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"Maybe
one of the many explanations of the violence in the city
is that cocaine is everywhere.
The cost of life in Colombia is the cheapest in Latin
America, that is, it's the cheapest place in Latin America
to have somebody killed.
You can't but think that it's related to the drug business."
Professor
Jason Wilson, University College London
"What's so fascinating about the
novel is how he involves the reader and makes him an accomplice
of all these shootings.
The narrator shoots about 18 people. It's a short novel,
only about 140 pages, and yet you have shootings all the
time.
He very quickly shows you that it's a general lack of
future in this society that makes any relationship hopeless."
Professor Erna von der Walde
"In literature, mental deeds and exterior deeds are almost
the same thing. Given that external reality is an illusion
and what is called reality is not real but unreal... it
is for the reader to answer, the reader will know."
Author Fernando Vallejo
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La virgen de los sicarios
(Our Lady of the Assassins) by Fernando Vallejo
"Tasss.
A single shot, crisp, inescapable, devastating,
that blew the bugger to hell. How many times have
I played that scene over in my head? I saw his green
eyes looking at him, cloudy green, drunk in that
unique moment. Tasss. A single shot without a word.
Alexis tucked the revolver away, half turned, and
carried on walking as if nothing had happened. Why
didn't he shoot him from behind? Why not kill him
sneakily? No man, kill looking straight in the eyes."
Our Lady of the Assassins by Fernando Vallejo
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La
virgen de los sicarios
is the story of a man who has left his home town of Medellín
- a town known as the capital of drug trafficking - and
returns after many years.
He discovers it has been taken over by 'sicarios' - contract
killers, who were a by-product of the drug traffic. Young
men from the slums of Medellín, who were hired by Pablo
Escobar, mainly to kill his enemies.
They are usually, vey young, between 15-20 years of age,
and are hired and paid amazing amounts of money for the
killings. It's like a sub-culture. The interesting thing
about La virgen de los sicarios is that the author
tries to depict the world and life, what it means, of
these young men. What sense it can have.
What makes the novel so strong and full of impact is the
idea of young people having no other project than killing
and earning money, in order to be able to consume."
Professor Erna von der Walde, New York University
"Look
out Fernando!" Alexis managed to shout to me at
the very moment the guy on the motorcycle fired.
It was the last thing he said, my name, which he
had never uttered before.
The snaking motorcycle vanished in the traffic and
my boy fell. He left the horror of life to go into
the horror of death. It was one short shot in the
heart."
Our
Lady of the Assassins by Fernando Vallejo |
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Filmmaker
Barbet Schroeder, best known for directing Reversal of
Fortune and Barfly, is taking Our Lady of The Assassins
to the screen. Born in Iran, Schroeder spent seven years
of his childhood in Bogota and most of his adolescence
in France. As an admirer of Fernando Vallejo's visceral
style and prose, he chose to film in Spanish and shoot
on location, in Medellín itself.
"I made this movie because I was in love with the writing
of Fernando Vallejo and with the music. It would be a
betrayal to have it translated so I decided to make it
in Spanish and, on the economic side, it makes it ten
times more difficult, but for me, more watchable.
It
is an impossible love story and also the portrait of a
town that has gone to pieces, in just 30 years, which
is the time that the narrator was away. He comes back
to see all his values of his childhood changed…that everything
he grew up with is destroyed, what created him.
He's appalled by the noise, the vulgarity, and the fact
that if you get a gun you get the power over everything.
Decent people can't go out on the street. Young people
with guns and gangs with guns, decide everything. People
have to shut up if they want to stay alive.
What's interesting in Vallejo is that he's saying: Watch
out. This is not only about Colombia. Colombia is at the
vanguard of things that are going to happen in the rest
of the world."
Film
director Barbet Schroeder
"Neither
in Sodom, nor Gomorrah, nor in Medellín, nor Colombia
are there any innocent people. Here everything that
lives is guilty, and if it reproduces, even more.
The poor produce more poor, and misery more misery.
And more misery makes more killings and more killings
make more corpses. This is the law of Medellín,
which will rule from henceforth on Planet Earth.
Be warned."
Our Lady of the Assassins by Fernando
Vallejo |
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