de Darío Ruiz Gómez, La lectora (2000) de Sergio Álvarez, Hijos de la nieve (2000) de José Libardo Porras, Quítate de la vía, Perico (2001) de Umberto Valverde, Comandante Paraíso (2002) de Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal, Angosta (2003) de Héctor Abad-Faciolince, Batallas en el monte de Venus (2003) de Óscar Collazos, Delirio (2004) de Laura Restrepo, El Eskimal y la Mariposa (2004) de Naum Montt, Sin tetas no hay paraíso (2005) de Gustavo Bolívar.

En este artículo se analizan las significaciones de la ostentación como tema y topo que figurativiza la violencia del narcotráfico en cuatro novelas colombianas contemporáneas. El corpus narra cómo el dinero posibilitó la apoteosis social de los narcotraficantes, considerados nuevos héroes y arquetipos del éxito; por lo que consideramos que la literatura, como discurso social, nos permite comprender los procesos sociohistóricos que garantizaron la narcoapoteosis, y leer cómo la violencia atravesó vidas y cuerpos, cambiando las relaciones humanas en un país que se interroga, por la permanencia del Conflicto, qué se entiende por vida. Abstract: This article analyzes the meanings of the ostentation, like a theme and trope, in four Colombian novels. The corpus narrates how the money made possible the social apotheosis of drug traffickers, considered new heroes and archetypes of success; for that reason, we consider the literatura, as social discourse, let us understand the socio-historical processes that ensured the narcoapotheosis and read how violence crossed lives and bodies, changing human relations, in a country that is questioned by the permanence of the war and the meaning of life.

Perra brava es una novela de ficción pero que presenta hechos bastante apegados a la realidad actual. Escrita en lenguaje coloquial y haciendo uso de modismos propios de la región en donde se desarrolla la historia así como el empleo de palabras tomadas del inglés, el texto lleva al lector a profundizar en la mente femenina. La novela narra en forma lineal la vida de Fernanda Salas, una estudiante de la filosofía que se hace novia de un capo del narcotráfico en Monterrey. Las coordenadas espacio-temporales que se observan bien podrían situar a la novela en el Monterrey del 2009-2010, en donde la presencia de grupos criminales en la capital de Nuevo León no es nada nuevo bajo el sol. La novela toma al narcotráfico solamente como contexto para presentar la historia de una mujer que pasa de la sumisión a la dominación y la adereza con megalomanía y emociones al límite. A lo largo de la novela se perfila la vida cotidiana de Fernanda: sus clases en la facultad, convivencia con su familia o amigos y  la cercanía que tiene con el grupo de sicarios comandados por su novio Julio. Pudiera ser que la historia fuera excepcional, sin embargo, la violencia de la guerra del narcotráfico se ha vuelto tan cotidiana que no es extraño que la narración  resulte familiar. El nervio central de la novela son los pensamientos y sentimientos de Fernanda. Es una historia que inicia con una mujer sometida a voluntad pero que al final saca la uñas y es ella quien toma las riendas de su propia vida además de asumir las consecuencias de sus decisiones. El final es bastante impredecible y a la vez es crudo; conformando así una novela que pretende retratar situaciones de la vida cotidiana y expone las debilidades humanas que aquejan a seres humanos, sin importar si son hombres o mujeres: dinero y poder.

Este trabajo examina la representación de la violencia y el narcotráfico en dos novelas vallecaucanas: Quítate de la vía, Perico, de Umberto Valverde y Comandante Paraíso de Gustavo Álvarez Gardeazábal. Aunque fueron publicadas en los años 2001 y 2002, cuando el país afrontaba un panorama de violencia generalizada que ya no podía entenderse al margen de la economía de la droga, estas novelas desestiman la importancia de la incidencia del narcotráfico en la violencia y ofrecen una mirada sobre el narcotraficante que realza sus atributos positivos y minimiza o desestima su responsabilidad directa en la debacle nacional. Esta visión de mundo pro-narca, desarrollada a través de múltiples mecanismos textuales, permite concluir que esta es una literatura cómplice.

1. Retomamos el término epidemia a partir de la conceptualización elaborada por Canghilhem (1971), como una enfermedad que ataca al mismo tiempo y con características inmutables a un gran número de personas. La epidemia por lo tanto, para Canghilhem, es histórica, colectiva y múltiple. pp. 79-92 la palabra No. 27 tunja, Julio -Diciembre de 2015, ISSN 0121-8530

La novela Trabajos del Reino y el cuento "Señor de Señores", escritos respectivamente por Yuri Herrera y Miguel Tapia, abordan el tema del narcotráfico desde un registro similar. En esta ponencia, analizaré su búsqueda de estructuras narrativas en la tradición regional y occidental más profunda, sobre las cuales sustentan su trabajo poético.

