The Queen of the South

For those of us who enjoy being totally lost in a fictional world for hours, even days, the six hundred pages of Queen of the South, is the ideal prescription. From the opening lines: “The telephone rang, and she knew she was going to die,” we are caught up in the fascinating life of Teresa Mendoza, a young and vulnerable Mexicana, in love with a blond-haired Chicano pilot, Güero Dávila, who is flying drugs from Colombia to San Antonio and El Paso. There are the dangers of arrest and imprisonment from customs and from drug enforcement agents, of course. But there are also worse dangers from the narcotraficantes themselves should Güero Dávila lose a shipment, compromise the drugs or the money, or inform on his bosses. It is a high-risk business based in Sinaloa where the people he works for will not simply settle for his death if he betrays them. He will be tortured for hours until he gives up everyone and everything he knows. Then he will be killed, and his relatives and associates will be hunted down and murdered as well. Güero tells Teresa this and also that he has stashed money, some cocaine, a mysterious notebook and a SIG-Sauer in a safe apartment where she is to go if she ever receives word that he has been killed.

When word of his death comes, she is in the bathtub. She gets out of the tub feeling the chill of the night air, and the premonition of danger, as she answers the phone and learns of Güero’s fate. The Tigres del Norte are singing a narco-corrido on the radio and the words of the song, the tragic end of a doomed drug dealer, put Teresa into a panic. She manages to pack a few things, and goes to the safe apartment where the money, drugs, and pistol are stashed. Once there, she puts them into a gym bag and sits down on the bed. She opens the notebook, and reads the dates and names of the shipments Güero has been involved in and realizes that he may have been working for the DEA. As she gets ready to leave, two hit men arrive and block her way. One is determined to simply put a bullet in her brain and leave. The other wants to “have a bit of fun” first, and proceeds to rape her while his companion yells at him in disgust and then turns to go into an adjoining room. This distraction gives Teresa time to reach into the gym bag and shoot her assailant in the face. She holds the other man off at gunpoint, and then escapes to the streets of Culiacán where she contacts Güero’s padrino who is also in the drug business. She gives him the notebook, and he provides her with safe passage to Europe.

She goes to Spain where she hooks up with another young smuggler. This one drives speedboats transporting drugs from North Africa across the straits of Gibraltar into Spain. Unlike her relationship with Güero, where she was little more than a morra, or narco girlfriend, this time she participates more actively in the business, keeping the books, learning to repair the speedboats, and she even accompanies him on occasional smuggling missions. On one such venture, forced by coast guard patrol boats and a helicopter toward a dangerous beach, the speedboat crashes, killing her lover instantly, while she is seriously injured and almost drowns. She is rescued and taken to a hospital and, when she recovers, tried as an accessory and sentenced to a short prison term. There, she meets another young woman, this one from a wealthy family, also serving a short sentence for drugs. It seems that her former boyfriend had stashed over 50 kilos of high grade cocaine stolen from the Russian mafia. Now he was dead, the cocaine long gone, and the mafia assumed she was just a spoiled rich girl who knew nothing about it.

When they get out of prison a year later, they recover the cocaine, and take it to the Russian mafia, who give them a finder’s fee. With Teresa’s knowledge of boats, shipping routes and finance, she convinces them to allow her to use her proceeds to set up a major transport business for the transshipment of drugs to Russia and Eastern Europe via sea-going vessels. Meanwhile the Mexican drug lord, discovering where she was, had sends two hit men to kill her in Spain. Enlisting the help of the Russians she is able to outwit the killers. She shoots one of them herself, and the other (the good half of the original pair who refused to take part in her rape in Culiacán) she invites to be her bodyguard.

Within a few years Teresa has become the “Queen of the South,” controlling transportation routes from Cartegena to Spain for cocaine, and from West Africa through Gibraltar to Eastern Europe and Russia for hashish. By the time she is thirty years old she is worth more than ten million dollars.

One day she is approached by a representative of the Spanish government and a DEA agent. He tells her that, while her first lover was killed by hit men from a rival gang (one of whom she killed in retaliation), the hit was ordered not by a rival drug lord–but by the padrino who engineered her escape to Europe. Later, when he found out that she was successfully involved in the transport business in Europe, he himself sent the two hit men there. He had retired a wealthy man from his drug activity, gone into politics, and decided to eliminate any loose ends which might connect him to his narco past. He was now about to become a senator in Mexico, and the DEA and Mexican government wanted him brought down. They tell her that they are aware of her activities in Europe, and offer her immunity if she returns to Mexico and testifies against the padrino. Her response, and the events that follow from it, reveal not only the inner workings of the drug trade in the U.S., Europe and Mexico, but are also packed with action, double betrayals, and more violence than the best scenes of “Dirty Harry” or “Amores Perros.”

