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Our Lady of the Assassins (novel)
Encyclopedia
Our Lady of the Assassins (Spanish title: La virgen de los sicarios) is a semi-autobiographical novel by the Colombia
n writer Fernando Vallejo
about an author in his fifties who returns to his hometown of Medellín
after 30 years of absence to find himself trapped in an atmosphere of violence and murder caused by drug cartel
warfare. The novel was later adapted into a film
that received different international recognitions like the Aware of the Italian
Senate, the Venice Film Festival
(2000) as the best Latin America
n film and the La Habana International Festival "Nuevo Cine" (2000).
A growing body of scholarship and critical commentary already exist about this controversial work, most of it in Spanish. The brief sections below attempt to give the reader a basic understanding of some of the main approaches to what undoubtedly is a central work in Colombian fiction of the 1990s. An elaborated and discussed fictional work dealing with events related to the drug trade and its deleterious consequences in Colombian society.
Notice: Any text from the novel in this article is a free translation by Wikipedians, and should not be considered official. The novel was formally translated into English in 2001.
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A writer called Fernando returns to Medellín after an absence of 30 years. He finds the place transformed into Colombia's "capital of hate". Fernando meets Alexis, 16 years old, a male prostitute and a hitman - a Medellín child - with whom he falls in love. But their tender love is doomed. Alexis needs no reason to kill: like an Angel of Death he opens fire on anybody who rubs him the wrong way. Fernando and Alexis are bound by an intense passion as they wander from church to church, murder to murder. Alexis explains to Fernando the meanings and symbols of the dangerous world of the Medellín guns, while the author tells the boys the remembrances of his childhood in a Medellín that is not more the one he knew. When Alexis is finally killed by two teenagers on a motorbike, Fernando looks for his killer.
He finds Wilmar, another boy who keeps a surprising resemblance with late Alexis, not only in his body but also in his behaviors. Trying to live the same with Wilmar, he is soon informed that he is dating with the killer of Alexis. But he can not kill him, because Wilmar confessed to him that Alexis killed his brother before. Fernando proposed to Wilmar to leave the country. The boy agreed, but when he goes to his home to greet his mother for the last time, he is killed also. Fernando winds up alone in the middle of a city where love seems not possible.
The geographic context of the novel is the city of Medellín
(Colombia
) during the 1990s, a difficult time for Colombian society, when mafias declared a terrorist war against the State and Colombian institutions, led by the infamous
Pablo Escobar Gaviria
. The second largest Colombian city was the main scene where the mafias wanted to dominate the nation by terrorists attacks, using very young killers from the slums, who were known as "sicarios."
Vallejo illustrates in his work the emergence of new social groups emerging from the problem of drugs. The sicarios (hired assassins) are the result of that tension. Most of them were boys ready to kill for money, the same offered by the criminal organizations, to exterminate those who would dare to challenge the power of the mafias or put in danger their business. If authorities would not accept their corruption activities, the mafias resorted to sending a young assassin (el sicario). Normally, the sicario kills from a motorbike. Paradoxically, Colombian mafias keeps a great Catholic
devotion and honor traditions like the one of Mary Help of Christians
. This Marian devotion is very popular among the poor population of the city. The sicarios show great respect to Mary and pray to her for protection in their work of killing (She is the Virgen of the Sicarios.)
The mafias also gained the appreciation of the Medellín slums doing for them what several governments did not do for years. Pablo Escobar provided numerous things to impoverished neighborhoods, including housing, sport areas, electricity and schools, a factor that gave more popular power to the mafias, who were praised as heroes of the people. Boys (in many cases also girls), were willing to work for such popular benefactors, even killing whomever. The mafias played on social inequalities to guarantee their influence.
After the death of Pablo Escobar on December 2, 1993, by a special unit of the National Police of Colombia, the Medellín Cartel
went through an organizational crisis and the sicarios formed gun groups in the barrios. They began to dispute urban territories. The situation worsened when Colombian guerrillas infiltrated the cities trying to bring their war, traditionally in the countrysides, to the main urban centers. A real civil war happened in the 1990s' Medellín.
