SOUNDTRACK: TORI AMOS-“Juarez” (from To Venus and Back) (1999).
This song was the first that I had heard of what was happening in Juarez, Mexico. In AP Magazine (Oct 99) Tori Amos said:
“I read an article about several hundred women in Juarez, Mexico, who had been taken out to the desert and brutally raped and murdered. When they didn’t come home, their brothers would go and look for them, and many times they’d find nothing. Sometimes they’d find a hair barrette or a sock or something they knew was their sister’s. The authorities haven’t really done anything about it…they get into this serial-killer theory. I mean, how much serial can one man indulge in? So as the song started to develop, I really began taking the voice of the desert, singing in that perspective.”
The song is very abstract, with references to Juarez, but overall the meaning is oblique (in typical Tori Amos fashion). Sonically it is claustrophobic and creepy, and the repeated line “No angel came” adds to the intensity of it. It has never been a favorite song, although I think as a commentary on the situation it is delightfully eerie. It doesn’t really add anything to 2666, but at least it provided me with some context.
[READ: Week of March 8, 2010] 2666 [pg 404-465]
Week 6 picks up much where Week 7 left off. There are a lot more deaths (Nicole at bolanobolano has the dubious honor of tallying them)in this reading. And you’ll have to look at bolnobolano for the details, as I’m not up to keeping the records straight.
Juan de Dios Martínez is ordered to stop working on The Pentitent, so that his officers can be freed up for other duties.
And the first dead woman of this section is an American, Lucy Anne Sander. She and a friend came down from Huntsville, Arizona. While her friend, Erica, was parking the car, Lucy got out to walk in the wet grass. She was not seen again for three days when her body turned up, raped and murdered. This was the first instance in the book where someone aggressively looks for a missing woman. Erica befriends a local nurse (and they from an intense bond in the short time they know each other) and has an Arizona sheriff come down to investigate on her behalf.
Two more women were found killed. One of them, a young schoolgirl willingly got into a black car (which is similar to what happened to a girl in the previous reading).
We then meet a new character, Harry Magaña. Despite the tilda over the n, Harry seems to be a real gringo, not pronouncing the tilda, and speaking Spanish with an accent. Harry is on the lookout for a Miguel or Manuel (these are the names of the man that Erica provided to the police. She didn’t suggest that he was the killer, rather that he was he was someone they had met when they arrived. It’ not entirely clear if this is the same Manuel or Miguel (as no last names were given), but it seems likely. Eventually Harry (in a most graphic scene) brings a hooker to a room and hits her with a belt until she tells him what she knows about Miguel or Manuel.
The next woman killed was named La Vaca (the cow). We get a lot of details about her. In this case, we meet the two men that she hung around with. La Vaca was a big woman who was not afraid to beat up men. She was killed in a fight with these two friends, although the fight appeared to be a kind of sparring, almost for fun. They felt bad about what happened as they did like her. Nevertheless they were found guilty of the crime. [The fact that Bolaño intersperses deaths that are seemingly unrelated to the unsolved deaths makes it had to parse all this information. It is very much like a criminal proceeding].
Harry Magaña finds the house of Miguel Montes (but nothing comes of it).
A trip back to Inspector Martínez and Elvira shows them still having regular relations. He would like things to move forward (actual dates, you know, like in public) but she says no way. [I have total sympathy for those who have to type accents all the time as it is quite a pain in the behind].
Another woman was found dead on the second floor of an unfinished building (which everyone admits is rather a lot of work to put a body).
In November of 1994, a partially charred body was found. In this case, the woman’s boyfriend tried to burn the evidence, but had failed. He admitted the crime and was foun guilty.
Around this time a seer appeared on Sonora TV. And with the introduction of the seer, this Part suddenly transforms itself into a new kind of spectacle. In many ways, reading the seer’s opinions of medical cures reminded me of the Madame Psychosis radio rants in Infinite Jest. Whereas in IJ, Madame Psychosis would read from the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed, Florita Almada, known as La Santa, spends her introduction talking about the types of healing that she believes in and the types she does not believe in (or has no opinion on). It’s quite a litany. I particularly enjoyed when she would give a lengthy description about something and then say she had nothing to say about it.
And finally we have radiesthesia, a practice that originally required a hazel rod, now replaced by a pendulum, and about which Florita Almada had nothing to say (429).
We learn a lot about her background: she more or less grew up taking care of her blind mother, and so she had no formal education. She married and traveled with her husband selling livestock. He was eventually struck blind as well. First she took care of him, but when he died, she took over the business. After a while, she found it too daunting to continue, so she proceeded to wander around with her animals, offering advice and consolation.
Her first TV appearance came about because her friend Reinaldo (who has a morning talk show) thought she would be a good guest. It turned out that everyone whom she talked to felt inspired, encouraged or just better after her counsel. On her first appearance, she went into a trance and revealed that women were being murdered in Santa Teresa and that the police were doing nothing about it. It got pretty intense, and I found this TV spectacle to be very exciting.
Meanwhile, Lalo Curo found half a dozen old police manuals in the station. He enjoyed Modern Criminal Investigation (originally written in 1965, ha) but updated in 1992 (ha!). This section also introduced a topic that I had been speculating about. One of Lalo’s coworkers asks
How could Llanos rape her…if he was her husband? The others laughed but Lalo Curo took the questions seriously. He raped her because he forced her, because he made her do something she didn’t want to do, he said. (438).
