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Mexico City (ratified). – Son of War (Seix Barral, Mexico, 2019, 444 pages) Ricardo Rafael’s latest book is an unclassifiable hybrid. Its structure combines two first-person voices: that of the writer narrating a detailed journalistic investigation and that of the drug dealer who is simultaneously living and dead.
Son of War It tells the story of Galdino Mellado Cruz, a soldier who deserted the country. Mexican Army According to the government of Enrique Peña Nieto, the founding member of the Zetas drug cartel is dead. However, Rafael delves into the deep details of his biography told aloud by Galdino himself in the prison of Chiconotla, Mexico State. The book cannot be categorized because it interweaves two universes that rarely mix: Rafael’s first-person voice narrates the construction of a news report in form, while the world of Z9, told from his perspective, is constructed from literary fiction. Son of War It is fiction, but it is also its opposite. The narrative does not follow a strict chronological structure, and the complete entries of the diary written by the prisoner for the journalist who visits him weekly appear from time to time in the two central voices. However, the commonality is clear and seeks to answer a central question: Who is Galdino Méraldo Cruz?
Son of War The complexity of multiple biographies is portrayed. In addition to the presumption of death, Galdino Melado Cruz has a series of identities that forces one to ask the obvious question: if it is really what he says it is. Rafael has taken a series of photographs in prison that, through evidence combining physical anthropology with statistics, show that the person in front of the hidden camera is the same person who was declared dead by the previous government. For his part, Galdino tells of a difficult childhood characterized by the indifference of his mother, the violence of his father (a criminal and pimp from Tepito), the brutality of his priests and supernatural episodes that led him into a supernatural world. Santeria. Galdino grew up in a completely dysfunctional environment in which crime flourished until he was affected. In a breeding ground of this nature, it seemed only a matter of time before the first criminal activity. However, the story is not linear: Galdino enlists in the army, becomes part of an elite organization that eventually becomes the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel and changes contemporary Mexican history under the name of the Zetas. Gardino’s character was a proto-Zeta, on par with major drug traffickers like Osiel Cardenas Guillén, Tony Tormenta, and Heriberto Lazcano. Son of War The intimate story of the Zetas is told in detail from the bottom up. To corroborate what is said, in addition to the anthropological evidence, Rafael – and a small research team of which I am a part – read previous documents on the Zetas, dusted newspaper archives and legal files, in addition to comparing Gardino’s story with other interviews and even letters from the drug lord. In a way, it is a work of documentary and journalistic contrast, outlining the macro history of the Zetas cartel from the fine organization and a series of micro stories told by Z9.
There are three types of books
Raphael made use of three schools of thought that coexisted Son of War — fiction, journalism and a kind of autobiography — delves into the nature of drug trafficking. The author breaks through traditional boundaries to reveal an extremely complex phenomenon: the birth of the most violent expression of our most brutal crisis. He does it from the perspective of a living dead man, who starts with the leader of the Zetas, spends days buried underground, tortured in feces and vomit, and ends up becoming a Ant More in prison. The answer to the book’s central question – who is Galdino Melardo Cruz? – is a mirror of its making: it is half-truth, half-false. The book evokes the opacity of the drug world, which is, by definition, underground. Rafael shows that truth and lies are not two parallel lines. Instead, they get closer and closer until they intersect, then move away again, like the double helix of genetic material. Lies and truth; authority and crime; open trade and the black market; light and darkness; fiction and research; journalists and fiction writers.
Son of War It also confronts at least a few philosophical dilemmas. On the one hand, the journalist reflects on the ethics of taking statements from serial killers without going to the authorities. On the other, it explores debates about the nature of truth. Raphael reveals the ontology of drug trafficking: it is impossible to fully understand it. It is an area where the truth can easily be overlooked. The interdisciplinary practices it deploys suggest that we are not moving blindly, but it also fails to produce definitive answers. As a journalistic investigation, Son of War This is a work that leaves questions unanswered and unresolved—it couldn’t be otherwise. Not even this effort to plumb the depths of the iceberg can determine its true size. Yet this book offers a thorough X-ray and a set of conclusions to confront the barbarity that affects us. Raphael illuminates the need to address domestic violence, to radically improve the management of our prison system, and, most importantly, to understand the psychology behind drug dealers, big and small. As it stands, prohibitionism stands in the way of a full understanding of our tragedy. It is impossible to know the size of the beast: we cannot fathom the size of the Minotaur. As long as the drug trade remains buried in ants and vomit, the truth of the full narrative and the justice it demands will not be discovered. Even if it were, Son of War This book pushes the current limits of our understanding of the space that the Zitascar and Raphael usually inhabit. It is a new path and a provocative invitation. Both for the literary and journalistic worlds, and for our reading of drug trafficking, Son of War It is a profound and necessary violation of the law.
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