The story of Fernando, Alexis and Wilmar happens after the death of Pablo Escobar. The two boys are part of an army of killers without a strong capo. Without jobs, the boys wander the city, making it a dangerous place and killing whomever they consider dangerous for their own safety. Male prostitution became an option too. Alexis lives in Barrio Santo Domingo and Wilmar in Barrio La Francia, two slum quarters of the North of Medellín.
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Urban violence, common to many other Latin American cities with the same social roots and political conflicts, is the central theme of the novel. In Colombia, violence has been historically associated with the countryside, but during the second part of the 20th century it came to the cities due to the growth of drug cartels, which imposed their rules of violence and corruption.
Medellín, the old industrialist center, became the main headquarter of the powerful mafia
cartel of Pablo Escobar
. He changed the textile city into one of the most violent of Latin America
for that time. Pablo Escobar was shot down in 1993. In the period 1992 - 2002 the city registered 42,393 murders.
imposed a modality of crime with the hired killers ("sicarios" in Spanish) to murder political opponents or any authority that could put in danger their dirty business. What became astonishing was that the mafias were contracting teenagers from the slums of the big cities. Boys from marginalized barrios
(and many cases also girls), became killing machines ready to murder for the service of the mafias. Pablo Escobar, in the middle of his war against the Colombian authorities in the 1990s, offered three to five million pesos
(about USD 5,280 y 8,800 of 1990 currency) to anybody who would kill an official of the Police. About 300 policemen were killed in Medellín by sicarios willing to get paid by the mafias.
The other central theme of the novel is the city of Medellín as the backdrop for the urban violence and young hired killers. Medellín as the birthplace of several writers has been the space for many other literary and documentary works of authors like Tomás Carrasquilla
, Fernando González
, Porfirio Barba Jacob, Manuel Mejía Vallejo
, Gonzalo Arango
, León de Greiff
and many others. It is a city of a rigid and conservative Catholic
tradition and one of the most important industrial and business centers of Colombia. It came into a social crisis at the end of the 20th century due to the emergence of the mafias. The reasons why an entrepreneurial urban center and the leader of the national economy during the 1950s and 1960s began to overflow with violence is a complex sociological matter that involves society, politics and the culture of contemporary Colombia. The work of Vallejo put in evidence a nostalgia for the lost role of a city dominated by the social chaos and far from the presence of the State. About this the author says:
The other theme is homosexuality
. It is discussed in an open and natural way in a country where it is a taboo. Even if it appears as a secondary theme, because violence and sicarios are the main subjects, homosexuality in the novel calls strongly the attention of the reader. After all, an adult man has relationships with two teenagers, who contrast their sexual preferences with the strong and male world of crime and guns. The website for education of Chile
says to this regard:
In the novel, homosexuality is not insinuated or suggested with malice, but it is a natural part of the context of the work. The other characters around do not see to it with a kind of scandal or surprise, but as something natural. The theme is introduced in the novel like this:
Colombia is a country of a deep Catholicism mixed with strong tendencies of popular religiosity, which was born out of Spanish traditions in the Middle Ages, the ancestral beliefs of Afro-Americans and the American aborigines. Their ancestral believes were hidden in devotion to the saints. Popular religiosity appears as an alternative manifestation to the official religion as a way for people to seek their own relationships with the divine, out of vertical structures of power. Even if the official religion tries to integrate popular religiosity, popular religiosity holds it own freedom, separated from norms and doctrines and assumed especially by a marginalized and suffered group of peoples.
In Medellín, one of the most Catholic and conservative regions of the country, the popular religiosity got an unusual tone when it mixed with the urban violence and hired killers. One of the most popular devotions is the one to Mary Help of Christians
, the one that inspired the title of the novel. The Sanctuary of Sabaneta
(Santa Ana Church), became the site of pilgrimage for the mafia and its sicarios.
