Title: Down the Rabbit Hole
Author: Juan Pablo Villalobos
Page: 78
Translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey
What is it like to be a son of powerful drug lords? Is like asking what is it like to be other people? It feels
ordinary, just like how do you feel being yourselves.
Juan Pablo Villalobos brought us
the “ordinary” life (except for the fact that he lives in a palace, have a
special for hat and when his son ask a Liberian pygmy hippopotamus, he said he
would find a way to get one, yes his life is just f*cking ordinary) of a powerful
drug lords in Mexico through the eyes of his innocence son, Tochtli.
“…being
macho means you’re not scared…” p. 9
Our protagonist Tochtli really
loves hat, samurai, guillotine, and dictionaries. He didn’t go to school
because his father is too afraid to let him out of the palace. As result, he
only interact with limited number of people(Mazatzin teaches him about the
empire of japan, Quecholi who is always in silence, Cinteotl with the
collections of herbs, and etc) and animals (yes, they have mini-zoo inside the
palace of course, it’s a palace). Through his eyes, we see how Youlcout the
drug lord run his business, how he talks to the governor like he is one of his
underlings, and his love life. In his palace Small Tochtli learns about life
and how is it like to be a gang, a family.
“…educated
people know a lots of thing about books, but nothing at all about life” p.7
The story narrate by children is
nothing uncommon, but Villalobo’s narration is so trivial, just like when you
asked by your teacher to describe your daily activity. It made the character’s
life looks very common, just like any ordinary people life. But, it reminds us
that either all of us have a very common life or all of us have an
extraordinary life, you choose.
“one day you’ll
have to do the same for me.” p. 69
