SOURCE: Clark, Stella T. “The Novel as Cultural Interpreter: The Case of ‘Las Poquianchis’ in Mexico.” North Dakota Quarterly 58, no. 4 (fall 1990): 205-14.

[In the following essay, Clark contends that Ibargüengoitia's fictionalized version of the “Los Poquianchis” case found in The Dead Girls is more successful than the documentary account written by Elisa Robledo.]

In a foreword to Yo, La Poquianchis, an account of a notorious crime case headlined during the early 1960s in Mexico, Elisa Robledo, the author/interviewer, states:

Las Poquianchis are a real part of our times. They constitute a revealing and extreme case, a rich source for searching within our contradictory nature. The word “people” acquires in their case a very meaningful resonance, a vivid manner of understanding that, removed from true fact, would remain only as obscure legend.

(My translation)

In an attempt to explain the case of three madams accused of some of the most heinous crimes known to man, Robledo presents the testimony of many participants. Her quote exposes the theory that all were victims of the system and that, representing the people, only they can lead us to the truth by telling their own story. Subtitled “Por Dios que así fue” (“As God is my witness, that is what really happened”), Robledo's documentary book (published in 1980) sought to fill the lacunae created by the sensationalist media coverage of the case and to promote our understanding of the motivations and the events that led to the crimes.

My contention is that this type of account falls short of accomplishing its mission where a novel succeeds. Jorge Ibargüengoitia's The Dead Girls, published in 1979 with an English translation in 1983, is a fictionalized interpretation in which “some of the events are real” and “all the characters are imaginary” (foreword). An analysis of the techniques used in this novel to communicate the fascinating story of the three sisters will demonstrate that such a “high culture” medium provides a more insightful and profound understanding of events than those allegedly true facts of Robledo's documentary book. Ultimately, I aim to show that the novelist and his text interpret events and illuminate traits that may seem particular to one culture and relate them to a more global system. Also refuting the journalist's reduction of fiction as “obscure legend,” I will show that fictionalization highlights elements common to all humans as opposed to those of one specific culture.

Piecing together events as portrayed by the media, one gathers that Delfina, María de Jesús, and Luisa González Valenzuela, alias “Las Poquianchis,” were arrested in January of 1964 and charged with, among other crimes, mass murder, abduction, torture, corruption of minors, the clandestine operation of a brothel, abortion, bribery, illegal use of firearms, and white slavery. The sensationalistic aspects of the case, it is evident, were best-seller material, as a look at back issues of the prominent Mexico City newspaper Excelsior, shows. The first account of the arrest, dated January 15, 1964, already condemns the sisters for having buried “four of their victims” and of having kept nineteen women against their will in a state of advanced starvation. Subsequent issues of that major and respected newspaper escalated the sensationalism, labeling the sisters the “Diabolical Ones” (I presume after the French film Diabolique that dealt with two murderesses) and “The Hyenas.” The case gained such notoriety that the scandal-sheet Alarma, which provided full coverage of the arrests, investigations, and convictions, increased its circulation from 140,000 to three million copies a week. Reporters from all over the world flocked to the scene. María de Jesús herself says: “Just a few weeks before [the arrest] we were nobodies and suddenly, [we became] international celebrities. … Journalists from many countries, blond-haired, redheaded, blue-eyed, slant-eyed, all took notes and pictures of us” (Robledo 10-11). Every type of account of the case, including those in Time and Newsweek that appeared after the conviction, decries the inadequacies of a system that permits such crimes and that limits its punishment to forty years in prison. As a result, popular condemnation of the sisters made itself known from the start with lynching attempts, stonings, and public humiliation. A photograph of María de Jesús pictures her shielding herself from the hard objects and the insults an angry crowd hurls at her as she is paraded through the village streets after her arrest. The victimizing aspect of international notoriety is evidenced further by a statement of one of the prostitutes who, imprisoned as an accomplice, is told by the prison warden, “Nothing can be done. After all, how can we do anything after such a big scandal? Don't say another word. This is an INTERNATIONAL matter so, not another word!” (Robledo 190). The case, therefore, invites conclusions about the most negative traits of a cultural environment, in this case a small Mexican village, that breeds such corruption. Those within it react with shame and violence as they see themselves reflected in the participants; hence the hostile behavior. Those on the outside, whether from an urban Mexican background or from a foreign culture, see their prejudices gain currency. For a people preoccupied with the concept of honor and shame, as Octavio Paz maintains in his essay The Labyrinth of Solitude, the scandal is a violation and a penetration of what Paz defines as the Mexican's “mask.” The central question is then whether, instead of an alienating element, the case can be a source of enlightenment of that culture and if a fictionalized rendition of “Las Poquianchis” and their story can provide a “bridge” rather than a “barrier” to our understanding of the society and the culture they represent. Ibargüengoitia's novel, I propose, is an excellent tool to explain the causes and the significance of this case. Having removed the elements of morbidity and revulsion, this author detaches his reader from the particulars and leads him away from prejudice, as I will attempt to show.