This Greek-Latin devotion became popular during the Middle Age
when the Christian
Europe
gathered to defend itself from the Muslim
invasions of the Ottoman Empire
in 1572. Pope Pius V asked the Christian world to pray to Mary under the advocation of Maria Auxilium Christianorum to defeat the enemies of the Church. In this way, Mary Help of Christians is a military devotion, a "(...) powerful Virgin, great and illustrious rampart of the Church, wonderful Help of Christians", one that is "terrible as an army drawn up in battle array". She is enough for protection, because "you alone overcome every error in the world; in anxieties, in struggles, in every difficulty defend us from the enemy" and we do not fear because "at the hour of our death receive our souls into paradise".
This devotion fills the expectancies of a young sicario and he asked to María Auxiliadora, the Virgen of the sicarios, to free him from every "evil and danger". As it became a popular religiosity, there is not the figure of the priest. Fernando and Alexis visited several churches but in any they cannot find a priest to listen their anxieties. The sicario is the priest of his own religion. He wears scapular
s with the image of the Virgin in his neck, his hands and feet to be protected at the time he will commit the murder.
For other sociologists, the Marian devotion of the young sicario is a cult to their mothers, la cucha ("mom" in the local jargon of Medellín). The theme was studied by the Medellian sociologist and journalist Alonso Salazar in his work "No nacimos pa semilla", 1990, ("We were not born to be a seed"), the first author to follow a systematic study of the problems of the slums young people. He discovered a very strong matriarchal society with the absence of the figure of the male parent and the cult for the mother, the real one, who in the Medellín slums was in charge of the growing of the family. The figure of the Virgen, so strong and powerful, caring for a child, has a great influence on the boys who look for their best future and have in their minds the endures of their own mothers. When Fernando proposed to Wilmar to leave the country, the boy agreed, but he wanted to give something expensive to his mother before were to go abroad.
is expressed through the first-person narrative
, as it is common in all Vallejo's works:
According to critics, the decision of Vallejo of speak in first person breaks the most obstinate tradition of literature of using an omniscient narrator who knows everything and sees everything, the novelist who can cross with his eyes the walls and reads the thought.
For the Colombian critic J.O. Melo, the work is written in an admirable style and sometimes poetic, where the jargon of the sicarios is mixed with local expressions and Antioquian terms
in such a way that alternate among the cynicism and the sensibility, the moving and the aggressive.
Our Lady of the Assassins is an urban novel, set in Medellín
. The characters travel throughout the city, from the slums to the more central spaces of the city. There is not a frontier to limit their wandering within the city, bringing behind them violence.
Medellín has been a recurrent setting for different works of literature and studies in Colombia since the beginning of its industrial revolution
at the end of the 19th century with authors like Tomás Carrasquilla
, León de Greiff
, Fernando González
, León de Greiff
and Porfirio Barba Jacob, to the writers, journalists and film directors of the second half of the 20th century like Gonzalo Arango
, Alonso Salazar, Víctor Gaviria
and Fernando Vallejo
. Through them, we can trace the development of a small town to an industrial city and the social crisis that surrounded the city at the end of the century.
In the novel, Vallejo sees two cities: that peaceful center that he remembers that he misses through Fernando (who is almost him) and the city of Alexis, the violent place he is seeing through the eyes and actions of the boy:
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n writer Fernando Vallejo
Fernando Vallejo
Fernando Vallejo Rendón is a novelist, filmmaker and essayist, born in Colombia. He obtained Mexican nationality in 2007.Vallejo was born and raised in Medellín, though he left his hometown early in life...
about an author in his fifties who returns to his hometown of Medellín
Medellín
Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...
after 30 years of absence to find himself trapped in an atmosphere of violence and murder caused by drug cartel
Drug cartel
Drug cartels are criminal organizations developed with the primary purpose of promoting and controlling drug trafficking operations. They range from loosely managed agreements among various drug traffickers to formalized commercial enterprises. The term was applied when the largest trafficking...
warfare. The novel was later adapted into a film
Our Lady of the Assassins (film)
Our Lady of the Assassins is a film by Barbet Schroeder about a Colombian author in his fifties who returns to his hometown of Medellín after 30 years of absence to find himself trapped in an atmosphere of violence and murder caused by drug cartel warfare...
that received different international recognitions like the Aware of the Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
Senate, the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
(2000) as the best Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
n film and the La Habana International Festival "Nuevo Cine" (2000).
