I have confessed to some of you recently that for the past several months, Lindsey and I have been following probably the most expensive telenovela in the history of Univision, Triunfo del Amor. I couldn’t begin to go into the myriad storylines, but I have narrowed them down to a few common themes:
1. Everyone is the son or daughter of someone other than their presumed parents;
2. Everyone has a son or daughter that they either don’t know about, or one that they discover is not theirs;
3. Everyone over the age of 16 will be either married or dead by the final episode.
The show’s female lead, Maria (of course), is about to be kidnapped thanks to the antagonist, a Catholic zealot who makes Cruella de Vil look like Mother Teresa. She orchestrates this effort from jail, thanks to various cronies who line up to work for her, even though everyone she associates with eventually ends up with a bullet in the face or a poker to the skull. I have always wondered why henchmen don’t inquire of their predecessors’ fates, but I guess even crooks gotta eat.
Unfortunately, kidnapping is nothing unusual in real-life Mexico, where violent drug wars have torn through the country. My last visit came in 2008, just a few months after a grenade went off in historic Morelia, the city I lived in during college. The blast killed seven or eight (or maybe more; the official count frequently changed) during an Independence Day celebration. Since then, things have only gotten worse; Mexico is now as dangerous as Iraq for journalists and just about everyone else. A few weeks ago, bodies were found strewn around the entrances of Morelia. They were the latest warning, except nobody is quite sure anymore who exactly is being warned.
I chatted recently with one of my best friends there, who asked when I was coming back. “When I stop hearing bad news,” I told her. “Oh, don’t worry, primo (“cousin;” a mutual term we have used ever since we figured out that the family I stayed with was somehow related to hers),” she said. “The worst they can do is kill you.” Ah, yes: the dark Mexican humor that has never feared death as much as it has embraced it, even waits for it. Perhaps death would not be the worst they could do, but it would make the list.
I await the chance to return to Mexico, but I fear I may not blend in as well when that time comes. In the meantime, I wonder how people who came to our country to escape poverty — and now risk death if they return — are considered by some to be criminals, less than human or both. The term “refugee” seems to apply, and yet many call for sending millions of these refugees right back into the middle of a war — a war fueled by our own citizens’ addictions. I guess I should be enraged, but I am mostly saddened and fearful of how violence in both countries will most likely continue to escalate without drastic intervention. Meanwhile, millions of people on both sides of the border will continue to live in the shadows, as they try to avoid certain paths for fear of what lies around the corner.
Sometimes, you don’t have to be kidnapped in order to be held hostage.
