Narconovela: four case studies of the representation of drug trafficking in Mexican fiction

Thesis

In addition to coverage in the national and international media of the ongoing violence in Mexico related to the drug trade, there has been growing interest in fictional representations of the Mexican drug trade, its origins and social context. There is now a considerable body of written narratives that have been christened narconovelas. A small number of academic works has charted the emergence of the narconovela and sought to examine how drug traffickers have been represented and evaluated in fiction. However, very little attention has been paid to the aesthetic qualities of ‘narco-literature’. This study examines four of the most highly-regarded works in detail: Balas de plata (2008), by Élmer Mendoza; Los minutos negros (2006), by Martín Solares; Contrabando (2008), by Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda; and Trabajos del reino (2004), by Yuri Herrera. So embedded is the phenomenon of drug trafficking in northern Mexican culture, so suffused with cliché is its representation in other media, that to write about the topic with originality and ethical nuance is difficult. This thesis accounts for the distinct choices made by the four authors in question to address this difficulty of representation in the structure, style and tone of their novels. The self-awareness exhibited by these works of fiction regarding the challenges of representing their subject matter render them the most sophisticated examples yet created of the so-called narconovela.

Authors: Beard, A; Alexander Beard

• Publication date: 2014
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: Oxford University, UK
• Language: English
• Keywords: Mexican Literature; Latin American Literature; Mexico; Narconovela; Drug Trafficking
• Subjects: History of North America; Latin American; Spanish & Portuguese literatures; Literatures of Romance languages