A growing body of scholarship and critical commentary already exist about this controversial work, most of it in Spanish. The brief sections below attempt to give the reader a basic understanding of some of the main approaches to what undoubtedly is a central work in Colombian fiction of the 1990s. An elaborated and discussed fictional work dealing with events related to the drug trade and its deleterious consequences in Colombian society.
Notice: Any text from the novel in this article is a free translation by Wikipedians, and should not be considered official. The novel was formally translated into English in 2001.
Synopsis
He finds Wilmar, another boy who keeps a surprising resemblance with late Alexis, not only in his body but also in his behaviors. Trying to live the same with Wilmar, he is soon informed that he is dating with the killer of Alexis. But he can not kill him, because Wilmar confessed to him that Alexis killed his brother before. Fernando proposed to Wilmar to leave the country. The boy agreed, but when he goes to his home to greet his mother for the last time, he is killed also. Fernando winds up alone in the middle of a city where love seems not possible.
Historical Context
Medellín
Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...
(Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
) during the 1990s, a difficult time for Colombian society, when mafias declared a terrorist war against the State and Colombian institutions, led by the infamous
Infamy
Infamy, in common usage, is notoriety gained from a negative incident or reputation . The word stems from the Latin infamia, antonym of fama ....
Pablo Escobar Gaviria
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and rich and successful criminal. He owned numerous luxury residences, automobiles, and even airplanes...
. The second largest Colombian city was the main scene where the mafias wanted to dominate the nation by terrorists attacks, using very young killers from the slums, who were known as "sicarios."
Vallejo illustrates in his work the emergence of new social groups emerging from the problem of drugs. The sicarios (hired assassins) are the result of that tension. Most of them were boys ready to kill for money, the same offered by the criminal organizations, to exterminate those who would dare to challenge the power of the mafias or put in danger their business. If authorities would not accept their corruption activities, the mafias resorted to sending a young assassin (el sicario). Normally, the sicario kills from a motorbike. Paradoxically, Colombian mafias keeps a great Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
devotion and honor traditions like the one of Mary Help of Christians
Mary Help of Christians
Mary Help of Christians , is a Roman Catholic Marian devotion with a feast day celebrated on May 24. John Chrysostom was the first person to use this title in 345 as a devotion to the Virgin Mary....
. This Marian devotion is very popular among the poor population of the city. The sicarios show great respect to Mary and pray to her for protection in their work of killing (She is the Virgen of the Sicarios.)
The mafias also gained the appreciation of the Medellín slums doing for them what several governments did not do for years. Pablo Escobar provided numerous things to impoverished neighborhoods, including housing, sport areas, electricity and schools, a factor that gave more popular power to the mafias, who were praised as heroes of the people. Boys (in many cases also girls), were willing to work for such popular benefactors, even killing whomever. The mafias played on social inequalities to guarantee their influence.
After the death of Pablo Escobar on December 2, 1993, by a special unit of the National Police of Colombia, the Medellín Cartel
Medellín Cartel
The Medellín Cartel was an organized network of "drug suppliers and smugglers" originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Central America, the United States, as well as Canada and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and...
went through an organizational crisis and the sicarios formed gun groups in the barrios. They began to dispute urban territories. The situation worsened when Colombian guerrillas infiltrated the cities trying to bring their war, traditionally in the countrysides, to the main urban centers. A real civil war happened in the 1990s' Medellín.
The story of Fernando, Alexis and Wilmar happens after the death of Pablo Escobar. The two boys are part of an army of killers without a strong capo. Without jobs, the boys wander the city, making it a dangerous place and killing whomever they consider dangerous for their own safety. Male prostitution became an option too. Alexis lives in Barrio Santo Domingo and Wilmar in Barrio La Francia, two slum quarters of the North of Medellín.
Urban violence
Medellín, the old industrialist center, became the main headquarter of the powerful mafia
Medellín Cartel
The Medellín Cartel was an organized network of "drug suppliers and smugglers" originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Central America, the United States, as well as Canada and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and...
cartel of Pablo Escobar
Pablo Escobar
Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria was a Colombian drug lord. He was an elusive cocaine trafficker and rich and successful criminal. He owned numerous luxury residences, automobiles, and even airplanes...