The physical details in the writing, the intricacies of the narcotics trade, and the careful research as well as the names of former and current politicos, drug lords and officials, make this novel read more like a non-fiction thriller, a genre first developed by Truman Capote with In Cold Blood. The omniscient narrator is a former investigative reporter who now only produces “works of four hundred pages or more.” The journalistic background is a perfect disguise for the Spanish author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, whose books have sold over three million copies worldwide, been translated into nineteen languages and published in thirty countries. In this excellent translation by Andrew Hurley, the reader is introduced to popular ballads and norteño music from the past thirty years: Los Tigres del Norte, Los Invasores de Nuevo León, Los Broncos, Los Huricanes, El As de la Sierra and more. The lyrics of the corridos provide a musical counterpoint to the violence and terror of high speed chases, narrow escapes, double-crosses, shot-outs, mutilations and killings.

It is a dark and ugly world, and through it all Teresa not only survives but manages to grow from a terrified little mexicana fleeing Sinaloa for her life, into a tough sophisticated European entrepreneur prospering in a dangerous business, not only controlled by men but by dangerous machos. She is a character with whom the reader cannot help but identify, despite the nature of her business, and the violence and betrayal to which she becomes accustomed, and ultimately an active participant in. She is the epitome of contemporary crime figures in the new millennium, the dark heroine: la heroina morena.

Read it in Spanish if you can (La Reina del Sur); you’ll learn lots of Mexican slang and nautical jargon, broadening your linguistic horizons. If not, Andrew Hurley’s English translation from Penguin will no doubt keep you turning the pages. Pérez-Reverte has sold lots of books in a number of languages; of the ones I’ve read, this is the one I liked best, because it seemed the most firmly rooted in reality.
The South in question is the south of Spain, and the reality is the international drug trade, a multi-billion dollar business that spans oceans and continents, enriching diverse criminal groups and corrupting law enforcement wherever it reaches. The novel was published in 2002, but things haven’t changed much; Mexico is still rotten with corruption and in thrall to ruthless drug cartels, and the south of Spain is still a playground for international mafias and the main entry point for illegal drugs, pouring across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco.
A poor Mexican girl becomes the girlfriend of an ace drug cartel pilot; when he is whacked for obscure reasons, she knows it’s time for her to run, because the custom is to kill a victim’s whole family; in Sinaloa those are the rules. She flees to Spain with a friend-of-a-friend introduction to criminal elements there, takes up with another ace, this one a speedboat skipper running merchandise across the Strait, and eventually is in the business up to her neck.
No spoilers, so I won’t detail her path to becoming the Queen of the South, but it is that journey that for me made the book so absorbing. The twin pillars of the novel are psychology and culture, and Pérez-Reverte paints both masterfully. How does a poor Mexican girl not only survive but prosper in an utterly ruthless business? What does it do to her? Over twelve years (and five hundred pages) we learn what makes Teresa Mendoza tick. And yes, we find ourselves rooting for her, whatever we may think of the business she’s in. As for the culture, there are few environments with such a rich tapestry of international criminal activity as the south coast of Spain, and it is obvious Pérez-Reverte knows the territory. The characters are vivid and convincing; the locales are concisely drawn; the complex networks of corruption and obligation are deftly sketched. The emotional cost of operating in a completely amoral world is the impression we come away with.
It’s a page-turner but not a quick read; there’s a lot of story and a lot of delving into Teresa’s consciousness. More than a thriller, it’s a substantial novel about a world we find morbidly fascinating but are glad we don’t live in.

This book was disappointing. There is so much rambling discourse the story is
nowhere to be found. Difficult reading, at best.

This book was out of the ordinary to say the least. I would read this author again.

Gracias a Kate del Castillo, descubrí la trágica historia de Teresa Mendoza. Este libro nos enseña cómo las personas tóxicas pueden quitarle la paz a una persona. La vida de Teresa no solo fue triste y dura, sino una aventura increíble. Adoro el cambio que dio este personaje. Al principio, no es nada más que una joven ingenua y enamorada de un narco y al pasar de los años, va enfriándose y endureciéndose hasta convertirse en la reina del sur. Le recomiendo a todos que lo lean y si no les gusta leer, entonces vean la telenovela porque esta historia es buenísima.

Good book, the basis for the TV series.

I wanted to read the book because I saw the series on TV. Of course it’s different than the series. The protagonist is quite a woman. Tough as nails but you would have to be in order to run the business she was in. The end left you hanging. I really don’t like loose endings. I know some authors think it’s cool to do that so you more or less have your own ending. I just prefer a solid ending. I would recommend the book as it’s different and a fast read.

Sharply drawn, larger than life characters.

Just loved it!!

Interesting look at the drug trade.