"Memory, Violence, and Childhood are Never Linear": An Interview with Yeiro Muñoz regarding El mensaje perdido
|
Santi—also known as Lobito, or Lobo—witnesses a murder and discovers a scrap of paper at the crime scene featuring a message written in a seemingly indecipherable language. This paper becomes a unifying and central element of the novel, establishing a mystery that drives the protagonist’s resolve through a narrative universe shaped by drug trafficking in Cali and New York. This is the core premise of El mensaje perdido, the debut novel by Yeiro Muñoz.
Muñoz was born in Bogotá in 1965, but one only needs to hear him speak to realize he was shaped by the streets of Cali, which he navigated extensively. It is no surprise, then, that the novel is primarily set in that city. He holds master’s degrees in Creative Writing from both Universidad Central and the Universidad Internacional de Valencia. The prose in Muñoz’s work is precise and, paraphrasing Philip Roth, turns his characters into flesh and blood. I spoke with the author about this book and the experience of telling this story. JAVIER ZAMUDIO: The "narco-novel" is not a new phenomenon in Colombia, nor in Cali. Nevertheless, El mensaje perdido revisits this theme from a different, more intimate perspective, focusing on how these circumstances transform the protagonist, Santi. Why did you choose this subject, and what did it mean to seek a new way of telling it? YEIRO MUÑOZ: In Cali, violence and drug trafficking aren't just a historical backdrop; they have defined generations, molded the city, and left invisible scars. I couldn't write from a distance because I grew up hearing those stories, walking those streets, and seeing how the everyday blended with the sordid. That intimacy comes from lived experience, even if the plot itself is fiction. I persisted because I feel this theme is far from exhausted: drug trafficking isn't just about business or statistics—it's about truncated lives, broken friendships, and families marked by silence. That is what I wanted to explore. Writing El mensaje perdido was like peering into a wound that is still weeping. |
|
ZAMUDIO: I must confess, after reading the novel, I thought it was partly autobiographical—that you were Lobito and had found that mysterious message. One of the most compelling aspects of the plot is its movement across different geographies; why did you decide to include New York in the narrative?
MUÑOZ: Because crime in Cali was never an isolated phenomenon. I wanted to show how what happens on a corner in my city is linked to global decisions, syndicates, and circuits. New York is the other side of the mirror: the place where money, power, and the promise of a different life materialize. For Santi, it is a land of illusion but also of confrontation; there, he realizes that physically escaping Cali does not mean escaping his heritage or his destiny. Santiago Lobo soon discovers that ghosts travel with you.
ZAMUDIO: That is a very interesting point. In fact, one of the novel's strengths is its architecture, where the present and past are intertwined. How did you arrive at this narrative decision?
MUÑOZ: From the start, I knew I didn't want a linear narrative. Memory, violence, and childhood are never linear: they return in fragments, in flashes, in wounds that reopen in the present. I built the novel like a puzzle where each piece of the past illuminates the present and vice versa. It was a slow process involving many rewrites; I had to face my own memories and figure out how to narrate violence without falling into flat reportage or glorification. It was almost an exercise in both personal and collective mourning.
ZAMUDIO: This discussion of memory and violence brings me to "El Gordo," Santi’s best friend and one of the most moving characters. How was he conceived? Is he based on someone real?
MUÑOZ: El Gordo was born from the need to give Santi a mirror and an emotional anchor. He represents that naive loyalty of adolescence—the kind of friendship one believes will last forever. He has traits of people I knew in my childhood: neighbors, neighborhood friends, even relatives. He isn't any one person in particular, but rather a composite of memories. What makes him moving is that, amidst the chaos and violence, El Gordo is proof that tenderness and humanity always persist.
ZAMUDIO: Finally, I think it's inevitable to ask how you view your novel within the context of contemporary literature. How do you manage to refresh a theme that seems overwrought?
MUÑOZ: I believe the theme of drug trafficking is never exhausted because it continues to mutate and because we still haven't fully grasped its profound effects. I wasn't interested in chronicling kingpins or cartels, but rather what happens in "small lives"—to the adolescents growing up on the margins of those major headlines. I refreshed the topic by incorporating an intimate dimension and a mythical component—the Buziraco—because I am interested in narrating how violence embeds itself in a city's soul and its inhabitants' psyche. That is where the demon appears, reminding us that evil exists not just in judicial files, but also in tradition, in the collective imagination, and in the things we have feared for centuries. Regarding contemporary literature, I see my novel as an attempt to build bridges: between noir and myth, between the local and the global, and between chronicle and fiction.
MUÑOZ: Because crime in Cali was never an isolated phenomenon. I wanted to show how what happens on a corner in my city is linked to global decisions, syndicates, and circuits. New York is the other side of the mirror: the place where money, power, and the promise of a different life materialize. For Santi, it is a land of illusion but also of confrontation; there, he realizes that physically escaping Cali does not mean escaping his heritage or his destiny. Santiago Lobo soon discovers that ghosts travel with you.
ZAMUDIO: That is a very interesting point. In fact, one of the novel's strengths is its architecture, where the present and past are intertwined. How did you arrive at this narrative decision?
MUÑOZ: From the start, I knew I didn't want a linear narrative. Memory, violence, and childhood are never linear: they return in fragments, in flashes, in wounds that reopen in the present. I built the novel like a puzzle where each piece of the past illuminates the present and vice versa. It was a slow process involving many rewrites; I had to face my own memories and figure out how to narrate violence without falling into flat reportage or glorification. It was almost an exercise in both personal and collective mourning.
ZAMUDIO: This discussion of memory and violence brings me to "El Gordo," Santi’s best friend and one of the most moving characters. How was he conceived? Is he based on someone real?
MUÑOZ: El Gordo was born from the need to give Santi a mirror and an emotional anchor. He represents that naive loyalty of adolescence—the kind of friendship one believes will last forever. He has traits of people I knew in my childhood: neighbors, neighborhood friends, even relatives. He isn't any one person in particular, but rather a composite of memories. What makes him moving is that, amidst the chaos and violence, El Gordo is proof that tenderness and humanity always persist.
ZAMUDIO: Finally, I think it's inevitable to ask how you view your novel within the context of contemporary literature. How do you manage to refresh a theme that seems overwrought?
MUÑOZ: I believe the theme of drug trafficking is never exhausted because it continues to mutate and because we still haven't fully grasped its profound effects. I wasn't interested in chronicling kingpins or cartels, but rather what happens in "small lives"—to the adolescents growing up on the margins of those major headlines. I refreshed the topic by incorporating an intimate dimension and a mythical component—the Buziraco—because I am interested in narrating how violence embeds itself in a city's soul and its inhabitants' psyche. That is where the demon appears, reminding us that evil exists not just in judicial files, but also in tradition, in the collective imagination, and in the things we have feared for centuries. Regarding contemporary literature, I see my novel as an attempt to build bridges: between noir and myth, between the local and the global, and between chronicle and fiction.
Comment Box is loading comments...
|
|