. He changed the textile city into one of the most violent of Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
for that time. Pablo Escobar was shot down in 1993. In the period 1992 - 2002 the city registered 42,393 murders.
Hired killers
The Colombian mafias and especially the Medellín CartelMedellín Cartel
The Medellín Cartel was an organized network of "drug suppliers and smugglers" originating in the city of Medellín, Colombia. The drug cartel operated in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Central America, the United States, as well as Canada and Europe throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was founded and...
imposed a modality of crime with the hired killers ("sicarios" in Spanish) to murder political opponents or any authority that could put in danger their dirty business. What became astonishing was that the mafias were contracting teenagers from the slums of the big cities. Boys from marginalized barrios
Barrios
Barrios, de Barrios, Barrio or Berrios is a surname of Basque origin. The name may refer to:-People:*Agustín Barrios , Paraguayan guitarist and composer*Artur Barrio , Brazilian artist...
(and many cases also girls), became killing machines ready to murder for the service of the mafias. Pablo Escobar, in the middle of his war against the Colombian authorities in the 1990s, offered three to five million pesos
Colombian peso
The peso is the currency of Colombia. Its ISO 4217 code is COP and it is also informally abbreviated as COL$. However, the official peso symbol is $. As 20 July 2011, the exchange rate of the Colombian peso is 1750 Colombian pesos to 1 U.S. dollar.-History:The peso has been the currency of Colombia...
(about USD 5,280 y 8,800 of 1990 currency) to anybody who would kill an official of the Police. About 300 policemen were killed in Medellín by sicarios willing to get paid by the mafias.
Medellín
Tomás Carrasquilla
Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo was a Colombian writer who lived in the Antioquia region. He dedicated himself to very simple jobs: tailor, secretary of a judge, storekeeper in a mine, and worker of the Ministry of Public Works...
, Fernando González
Fernando González (writer)
Fernando González Ochoa , was a Colombian writer and existentialist philosopher known as "el filósofo de Otraparte" . He wrote about sociology, history, art, moral, economy, epistemology and theology in a magisterial and creative way, using different genres of literature...
, Porfirio Barba Jacob, Manuel Mejía Vallejo
Manuel Mejía Vallejo
Manuel Mejía Vallejo, was a Colombian writer and journalist. The specialist Luís Carlos Molina says that Mejía represents the Andean aspect of the contemporary Colombian narrative, characterized by a world of symbols which are little by little being lost in the memory of the mountain.Doctor...
, Gonzalo Arango
Gonzalo Arango
Gonzalo Arango Arias was a Colombian poet, journalist and philosopher. He was famous in his country for being the founder of a literature and philosophy movement called "Nadaísmo" with other young Colombian thinkers of his generation and that was inspired by the Colombian philosopher Fernando...
, León de Greiff
León de Greiff
Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler , was a Colombian poet of the 20th century he is notable for his stylistic innovations and eclectic deliberate use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often used different pen names of which the most popular were Leo le Gris...
and many others. It is a city of a rigid and conservative Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
tradition and one of the most important industrial and business centers of Colombia. It came into a social crisis at the end of the 20th century due to the emergence of the mafias. The reasons why an entrepreneurial urban center and the leader of the national economy during the 1950s and 1960s began to overflow with violence is a complex sociological matter that involves society, politics and the culture of contemporary Colombia. The work of Vallejo put in evidence a nostalgia for the lost role of a city dominated by the social chaos and far from the presence of the State. About this the author says:
Homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
. It is discussed in an open and natural way in a country where it is a taboo. Even if it appears as a secondary theme, because violence and sicarios are the main subjects, homosexuality in the novel calls strongly the attention of the reader. After all, an adult man has relationships with two teenagers, who contrast their sexual preferences with the strong and male world of crime and guns. The website for education of Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
says to this regard:
In the novel, homosexuality is not insinuated or suggested with malice, but it is a natural part of the context of the work. The other characters around do not see to it with a kind of scandal or surprise, but as something natural. The theme is introduced in the novel like this:
Popular religiosity
In Medellín, one of the most Catholic and conservative regions of the country, the popular religiosity got an unusual tone when it mixed with the urban violence and hired killers. One of the most popular devotions is the one to Mary Help of Christians
Mary Help of Christians
Mary Help of Christians , is a Roman Catholic Marian devotion with a feast day celebrated on May 24. John Chrysostom was the first person to use this title in 345 as a devotion to the Virgin Mary....