As stated before, the novel incorporates real and imaginary elements. It tells the story of three women who lived in parallel circumstances to “Las Poquianchis.” The basic events of the case, with the death of several prostitutes (hence the title) as well as the arrest and conviction of the sisters and accomplices, constitute the plot. Some real names are mentioned. Characters tell their view firsthand, much as María de Jesús and others do in Robledo's book. Included are documents and clippings from newspapers and other obviously intertextual items that place the story in a specific setting and time. However, it is not the simulation of authenticity but the discourse found in a self-referential work which communicates the events with such force.

The first consideration is the sequence of events. The novel begins with the revenge of Serafina, the character equivalent to María de Jesús, gunning down a former lover's bakery. This dramatic scene is followed by the baker's testimony against Serafina and her sister Arcángela. The title of the chapter, “Double Revenge,” communicates a sense of irony since the baker's accusation of Serafina leads to revelation of his own complicity with the sisters. By wanting to get even with Serafina, Simón not only implicates himself but opens the case to the police. This initiates the investigation of the crime, reversing the structure of events in the real case which started with the escape of some prostitutes from their captive state. The next chapter, “The Case of Ernestina, Helda or Elena,” is an elaboration of the bakery incident, with Simón's testimony and an interpretation of his declaration. Thus starts the chain of revelations. Apparently, at this point, the narrator allows witnesses and participants to speak for themselves. Yet this is merely a structural device that sets the wheels in motion. By selecting the voices to be heard, the narrator is, in fact, very much in control of the text.

Another technique that makes itself evident in these first two chapters has to do with topography and nomenclature. The following paragraph is an example of how the author plays with the concept of fiction vs. reality by his selection of place names:

The road takes them by historic spots: through Aquisgran el Alto, at the entrance to which there is a sign that says: “Mr. President, they stole our water!” and where Serafina orders a halt to quench her thirst with a bottle of orange soda; through Jarapato where Ladder stops to drop a peso into the collection box of a church being built with contributions from drivers; through Ajiles where they buy cheeses; past Cazaguate Hill where the captain asks to be let out to pass water … ; and, to San Juan del Camino, which has a Miraculous Virgin, where they take a break.

(Ibargüengoitia, trans. 10)¹

The names sound typically Mexican, especially in the context in which Ibargüengoitia puts them. However, any person familiar with Mexico is able to recognize them not only as fictitious but as take-offs on real names. Anyone else, moreover, only has to consult an atlas to find out that, as authentic-sounding as Jarapato is (it sounds like Guanajuato and Irapuato, for example), it does not exist. As to the imprecision in some characters' names (Ernestina, Helda or Elena), it emulates the prostitutes' camouflaging tendency to change their identities frequently, thus becoming fictionalized characters even in real life. In several cases, moreover, Ibargüengoitia transfers the name of a real character to another. Ladder, for example, is only a driver and a “gofer” in the novel, whereas in the true story, as María de Jesús' lover, he was a protagonist and a main contributor to the sisters' downfall. The nomenclature and topography techniques, consequently, convey two effects. On one hand the reader is presented with facts that seem genuinely planted on reality. On the other, the author states that reality is elusive and that occurrences have a significance independent of time and place. The particulars, furthermore, create an obstacle to our perception of the repercussions and the meaning of an event.

The third chapter introduces the technique of contrapuntal testimony, or presenting a series of “interviews,” each of which affords a slightly different version of the same event. A prostitute and assistant to the sisters, nicknamed “The Skeleton” (another take-off on the name of her real counterpart called “Bones”), tells about the love affair between Serafina and Simón, the baker. A linking pattern in which one person's story elucidates the next develops, simultaneously giving us yet another perspective on the two characters. The narration is followed by Serafina's own version of her relationship with Simón, rounding out the picture and letting the reader arrive at his own conclusions on the ill-conceived affair. While leading to tragic consequences, the event appears factual rather than melodramatic because each version carries a direct, matter-of-fact tone which isolates each aspect of the real story. This tone characterizes the entire novel and is a strong contributor to the understated effect created in later episodes.

The fourth chapter, “Enter Bedoya,” continues Serafina's narration and closes up the revenge section of the novel, as the first segment ends with “… and two years and nine months went by before she took the revenge related in the first chapter” (Ibargüengoitia 38). The self-referential aspect of the novel is clear in this sentence to remind us that we are reading a work that is organized and presented as fiction.

