Disturbing Innocence: Defamiliarizing Narco Violence through Child Protagonists in Fiesta en la madriguera and Prayers for the Stolen

Abstract

This article uses a Benjaminian framework to show how the two novels studied, Fiesta en la madriguera, by Juan Pablo Villalobos, and Prayers for the Stolen, by Jennifer Clement, leverage children’s unorthodox ways of perceiving the world in order to upend habitual ways of thinking about drugs and drug violence. Tochtli, a capo’s son, and Ladydi, a poor girl from Guerrero, create disorienting visions that constitute one mode of intoxication that exposes another: the exaltation of the sovereign and autonomous self that accompanies apparently disparate activities like shopping, cocaine abuse, and drug trafficking.