, the one that inspired the title of the novel. The Sanctuary of Sabaneta
Sabaneta
Sabaneta could refer to either of the following:*Colombia**Sabaneta, Antioquia*Dominican Republic**Sabaneta, Dominican Republic*Venezuela**Sabaneta, Barinas- See also :* Savaneta, Aruba* Sabanetas * Sabanetas...
(Santa Ana Church), became the site of pilgrimage for the mafia and its sicarios.
This Greek-Latin devotion became popular during the Middle Age
Middle age
Middle age is the period of age beyond young adulthood but before the onset of old age. Various attempts have been made to define this age, which is around the third quarter of the average life span of human beings....
when the Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
gathered to defend itself from the Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
invasions of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in 1572. Pope Pius V asked the Christian world to pray to Mary under the advocation of Maria Auxilium Christianorum to defeat the enemies of the Church. In this way, Mary Help of Christians is a military devotion, a "(...) powerful Virgin, great and illustrious rampart of the Church, wonderful Help of Christians", one that is "terrible as an army drawn up in battle array". She is enough for protection, because "you alone overcome every error in the world; in anxieties, in struggles, in every difficulty defend us from the enemy" and we do not fear because "at the hour of our death receive our souls into paradise".
This devotion fills the expectancies of a young sicario and he asked to María Auxiliadora, the Virgen of the sicarios, to free him from every "evil and danger". As it became a popular religiosity, there is not the figure of the priest. Fernando and Alexis visited several churches but in any they cannot find a priest to listen their anxieties. The sicario is the priest of his own religion. He wears scapular
Scapular
The term scapular as used today refers to two specific, yet related, Christian Sacramentals, namely the monastic and devotional scapulars, although both forms may simply be referred to as "scapular"....
s with the image of the Virgin in his neck, his hands and feet to be protected at the time he will commit the murder.
For other sociologists, the Marian devotion of the young sicario is a cult to their mothers, la cucha ("mom" in the local jargon of Medellín). The theme was studied by the Medellian sociologist and journalist Alonso Salazar in his work "No nacimos pa semilla", 1990, ("We were not born to be a seed"), the first author to follow a systematic study of the problems of the slums young people. He discovered a very strong matriarchal society with the absence of the figure of the male parent and the cult for the mother, the real one, who in the Medellín slums was in charge of the growing of the family. The figure of the Virgen, so strong and powerful, caring for a child, has a great influence on the boys who look for their best future and have in their minds the endures of their own mothers. When Fernando proposed to Wilmar to leave the country, the boy agreed, but he wanted to give something expensive to his mother before were to go abroad.
Language and tone
In the novel, the toneTone (literature)
Tone is a literary technique that is a part of composition, which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work. Tone may be formal, informal, intimate, solemn, somber, playful, serious, ironic, guilty, condescending, or many other possible attitudes...
is expressed through the first-person narrative
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
, as it is common in all Vallejo's works:
According to critics, the decision of Vallejo of speak in first person breaks the most obstinate tradition of literature of using an omniscient narrator who knows everything and sees everything, the novelist who can cross with his eyes the walls and reads the thought.
For the Colombian critic J.O. Melo, the work is written in an admirable style and sometimes poetic, where the jargon of the sicarios is mixed with local expressions and Antioquian terms
Paisa Region
The Paisas are a people who inhabit a region over the northwest Colombia in the Andes.The region is formed by the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, Risaralda and Quindío. Some regions of Valle del Cauca Department and Tolima Department belong to the cultural identity of paisas...
in such a way that alternate among the cynicism and the sensibility, the moving and the aggressive.
Setting
Medellín
Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...