The rest of the chapter, as Serafina meets Captain Bedoya and sets up her first brothel, consists of a straightforward, third-person narration. As the turning point in the action of the novel, the chapter is told with control and omniscience, as if Ibargüengoitia's narrator at this point sought to spare the reader the digressions typical of an eyewitness account. Again the selection process of fiction is very much in evidence, here reinforced by an abundance of precise detail, much of which corresponds to the real setting. Nevertheless, the narrator reminds us that no matter how much control he has, the storyteller remains a speculator: “She must have told to the captain, ‘Tell me the story of your life.’ Whereupon, he must have told her about his wife …” (Ibargüengoitia, trans. 38; emphasis mine).

In the following chapter the narrator, reinforcing his speculative stance, locates for us his “present” in the year 1976. As he describes a photograph of one of the brothels, he comments on its deteriorated state and thus makes us “share” this visual account of the place and the passage of time. His description, he seems to say, is sufficient for us to be convinced that the place is authentic. The narration, as a secondary source, must distract us from the voyeuristic effect of witnessing the scene of a crime.

The chapter highlights the direct-testimony technique, with statements from two of the protagonist madams, one of the prostitutes and, again, that key witness, “The Skeleton.” In this case the testimony appears in two guises, intact or “edited” with parenthetical statements such as the following: “(A detailed description follows of her first ordeals …)”; “(A list of the places she worked follows.)” As he edits, the narrator abbreviates the discourse so that only the pertinent facts apply. However, he does mention the fact that details have been left out, to call attention to his own fictional technique and his ability to select in order to create a maximum impact.

In the “unedited” testimony the senior madam, Arcángela Baladro, exemplifies how a technique can convey a major theme of the novel without the apparent intrusion of the author or a narrator. In her statement, Arcángela (note the ironic name) describes the operation of a brothel in her own words. Because Ibargüengoitia assumes the reader's a priori condemnation of the women, given their marginal role in society, he lets Arcángela speak for herself. In this monologue we see that the sisters had their own code of honor in a system that operated within the law:

The prostitution business is simple. All you have to do to be successful at it is to keep strict discipline. The girls come down from the rooms at eight o'clock in the evening and file by me so I can make sure that they are well-groomed, neatly dressed and properly coiffeured. They sit at the nightclub tables. The cashier sets his register at zero. The jukebox is turned on and the metal curtain is raised. … In my places it is forbidden for a girl to drink at the bar. The jukebox is rigged up so that there is a break between numbers for everybody to have a drink. When a piece ends, everybody has to go back to the tables. It is forbidden to go straight from the bar or the doorway to the dance floor. It is forbidden for the girls to charge for a dance. It is forbidden for a client to sit at a table without ordering a drink. When serving a round, the waiter has to hand the client his check and to give the girl a token. The customer is required to pay his bill upon leaving, politely and in cash.

(Ibargüengoitia 49-51; translation mine)

The description goes on, providing a litany of rules that can stand up to any legitimate system. The matter-of-fact, understated tone that Arcángela uses in her monologue removes the elements of shock from what she is describing. Arcángela, being able to use her own discourse, is allowed to appear not as someone who practices an illicit profession but as an entrepreneur and a good businesswoman. The monologue is a key indicator that the Baladros and, therefore, “Las Poquianchis,” were following their own version of the straight-and-narrow. That such dire consequences resulted, Ibargüengoitia prepares us to see, was not because of any premeditation but of the sisters' delusion that their marginality is offset by an adherence to a canon.

A pacing technique characterizes the three-chapter section of the novel in which the action begins. A chain of minor events escalates into larger tragedies. First is the advent of a moralistic governor who makes prostitution illegal in his state, bringing about closure of one of the brothels. The second episode results in the demise of the second brothel which was in a different state. Finally, a bureaucrat, having revealed himself accidentally as a homosexual, targets the sisters as his enemies. The first chapter, entitled “Two Incidents and One Snag,” pokes fun at what appear to be minor and isolated setbacks. In this way the narrator removes the sense of retrospection, letting events set their own momentum. Through the intertexual intrusion of the much-publicized story of “Las Poquianchis,” as well as the title, The Dead Girls, we know that the novel leads to tragedy. Nevertheless, Ibargüengoitia keeps the events in the context in which they were perceived at the time they occurred. In this sense he minimizes the sensational as the participants and the reader have no perspective on the consequences. Once again the narrative technique overpowers the shocking aspects of the story.

