Why a Booktrail?
1990s, 2001: The slums of Buenos Aires are ruled by gangs, drugs and violence. Gang warfare is everywhere and life has just got a whole more deadly…
7 Ways to Kill a Cat
What you need to know before your trail
Buenos Aires is a city under siege – the economy has collapsed and people are protesting on the streets. Gangs are now patrolling the slums and the city handing out their own version of justice. Drugs and violence are the only currency here.
Gringo and Chueco are on the cusp of adulthood. It’s almost inevitable that they will join one of the two rival gangs – El Jetita’s or Charly who has moved onto its territories. However Gringo sees an alternative way of life, but whether this will even be possible is another matter.
A few days ago he and Chueco were joking about killing cats; now he’s fighting to save his own skin.
Travel Guide
Cat lovers may want to avoid the first chapter at least, as this is one of the most graphic starts to a novel for its scenes of violence and grim rawness on display. This is the killing of one of those cats and only foreshadows what is to come.
This is life in the barrio of Buenos Aires and the gangland warfare between two rival gangs. Even the police seem to be involved, merely waiting to see what the outcome will be rather than doing anything about it.
The country is on the edge of a nervous breakdown as well as a violent and financial one too. Events soon spiral out of control and Gringo notices this in poignant detail –
“Used to be able to smoke a cigarette right down to the butt without the ash falling … Used to. Not now. Now I’ve got a .38 with six bullets in the cylinder. I counted them.”
Whilst Gringo wants to escape his life the barrio, the gangs and everything in between, Chueco seems to want and fight, facing it head on so to speak. But the tentacles of gang warfare are slithery and deadly, their vice like grip choking the very life out of you before you have even had a chance to move.
This is the Buenos Aires you won’t see on a tourist trail, this is the one that no tourist office in the world would show. Read with one eye open and in daylight hours, for the violence and the barrio drug culture portrayed here is not easy reading.
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