. The characters travel throughout the city, from the slums to the more central spaces of the city. There is not a frontier to limit their wandering within the city, bringing behind them violence.
Medellín has been a recurrent setting for different works of literature and studies in Colombia since the beginning of its industrial revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
at the end of the 19th century with authors like Tomás Carrasquilla
Tomás Carrasquilla
Tomás Carrasquilla Naranjo was a Colombian writer who lived in the Antioquia region. He dedicated himself to very simple jobs: tailor, secretary of a judge, storekeeper in a mine, and worker of the Ministry of Public Works...
, León de Greiff
León de Greiff
Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler , was a Colombian poet of the 20th century he is notable for his stylistic innovations and eclectic deliberate use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often used different pen names of which the most popular were Leo le Gris...
, Fernando González
Fernando González (writer)
Fernando González Ochoa , was a Colombian writer and existentialist philosopher known as "el filósofo de Otraparte" . He wrote about sociology, history, art, moral, economy, epistemology and theology in a magisterial and creative way, using different genres of literature...
, León de Greiff
León de Greiff
Francisco de Asís León Bogislao de Greiff Haeusler , was a Colombian poet of the 20th century he is notable for his stylistic innovations and eclectic deliberate use of obscure lexicon. Best known simply as León de Greiff, he often used different pen names of which the most popular were Leo le Gris...
and Porfirio Barba Jacob, to the writers, journalists and film directors of the second half of the 20th century like Gonzalo Arango
Gonzalo Arango
Gonzalo Arango Arias was a Colombian poet, journalist and philosopher. He was famous in his country for being the founder of a literature and philosophy movement called "Nadaísmo" with other young Colombian thinkers of his generation and that was inspired by the Colombian philosopher Fernando...
, Alonso Salazar, Víctor Gaviria
Victor Gaviria
Victor Gaviria is a film director best known for his treatment of street life in his native Medellín.- Feature-length films :*Rodrigo D: No Future, 1990...
and Fernando Vallejo
Fernando Vallejo
Fernando Vallejo Rendón is a novelist, filmmaker and essayist, born in Colombia. He obtained Mexican nationality in 2007.Vallejo was born and raised in Medellín, though he left his hometown early in life...
. Through them, we can trace the development of a small town to an industrial city and the social crisis that surrounded the city at the end of the century.
In the novel, Vallejo sees two cities: that peaceful center that he remembers that he misses through Fernando (who is almost him) and the city of Alexis, the violent place he is seeing through the eyes and actions of the boy:
Characters
The main characters are three: Fernando, Alexis and Wilmar.- Fernando: He is a mature homosexual writer who has been abroad for 30 years. He returns to his city and looks for a young man to travel through the city. They introduce Alexis to him at a party and, with him, he will know all the changes to his city.
- Alexis: A 16-year-old teenager. He lives in Barrio Santo Domingo Savio. He belongs to a gang of sicarios that is at war with another gang from Barrio La Francia, in the same North-East districts of Medellín. He began a relationship with Fernando that is not only for sexual purposes but also to travel the city and share both their worlds. Alexis explained to him the world of sicarios, while the boy listens to his nostalgic remembrances. In one of their travels, two boys on a motorbike kill Alexis. In a certain way, Fernando is responsible because Alexis' gun is not at hand because of Fernando's suicide attempts. After the death of Alexis, Fernando gives some money to his mother.
- Wilmar: Another boy from the comunaSlumA slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...
s, this time Barrio La Francia. He is also a sicario and belongs to a gang at war with Barrio Santo Domingo Savio gang. Fernando likes him because the boy bears a curious resemblance to Alexis, not only physically but also in his behavior. They continue to travel throughout the city, but Fernando is looking for Alexis' assassin. When a friend tells Fernando that Wilmar is the one who killed Alexis, Fernando wants to kill him. However, Fernando restrains himself when he learns that Alexis started the violence by killing Wilmar's brother. Fernando proposes to Wilmar that they leave the country together. The boy wants to say goodbye to his mother and offers her some gifts, but when he goes, he is also murdered. Fernando ends up alone in a city where love is not possible.