On the border we live a reality of a western film, but failed: Diego Ordaz

Border identity, sexuality and the search for destiny are the central themes of the novel Los días y el polvo (Days and Dust), by writer Diego Ordaz Ramírez (Hidalgo del Parral, 1979), in which he reflects on the identity of one of the inhabitants of that border town and the varied conditions that surround them.

In an interview with The Daythe author spoke about the challenge of approaching Ciudad Juárez and its contexts: border, migration, human trafficking, drugs, and the gigantic desert that looms on the horizon. “At that time I was obsessed with Walter Benjamin, with the idea of ​​walking through the center of my city, because the idea of ​​installing a character that would crystallize its atmosphere, specifically, of the center, seemed very powerful to me.

“That was my intention,” Ordaz Ramírez said. For the author, the duality experienced when traveling through the hearts of two cities as close as Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, Texas, which act as two Siamese nuclei located in marginal areas between the countries, gives rise to multiculturalism.

Days and Dust tells the story of the epistolary and physical relationship between Janeth, a transgender prostitute who lives in Ciudad Juárez, and Andrei, an American soldier whose stay in Mexico is intermittent due to his military duties.

There is more than sexuality between them: it is a treatise of two very different realities in which they coincide in dreams, longings, desires and the search for a refuge; all, against the backdrop of a city hidden under the dust of the Chihuahuan desert.

“It is an area where many voices come together; it is full of migration, sexual dissidence, foreigners, otherness. I wanted to link all of that through a character who walks the streets,” said the writer.

Despite having been published 13 years ago, the story keeps pace with recent times: violence is the order of the day, machismo and insecurity persist, and soldiers also appear. In addition, it is a clear criticism of the period of militarization that took place during the six-year term of PAN member Felipe Calderón Hinojosa.

“2011 was the worst year I can remember, I saw it as very representative of a western; it was like juxtaposing a plane of several problems. The truth is that we lived a reality like a Midwestern movie, but a failed one, everything was more serious.”

In the book, the characters resist the city, they rebel, using the letters they send to each other as trenches in which they can deconstruct their personalities in complete peace. There are confessions, dreams, nightmares and fears.

“I opted for a fragmented novel, because in our lives the first thing we want is order, but here it is the opposite. Jumping from one character to another and breaking the everyday, without breaking the voice of the characters,” said the writer.

“Life ends at some point, and this reflection came to me as an ascetic thought. ‘How do you become aware of the fragility of life when you have a violent past in front of you, where the strongest prevailed?’ I keep thinking about that.”

Borders of anonymity

Ordaz Ramírez says that the border is like a cloak that allows anonymity, from the cars bought in the United States (called chocolates), to the poor regulation of the entry of foreigners and the lack of justice characteristic of our country.

It works as a wall of morality: “here, the barrier between freedom and debauchery becomes very diffuse, a very fragile territory in which these two worlds seem to exist. An example is when our city was a refuge to combat the prohibition of alcohol in 1920, which left a great economic spillover.

“We are an industrial society, essentially a maquila company. We have a love-hate relationship with American companies. We know that they hurt us with exploitative conditions and that they deplete our resources, but they are also necessary. That is why we recycle a lot of the material from our northern neighbors, and that filters into our identity,” said the author.

“This city feels like a desolate and desert-like space, as if it were constantly polluted. That is what happens to those of us who live here: it is as if the dust were eating away at us, we are losing our identity as people,” concluded Diego Ordaz Ramírez.