NARCO YOUTH IN CHILE, VICTIMS AND VICTIMIZERS. "BUGANVILIA" BY RODRIGO CORTÉS

Abstract

Buganvilia (2018) is the first novel by the Chilean writer Rodrigo Cortés, winner of the El Mercurio Book
Magazine Award. Similar to Colombian and Mexican narcofictions, in this book young people are presented
as dual actors, i.e. as victims of a social and economic system that attacks and marginalizes them, as well
as perpetrators who use violence against their peers. Using the concept of “juvenicidio” proposed by José
Manuel Valenzuela, in this article I suggest that Cortés denounces the various aggressions experienced
by children and adolescents in situations of marginalization and poverty, in the peripheral neighborhoods
of Santiago. This leads him to construct the portrait of a degraded society in which minimal gestures of
empathy, solidarity, community or strategies of resistance are lacking, which results in the impossibility
of moving forward or escaping from these precarious conditions