Giancarlo De Cataldo’s violent, white powder fueled tale zooms from the coca growing Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro in Peru to chic social circles in Milan, a tale culminating in a chapter appropriately entitled Grand Finale.
Did I say violent? Perhaps I should have been more descriptive - a brutal, vicious, savage, bloodthirsty, ferocious, frenzied tale. If this sounds extreme, please keep in mind we are talking tons of cocaine and billions of dollars. So saying, allow me to initially focus on the first of the author's five chapters, the one set in a Peruvian valley - and then blast off from there.
CONVOY
Two Land Rover Defenders rumble along the Apurímac River. The man in charge is a stocky Mexican wearing red-framed, mirrored sunglasses who only shows his snake eyes to his equals within the drug cartel, the women he wants and the men he kills. He goes by El Rubio. Among the others - banker Tano Raschillà and guitar playing El Norte to sing the praises of Ed Rubio. Since the US crackdown on Colombians, the Mexicans have taken over, operating as merciless dictators, sadists who enjoy control by terror.
FELIPE
Uncle Jorge takes fifteen-year-old Felipe out of school to join him since he needs help in the fields picking leaves. When you get tired, Uncle tells him, chew one of the leaves. As a four-wheel-drive monster passes, Felipe looks straight at the man with the mirrored sunglasses. He shudders - El Rubio is looking straight back at him.
SPY
No sooner do the Hummers reach base camp then two boys drag out a middle-aged man, his face all blood and mucous, his shirt in shreds, and fling him at El Rubio's feet. They tell the boss this guy, a village teacher, is a spy. The teacher pleads his innocence; El Rubio doesn't want to waste time, the boss shouts: "Away, with him!"
FIESTA
El Rubio negotiates with the producer and a deal is struck. Time for a fiesta to celebrate. Word goes out to everyone, even the harvesters in the fields. Felipe, now wired on cocaine, ignores his uncle and runs off to have some fun.
DEATH
Once at the base camp, the first person he meets is the teacher he recognizes, a teacher who is now nailed to a door of a hut to suffer the agonies of a slow, painful death. The teacher begs Felipe to kill him with the knife on the table. Felipe, having sliced many a throat of a goat or pig or chicken, slices the teacher's throat.
JUSTICE
Felipe is grabbed and brought before El Rubio. The boy violated the boss's order that the teacher suffer a prolonged, painful death for his treason.
What follows is a twist involving guitar playing El Norte who, as it turns out, is not the man El Rubio thought he was. It isn't long thereafter that the US makes a pact with the Peruvian government and Peru sends in special units to kill the drug producers. They succeed, sort of.
When the tale moves to Milan, after more cocaine snorting and highs, more cocaine buying and selling and dealing, more piles of money moving from one hand to another, more violence and killings, numerous killings, the names of El Norte, Tano Raschillà, El Rubio and even Felipe pop up again as if stock characters in the white powder dance that keeps an entire population and society hip-hopping at top speed.
For English Readers, The White Powder Dance is one of three novellas included in Cocaine, published by Maclehose Press. The other two novellas are Campagna's Trail by Massimo Carlotto and The Speed of the Angel by Gianrico Carofiglio.
Giancarlo De Cataldo, born 1956
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