Este libro y el coloquio internacional del que es fruto han recibido el patrocinio cultural de la Universidad de Haute-Alsace (ILLE), de la Ciudad de Mulhouse y de la Región Alsacia (Francia). Agradecemos encarecidamente la colaboración del Comité Científico del Coloquio Internacional "Reescrituras del imaginario policiaco en la literatura española y latinoamericana contemporáneas

The Neoliberal Process has had disastrous social and economic performance across the country, but some regional have been most affected, Michoacan is a paradigmatic example because despite being a state with a great cultural and geographical wealth is mired in a process of violence, insecurity and corruption that has caused the most important social upheaval of the new millennium. Demand which is the world's largest drug market (USA) became the early 90s the state of Michoacan (one of the most backward provinces) in one of the leading territories in production, transfer and export narcotics, huge business, which combined with the ineffective response of the Mexican state, enabling the emergence of various drug cartels, all of which were transformed into criminal fundamentalist groups, deeply embedded in the social fabric, able to replace the state in its functions from; administration of justice, social security, education and employment, but at the same time be "the scourge of God" to commit murder, robbery, kidnapping, extortion, rape and any number of crimes by "divine right". Corruption and absence of rule of law enabling that in 2013 a group of citizens take up arms in order to defend itself and in fact replace Mexican security institutions, the alert is on and the federal government faithful lackey imperialist interests has dispersed this uprising deposed, either through silver or lead

In the last decades the narco-trafficking industry has grown in its economic, social, and political global impact. Nevertheless, the distribution of wealth of this industry does not follow the traditional approach of capital accumulation, especially due to the precarious environment involved in this illegal activity. As result of this circumstance, the transitory protagonists of the narco-business have developed an extravagant attitude in which economic expenditure ultimately means a violent and tragic defiance to the sovereign state. In a social and legal order where their lives are considered worthless, they expend money in a manner inversely proportional to their life expectancy. The foundational rise of the so-called narco-narrative in Mexico and Colombia in the early 90s began to deal with the topic beyond the condemning approach in official discourse. Furthermore, the narco-literature exposes the deep crisis some countries and social sectors are immersed in due to the hegemony of late capitalism, which has allowed the conditions for this industry to continue to flourish.

El artículo aborda la formación de grupos de defensa comunitaria, en la Meseta  Purépecha en Michoacán, México, a partir de entender su emergencia como momentos de la reapropiación de la violencia y de la instauración permanente de comunidades defensivas, erigidas bajo un contexto signado por un Estado omiso, transformaciones económicas que dan soporte a una mayor vulnerabilidad social, condiciones de vida precaria y actividades delictivas del crimen organizado. Las comunidades o segmentos de ellas han instalado controles al margen de las instituciones de seguridad del Estado y negocian con él bajo situaciones de ambigüedad legal y violencia.

Set in South America, this fictional account is part travelogue and part social, cultural and political comment as seen through the eyes of three main characters - an open-minded British traveller, a Colombian-born farm turned city girl, and a Scottish-born traveller immersed in Eastern philosophy. Through brief, but intense encounters, these three attempt to understand the South American culture - and their own paths.

- Wendy O’Hanlon - The Noosa Journal

" David Cole's novel, A Mushroom of Glass, is evidence the literary novel is very alive. Those who seek the magic of language in their reading, will find much to enjoy here.  Every traveller to South America should take this novel on the journey."

Roslyn Arnold

BOOK REVIEW A MUSHROOM OF GLASS David Cole

This is a superb first novel, a young man’s novel, compellingly fresh with each shift of feeling carefully detailed. It is utterly persuasive with a spiritual intensity which is stunning. It is engrossing, imaginative and humane with an intensity of excitement and sensuality which is powerful. The concept behind the novel is bold. Through the narrative with its intensive stories set in diverse political and geographical locations the novel persuasively explores time, love, loyalty and betrayal. It conveys a wonderful feel for a variety of locations where corruption is deep, compulsive and acutely observed. The plot is racy and mysterious, a compulsive read, difficult to put down.

Claire Hiller
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JOHN MORROW’S PICK OF THE WEEK

A MUSHROOM OF GLASS
David R Cole
Sid Harta

David Cole, the author of this novel, lives in the beautiful state of Tasmania where he lectures on literacy and English education at the University of Tasmania.  He bases his writing on life experiences and his travels throughout the world.

The author’s obvious knowledge of South America formed the basis of this novel which is set in Colombia.  Not only is this story about love and desire but it transports the reader into the romantic and passionate world where rhythms of South American music beats wildly.

Music such as the salsa, reggae and mambo has seen the beginnings of many a love story, I would hazard to guess.  There is something steamy and passionate about whirling bodies, long looks and swinging hips that certainly cause the blood to stir, even in a man who is referred to by his wife as ‘tradeinable’.

Panaiota is a flirty and sexy young woman who has beguiled the young man Sebastian.  Meanwhile, a young European man is about to meet his destiny when he falls under her spell as well.   

As the story develops, you soon become caught up in the myriad of rich characters described by the person telling the story, the young man who falls under not only Panaiota’s spell, but the spell of Colombia as well.

This novel is a sensuous one and I would probably not recommend it to my dear old granny or my mother-in-law as a ‘must read’ novel.  They would probably become a little shocked at the sexual undertones in the novel. 

