Zel Cabrera and the silence of the dead

MEXICO CITY (apro).- Sometimes the silence of the cypresses and the dead weighs a lot, wrote the Peruvian poet José Watanabe, with that abysmal phrase in his mind, the poet and writer Zel Cabrera travels through the labyrinths of the missing and the wave of violence in Mexico at the time of the war against drug trafficking during the six-year term of Felipe Calderón in his novel How the silence of the dead weighs.

“In this verse by Watanabe about the cypresses and the dead. It invites you to reflect on the things that we cannot and that remain there, and the things that a journalist cannot know and not because of a lack of expertise, but because he no longer There is a way to interview that person and not tell the truth,” says the author in an interview with Process.

Cabrera reflects: “Elaborate through a verse, a world of feelings. A single verse.” But he returns to the origin of his characters: “Journalists always have to try to understand all possible aspects, but the journalist has to be objective, but there are things that do not leave you still and understand what is happening and always go behind the true that it is possible.”

The plot set in Cuernavaca gives rise to the adventures of a culture reporter who, surrounded by violence, begins to investigate death and its repercussions. It is enough to remember that it was in Morelos, where one of the most critical episodes of the dispute between the State and organized crime took place, when the Navy shot down Arturo Beltrán Leyva, in the Altitude residential complex, in the Punta Vista Hermosa subdivision.

Between December 2006 and January 2012, around 121,000 people died through executions, clashes between rival gangs and clashes against the government. Each issue is a story that continues to disrupt the lives of those who lost a mother, a father, a brother or a cousin. Beyond what violence represents, Cabrera tries to represent the daily life of living with death, but above all with silence and what the absence of it weighs.

“The love story between Viri, a reporter for the Hora21 newspaper, and Horacio, intelligence director of the Cuernavaca Police Department, is intertwined with the murder of Rebeca’s cousin, Viri’s best friend, who covers the red note. This story is a respite in the world of crime novels, its plot does not aim to present us with corrupt police officers, but rather with people who give us hope in the administration of justice in a country where the silence of the dead is deafening.

Cabrera seeks to turn the crime novel on its head, as he assures that the main theme is friendship and love, a feeling he calls “volcanic force.” “Love detonates everything,” he also points out, seeks to deconstruct these models of the all-powerful detective, the one who has the absolute expertise and all the tools to solve the mystery of the case, which is why the journalists of his novel go out to search for the truth, finding more clues than the detectives themselves.

It is also about removing that knot from the “somewhat sexist” formula that has permeated the crime novel.

When asked about silence as a concept in her novel, Cabrera is lapidary:

“Silence is, death, silence is definitive. As the point from which the plot and the sections of the characters start from what worries them. The terror that they are experiencing and one of the ways to combat it is to do something, not sitting still. To Rebecca with this terrible loss. To Viridiana at the end of the story. What she regrets most, not being able to ask a dead person so many things. Murdered in Mexico. We continue to live in a climate of sustained violence that has hardly let us know what to do with this time of losses.

The book released by Editorial Gato Blanco belongs to the Onda Nueve Collection and has illustrations by Joel Ossorio.

Process makes a fragment of the novel available to its readers:

What I didn’t imagine was that it would be so dangerous. We didn’t have it on the map as a red light or a place that could

be under siege as is already the case with other cities. Wow, no

is Iguala, Acapulco, Tijuana, Matamoros, or Ciudad Juárez

which we know are kegs of gunpowder…

—You know what they say, small town, big hell.

And you weren’t here on the 14th. Hell is little.

—But I saw the recordings, I heard the messages that de la Torre

wanted to hide, Viri. The list of the missing doubles the

of the dead and many are kids who didn’t even make it

eighteen years old.

—Disappeared? —I frowned—there has been no

complaints or at least not that I know of – I continued saying

in a tone of surprise, thinking that he would not answer me, that

I would get around to my question. In the end we were on the opposite side of the desk, so to speak.

manner. She was still a reporter and he was an official

public. I could take his words and distort them if I wanted, secretly record it to leak first-class information to Hora21, but Horacio didn’t seem to care.

could be harmed by my work.

—There are no complaints, it’s true. Or at least not formally, but we have information from various sources that

They affirm that for ten years boys and also girls of

between fifteen and twenty years old are being raised from their

homes or schools, although strangely the parents have not

reported nothing. Apparently they are voluntary absences, the

“People leave with their consent,” he responded bluntly.

—And boss Alberto knew it?

—Of course he knew, he also knew in time about the

attacks and did not lift a finger to avoid it or grab

those responsible at the time, but you already know that. My boss

was monitoring his movements, his calls, until

your bank records from one month to date. Discovered deposits of several zeros that did not match the entries

that Alberto de la Torre had been registered with the Treasury.

All of this seemed very strange to General Camarena and he

some trackers in their cars.

—Isn’t that illegal? —I responded almost without thinking about it.

“Of course it’s illegal, Viri,” he replied, smiling slightly, “but we needed more clues and, if possible, more

evidence to be able to issue the arrest warrant against him,

It’s just that he got ahead of us. Despite handling it with great

discretion and be as cautious as possible, someone alerted him,

he escaped with everything and wife and son

Cabrera is a graduate of the master’s degree in political journalism from the Carlos Septién García School and a scholarship recipient of the FONCA Young Creators Program (2017-2018) and the Foundation for Mexican Letters (2014-2015). She won the 2018 Tijuana National Poetry Award and the 2013 State Youth Poetry Award, convened by the Secretary of Culture of the State of Guerrero. Some of her poems appear in the Anthology of Poetry for Children Triángulo del sol (Praxis, 2015).