Enrique Mendieta and the Ghosts of Leftism Past: The Aftereffects of Mexico’s Dirty War in Élmer Mendoza’s Detective Fiction

• Author: Michael K. Walonen
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• Date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20951790
• Subject Matter: Articles

77

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20951790

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 235, Vol. 47 No. 6, November 2020, 77–86

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20951790

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

Enrique Mendieta and the Ghosts of Leftism Past

The Aftereffects of Mexico’s Dirty War in Élmer Mendoza’s

Detective Fiction

by

Michael K. Walonen

The continuance of the revolutionary strife of Mexico’s dirty war into the present day,

both as a legacy and in the form of its survivors, resonates strongly in the work of the

novelist Élmer Mendoza. Mendoza’s early novel Janis Joplin’s Lover uses its protagonist

to portray a 1970s Mexico torn between a revolutionary path of collective social ameliora-

tion and the corrupt, mercenary self-interest embodied by Mexican narco-traffickers, with

the country pushed toward the latter through the repression of student activists by the

Mexican state. Mendoza’s five subsequent novels that center on the exploits of detective

Lefty Mendieta focus on the fallout from this period of repression, using the figure of

Lefty’s brother Enrique, a former leftist guerrilla, to represent a lost (but not totally lost)

egalitarian and socially just alternative to the neoliberal political economy that has rav-

aged the living conditions of most Mexicans for almost four decades.

La continuada lucha revolucionaria en el marco de la guerra sucia que ha caracterizado

a México hasta la hoy en día, tanto como legado a la vez que en la presencia de sus sobre-

vivientes, resuena poderosamente en la obra del novelista Élmer Mendoza. La primera

novela de Mendoza, Janis Joplin’s Lover, utiliza a su protagonista para retratar a México

en la década de 1970, dividido entre un camino revolucionario de mejora social colectiva

y el corrupto y mercenario interés propio encarnado por los narcotraficantes mexicanos; el

país se ve empujado en esta última dirección a través de la represión de los activistas estu-

diantiles por parte del Estado. Las cinco novelas posteriores de Mendoza, centradas en las

hazañas del detective Lefty Mendieta, se centran en las consecuencias de este período de

represión y emplean la figura de Enrique, el hermano de Lefty, un ex guerrillero izqui-

erdista, para representar la pérdida (si bien no total) de una alternativa igualitaria y

socialmente justa en oposición a la economía política neoliberal que mermado las condicio-

nes de vida de la mayoría de los mexicanos durante casi cuatro décadas.

Keywords: Élmer Mendoza, Mexico’s dirty war in fiction, Repression of populist

leftism, Politics in Mexican detective fiction, Mexico’s dirty war and

neoliberalism

Michael K. Walonen is an associate professor of English at Saint Peter’s University who specializes

in world literature and postcolonial studies. He is the author of Imagining Neoliberal Globalization

in Contemporary World Literature (2018), Contemporary World Narrative Fiction and the Spaces of

Neoliberalism (2016), and Writing Tangier in the Postcolonial Transition: Space and Power in Expatriate

and North African Literature (2011), as well as numerous scholarly articles. He thanks his research

assistants, María Pita de Abreu and Desiree Armas, for their invaluable contributions in gathering

the materials for this essay, particularly their help with Spanish translations.

951790LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20951790Latin American PerspectivesWalonen / Dirty War Aftereffects in Detective Fiction

research-article2020