However, if you, like myself, approach every novel with an open mind, you may find this novel very entertaining.

This novel also provides many insights into the daily life, countryside and lifestyles of the Colombian people…………..warts and all.  More than any of the content, this was what made this novel particularly interesting for me.

“Hot Colombian nights, hot South American music and some hot characters star in this novel about love and relationships in Colombia”

CA Cranston:

Like Alice Through the Looking Glass, this novel gets curiouser and curiouser. Is this novel about a young woman’s journey from hell into a healing, alternative life-style?  Or is she to be read as the embodiment of deeply embedded social practices, imprisoned by the constructions that others write upon her?  This, Cole’s first novel, is post-modern playfulness set against the background of contemporary Colombia and the legacy of colonisation: Columbian, Indian, Indonesian, political and spiritual.  His title ‘A Mushroom of Glass’ itself engages in textual colonizing: the literary portal that allows Lewis Carroll’s Alice to cross Through the Looking Glass into paradoxical situations and inverse logic are in Cole’s novel further complicated by the inclusion of shamanic portals (facilitated by the guru-figure Shean) along with the computer portals of the technological age which ensnare the central character, Panaiota, in a Q&A blueprint for dystopia.

The first half of the novel explores the external realities of the Colombian political situation specifically through speech-action pastiche filtered through the daily activities of Panaiota, a privileged young female lawyer--the glue in novel’s spine. But the nineteenth-century literary conventions that haunt about the novel (the narrator’s collusion with the reader; his reference to ‘our heroine’; the promise of romance and exoticism) evolve textually into post-modernity subjectivity in the second half of the novel.  Here Panaiota comes unglued:  here the fragmentary quality of glass provides the motif for exploring multiple perspectives, while the hallucinogenic property associated with mushrooms provides, metaphorically, the logic driving subjective exploration. Dream becomes the meta-narrative; dead philosophers argue absolute truths; unpublished writers defend their creativity to the deaf ears of the publishers.

The manipulating writer character/narrator, Gregory, though in love with his heroine, is no White Knight; and whereas Lewis Carroll’s Alice tells the White Knight ‘I don’t want to be anybody’s prisoner. I want to be a Queen’, Gregory’s heroine is imprisoned by social militants; Panaiota is transformed into the body politic, she becomes a writerly construct for national psychological distress and ancestral shame of Spanish colonization and Colombian oppression.  Alice and the White Knight leave happily, together.  Gregory, however, abandons his character to powerlessness and subservience.  Perhaps the ending (Panaiota, earth-mother figure, wife number three, in Shean’s shamanistic community) is to be read as socially positive, or perhaps it is to be read as a failure of the postmodern social project in which gender and class is integrated and replaces the master narrative.

Capítulo del libro "Los silencios de la guerra" coordinado por María Victoria Uribe y Camila de Gamboa en el que se estudian distintas formas en las que se ha registrado el silencio en el México contemporáneo. Se toma como punto de partido la  lectura que hace Shoshana Felman sobre el silencio en la obra de Walter Benjamin.

The article is a consideration of the work of Giuseppe Di Giacomo, Estetica e letteratura which deals with the era of the great European novel between the 19th and 20th centuries. Di Giacomo takes into consideration the two streams of the modern novel which Lukács identifies in Die Theorie des Romans: 1) the Flaubert stream, which understands “literature as an absolute”, and is characterized by its demand for totality (of meaning); and 2) the Dostoevsky stream which, in contrast, deals with the step from “the work to life”, a step that situates the totality, the meaning, in life itself. The aesthetic- literary reflexion of Di Giacomo implicitly involves the relationship between philosophy and literature.

El libro "Nosotros, Colombia... Comunicación, Paz y (Pos)Conflicto incluye ensayos de distintos autores que piensan la paz y el (pos)conflicto desde la comunicación. El capítulo "Literatura, ficción y memoria: el relato del conflicto armado en la narrativa colombiana del siglo XXI" recoge más de 50 obras literarias escritas en Colombia en lo corrido del siglo XXI, en las que se representan distintos hechos victimizantes y se describen situaciones propias del conflicto armado colombiano: narcotráfico, sicariato, desplazamiento y desaparición forzadas, masacres, paramilitarismo y guerrillas, violencia urbana, entre otros.

En el presente artículo se analiza algunos topos de la violencia
del narcotráfico en Colombia en cuatro novelas contemporáneas;
haciendo énfasis en las décadas de los ochenta y noventa, contexto
histórico recreado por los textos, y que en este trabajo llamaremos
“años de la peste”. El objetivo es demostrar, desde un análisis
semiológico, que el narcotráfico como sistema de producción
es símbolo y síntoma de la ausencia del Estado; por lo que
presentamos la relación “morbosa” entre narcotráfico y violencia
que se reconstruye narrativamente en el corpus seleccionado, para
caracterizar lo que llamaremos narco-violencia y entenderla como
una epidemia que irrumpió históricamente en la cotidianidad
colombiana.

Palabras Clave: narco-violencia, epidemia, ausencia de Estado, literatura colombiana, semiología.