Una aproximación antropológica a la novela del narcotráfico y la violencia en la Medellín de los ochenta y noventa

Narcotrafficking and the violence linked to it have had devastating consequences in Medellín. This article examines how narcotrafficking and violence were represented in narrative production during the 1980s and 1990s, adopting an anthropological perspective. The analysis is grounded in the viewpoints that dominate the works, which in turn are studied through conceptual categories rooted in the sociocultural context, in the lifestyle associated with the narco world, and in what the literary sources themselves suggest. The selected novels are explored from the perspectives of young people in working-class neighborhoods, members of the upper and middle classes, and the chichipatos, based on the premise that multiple vantage points are necessary to understand complex phenomena marked by deep origins, strong symbolic force, and a wide array of causes, actors, variables, and implications. In each of these three perspectives, the article examines representations of narcotrafficking and violence, along with several narrative strategies. One conclusion is that these texts confront the reader directly: they imply that attitudes tied to cocaine trafficking were not isolated phenomena but seeped deeply into the social fabric. Drawing on an anthropological reading of a broad and critical body of literary work, the article invites reflection on how narcotrafficking and violence were portrayed in Medellín during the 1980s and 1990s, on the meanings and repercussions of those events, and on the ways personal or direct violence became intertwined with structural or indirect forms of harm, such as economic precarity, social exclusion and invisibilization.