This rests my mind somewhat about Bolaño concerning his attitudes about women.
Then we finally learn who the mysterious Harry Magaña is. Turns out he is the sheriff of Huntsville, Arizona, the man who Erica called for assistance. In what turned out to be another exciting section, Harry uses all of his resources to track down Miguel Montes. The investigation leads to our old friend Chucho who is now in Tijuana (it must be the same Chucho, right?).
I was amused that Magaña is basically biting his nails trying to track down Chucho while his contact in Tijuana basically just sits him down to shoot the breeze for hours on end. He follows a winding road that leads to brothels, abandoned houses (where he finds a bag of cash and an address book) and ultimately Miguel’s house.
As is Bolaño’s way, he sets up a red herring (a Rand Charger passes him as he is leaving the suspects’ house, but the driver is not interested in him). Of course, later in, when he gets to the final house of his search, those same Charger occupants jump him. My adrenaline was pumping through this section.
And then we begin 1995 with more deaths. I have been casually trying to see if there is a connection. I have been casually trying to determine if the reader may be able to divine something about the killer. I have casually been wondering if this is sort of a detective story. And yet I am leading to the conclusion that it is not. That all of this evidence is going to lead us nowhere. Just as it led Magaña nowhere (actually it led to his disappearance. We will shortly learn that in May, the American Consul visited Santa Teresa with the goal of tracking down the missing sheriff).
When details are given about the ead women, they seem to be mostly short (5′ 3″) with long hair. But that can’t be any kind of giveaway. I’m also curious that most of the women have been re-clothed after they were killed. Is it possible that it is the same person? The deaths where the women are abandoned and raped all happen far enough apart that it could be the same person. And yet enough minor details change in each case to suggest that it is not one person.
In July we see the very first protest by Women of Sonora for Democracy and Peace (WSPD). This first protest had only 3 people (in Part 2 we saw Rosa take part in much bigger protest, which must be some time later).
Florita Almada made her 2nd appearance on TV. It was less sensational, although she did spend a lengthy amount of time talking about helping us “go to the toilet, or make number two or, begging the pardon of Reinaldo and his distinguished audience, defecate” (457). By the end of the show, she reiterates her visions of the dead women of Santa Teresa.
Initially I said that the deaths in this section weren’t as bad as I feared they would be. However, I just read in The Believer, a roundtable discussion with three Latino writers. Santiago Vaquera Vasquez was talking about reading books in Spanish and said “Book 4 of 2666…left me speechless and numb.” And I admit that I am getting, yes, numbed to them. But I actually find the police reaction to the killings more upsetting than the descriptions of the killings themselves. So the sequence where the cops talk about raping women in all five or all seven orifices was a little too much for me. Not to mention, the escalating disfigurement that the women are facing.
There were seven killings in August 1995–one of whom was killed by her stepfather. The rest were unsolved.
Epifanio returns briefly to bemoan that judiciales never find a case. And he reveals that he swiped an address book that no one even bothered to ask about or to use for evidence. Of course, he didn’t do anything with it either.
And next Sergio González returns briefly. I loved the joke that arts reports were considered faggots “(assthetes, they called them)” (464) and I wonder if that was original in the Spanish or of that is just an awesome translation. [As I am currently commenting on a post about homophobia in 2666, it would behoove me to point out that I didn’t love the homophobic nature of the joke, just the linguistic pun of it].
[Our library has a copy of 2666 in Spanish, so I’m delighted to have been able to look up this word. The page numbering is different (of course) and I’m delighted that even with my minimal Spanish, I was able to track down this section with relative ease. I would never bother working on any other translation in the book, but this word really stood out. And so, in the original, we get “(periodistas <<pulturales>>, los llamaban)” (581). Using Google translate I’m getting the “pul” part to mean neatness/fastdiousness and the “ultrales” means culture. It’s a funny joke in Spanish but I love that Natasha Wimmer came up with “assthetes.” What a great translation.]
Of course the arts reporters think of the crime reporters as scum. He remembers back to his trip to Santa Teresa. And as he is talking to (who else?) a whore, and asks her why she feels no solidarity for her fellow whores who are being killed. She says that they were factory workers not whores. Workers. And, “as if a lightbulb had shone over his head, he glimpsed an aspect of the situation that until now he’d overlooked.” (466).
And THAT is a cliffhanger!
COMMENTS
This was by far the most exciting section of the book so far. Between La Santa’s crazed TV appearances and Harry Magaña’s detective work, there was all kinds of excitement. Of course, there was also a lot of weirdness: La Santa’s talking about all those healings, Harry Magaña’s lack of finding anything and of course the unsettling revelations about all the deaths.
I am worried because I feel like Bolaño is setting us up to find out nothing about the Crimes. I mean, realistically, he’s not going to “solve” them, right? And yet it feels like he is leading us on a trip which will end in conviction. Whether it is the style of this section (so much like a detached observer) or the excessive details, it just feels lie we’ll get a big aha! moment. But everything about this book tells me we won’t. And, I think I’m okay with that, as long as he handles it well.
Oh, gosh and now what about The Pentitent? And what about Harry Magaña? And what about the Inspector and Elvira? So many balls in the air!
Three more weeks (!) of crimes. I hope I have the stomach for it. And I hope there’s at least a little reward when we get to the end.
For ease of searching I include: Bolano
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