The action begins to accelerate after Arcángela's son is gunned down and wounded on the street but dies on the doorstep to his mother's brothel. This gives ammunition to the ill-disposed authorities in denying any appeal from the prostitutes to reopen their establishments, sending them to a clandestine life inside one of the houses. The detachment and the cold irony that the narrator uses in describing the mounting complications continues our perception that disasters come from smaller and seemingly insignificant episodes in our lives. Note the tone in the following statement after the brothel is closed down: “The solution finally adopted was illegal but very simple: to move out of one closed-down whorehouse into another closed-down whorehouse” (Ibargüengoitia, trans. 70). The narrator seems to agree with the women and follow their logic, indicating no moral involvement. The dire results are irrelevant at that point.

In subsequent chapters, Ibargüengoitia shifts the action back and forth between his narrator's vantage point and the events. He spurs the reader's interest by referring to future explanations or occurrences (“The result of their having spent the morning there will be seen later”) or by reminding us again that he is telling a story (“The court deliberated so long with respect to the fine that this story will be over before its decision is announced”). He creates a “teasing” effect but maintains a sense of measure at the same time.

This understatement is, as in the case of Arcángela's monologue, what provides us with a sense of detachment from the horrible and repulsive events. The logical explanation for the violence which the women began to exercise among themselves maintains the clinical eye of one investigating a crime as opposed to that of a curious and morbidly attracted bystander. The reconstruction of the death of two of the prostitutes, for instance, deemphasizes the scandal-sheet elements:

Thirteen women look on [notice the present tense] while the two tear each other's hair out without anyone trying to stop them. The reason is that the two women fighting are “soul mates”—that is, lovers—and the others consider their fight a personal matter in which the community should not interfere. And so, the women followed the bitter and even struggle—a shove one way, a pull the other—closely but silently, thinking that it would stop when the combatants were exhausted. The fight would have ended without blood being shed if the Baladros, who were getting out of Ladder's car, had moved a bit faster; they would have been in time to yell and break it up. Or if the fighters had not had the bad luck to reach the balcony just as one gave the other a violent push that made her hit the railing with her buttock, breaking it loose and causing the two of them, still clutching each other by the hair, to plunge to the floor. Their skulls hit the cement and broke like eggs. The lives of both came to an end at the same moment. Their names were Evelia and Feliza.

(Ibargüengoitia, trans. 104)

The speculation as well as the depersonalization of the act of death is repeated throughout the rest of the novel, giving events an understated value and rendering them part of a chain.

Finally I refer to the attached photographs, one from Robledo's book and the other included by Ibargüengoitia as part of an appendix. At first glance they appear unrelated. A closer look, however, reveals that picture B is the same as A but printed in reverse, with the faces etched off. Picture A is a group portrait of two sisters with their “girls,” ironically emulating a graduation or a family photograph. We see some support of Arcángela's contentions that in better times the women enjoyed a sense of camaraderie. Ibargüengoitia's stylization of the photograph is a visualized rendition of what he does in the novel—he removes the identities to make the women faceless and alike. He also reverses the photograph to make it ahistorical and to remove the content along with the faces. In this manner he establishes a symbiosis between “figure” and “ground,” in the words of E. H. Gombrich, to keep our eye from distinguishing between form and content. Thus, for the novelist, the revelation of the circumstances of the case is as important as the case itself. As the basis of an aesthetically-formulated work, the case is only as dramatic as the novelist permits it to be under his artistic control.

“Las Poquianchis” were convicted of their crimes and given the forty-year maximum sentence that Mexico allows. Although the courts found them guilty, Robledo and others point out that no proof of murder or premeditation was produced. The rendering of the case in the print media, for that reason, does not elucidate the motives and the causes of the events. Ibargüengoitia's novel is not apology nor does it attempt to justify the actions of such controversial figures. By its premise and its presentation of events, however, it does succeed in explaining what might have led to chaos and the loss of control of one's own life. The escalating series of disasters reconstructed with an impartial eye, the emulation of direct testimony, and the interplay of fiction and reality open the reader's possibilities for scrutiny and interpretation. The Dead Girls serves the reader well as an instrument for interpreting an episode outside its cultural context and for relating it to a larger picture with which we can all identify.

Note

1. In some cases I quote the original with my own translation when I consider that the technique is not clearly conveyed by the published translation. When I do refer to the latter it is for the sake of expediency or because the translation communicates satisfactorily the point I want to make.

Works Cited

Excelsior (Mexico City), XLVII, Vol. 1, January 15-29.

Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.

Ibargüengoitia, Jorge. The Dead Girls, trans. by Asa Zatz. New York: Avon Books, 1983.

———. Las muertas. Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1979.

Paz, Octavio. El laberinto de la soledad, 6th ed. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1970.

Robledo, Elisa. Yo, La Poquianchis: ¡Por Dios que así fue! Mexico: Grupo Editorial Sayrols, 1980.