Being immortal is something that many people dream of. The idea of ??approaching any danger without fatal consequences is succulent, but Sergio Álvarez (Bogotá, 1965) was not convinced. “Experiencing it for a while could be fine, but if it lasts forever, it would become a problem, especially if you live in Colombia,” admits the author from his home in Barcelona.
“In much of Latin America, especially in my country, crime is part of the system. People resolve many conflicts by confronting each other and the State resolves everything by killing the one it doesn’t like. For this reason, in a place where the way in which order is established is that, someone who never dies is in the way, ”reflects the writer, who has decided to carry out this experiment in his new book, The Immortal ( Navona).
In its pages, Álvarez uncovers various gruesome businesses, such as drugs. Something that “may seem brave but in reality it is not so brave. There is an anecdote by the author Laura Restrepo that sums it up very well. Once she wanted to make a television series about some gangsters from La Guajira, in Colombia. When the gangsters they found out about the project, they threatened her and told her she couldn’t say anything about it on television. She didn’t shy away and asked if she could at least use her research to make a book. The mafia gave her permission. She said well, a book yes, no one reads that. So I am in the same way”.
Regarding drug trafficking, he points out that “coca is an illegal business. And illegal businesses remain so until they are very profitable. When that happens, the powerful look for a way to control it without it being noticed. They believe that all that money must be used and they do it by allowing the right-wing paramilitaries to work quietly in the drug-trafficking business in exchange for them eliminating the left-wing guerrillas. The State not only allows you to work, but also organizes you and in the process everyone gets rich. That’s when the Narco grows too much, like Pablo Escobar, that you start to be a problem. Then they capture you and the Americans extradite you, but not to fight drug trafficking, but to continue having their interests controlled.”
He regrets that people believe that they are fighting against drugs, “but it is not true. You go to the last lost town in Siberia and ask for a line of cocaine and they put it on you. Surely a Coca-Cola will not serve you. So, if you have a product that is distributed all over the planet, you have to be very naive to think that drug trafficking is managed outside of power”.
Living in a place where drug trafficking, and therefore death (“they are two things that go hand in hand”) can arrive at any moment “makes you live with intensity and it is that same intensity that feeds back into the security system.” kill. But not only in drug trafficking. You can die for a pair of shoes, for stealing your wallet, and even for thinking too much. Also because of the powerful. In the last twenty years, 300,000 people have been killed in Colombia and another ten million have been forced to displace so that the State can appropriate their land and give it to mining and oil companies that exploit it. Some scandalous figures that the middle class prefers not to see, either out of fear or indifference. Of course, no matter how hard they try to step aside, the splinters of war end up arriving”.
The author places part of the blame for the fact that the situation does not improve on the media, “which are capable of building a story that covers these atrocities, either by adding more entertainment content than ever, with soap operas, soccer and series, or speaking of the peace process, which is also a story and is not true and does not exist. Those who commanded it come here to Europe to be awarded Nobel prizes, but at the moment of truth, things do not advance and the difficulties increase.
As in his previous novel, 35 Dead, the protagonist has no name. “One of the problems that exist in literature is that it focuses most of the time on the middle and upper classes. For this reason, its protagonists tend to belong to that social stratum. The stories of poor or humble people are hardly told but sometimes They call my attention more. Its protagonists rarely have a name and that’s why I pay tribute to all those people who remain unrecorded”.
Although he has no identity, the character is not exempt from the grace of the Divine Child, who grants him the gift of immortality. “You will give birth to a son who will not only make you happy and fill you with hope, but who will be destined to show the value of life to this country addicted to hatred, violence and crime”, says the guardian angel to Mother. A harsh criticism of his native country, which he describes as “lack of values”, since “we have become accustomed to the fact that values ??are something relative, that they depend on how much it affects me and how much it does not. That is why it is they come to commit certain atrocities and the worrying thing is that people no longer feel like fighting against the system anymore”.
