Yuri Herrera
Nils Longueira Borrego’s comments on Yuri Herrera’s Trabajos del reino
Yuri Herrera’s first novel, Trabajos del reino (translated into English as Kingdom Cons), pertains to that category of literary works that are almost inextinguishable, the ones that, after turning the last page, demand yet another reading. One could spend hours over one page, unpacking words, taken away by their richness. Trabajos del reino tells the story of Lobo, a young self-taught musician and composer of corridos who becomes the “official” artist in the court of a drug lord, the King. It is also the story of Lobo gaining control over his language, discovering love and violence. Trabajos del reino is a novel that follows the young artist’s attempts to define his own voice and, of course, the unavoidable negotiations with power that the process entails. It is precisely this topic’s centrality and the inquiry into the endless wrestle between art and power that make Trabajos del reino an ideal work to deepen the Workshop for Contemporary Critical Thought’s current examination of the debates around the voluntary/involuntary servitude.
In the manner of a Künstlerroman, Lobo starts a journey toward a better understanding of the world surrounding him while also experiencing a personal awakening and discovering his talent as a musician. It all starts with Lobo’s encounter with the King and, consequently, with the language of power. The King names things and persons, thus making the reality emerge and acquire form and meaning. He is the one to call Lobo an artist, and, from that moment on and until the end of the story, Lobo loses his name and becomes the Artist. For Lobo, in the beginning, the encounter with the King implies a positive change, since “at last, he had found his place in the world” (14).[1]
However, the acritical and naive perception of power will be soon challenged by the complex reality. The now-official Artist discovers the inner world of power and begins to see —that is, to understand— its different faces better. Thus, tracing the images related to the sense of vision provides a possible structure of the text, a link between the Artist’s different stages. At each step in the movement from apology to an active and critical consciousness of his reality, the Artist acquires a better vision.
First, due to the constant headaches the Artists suffer, the Doctor of the court evaluates his vision. As a result, the Artist receives new glasses and the shock of a reality richer in details: “The surprise of so many new details bemused him” (79). Then, reading also has an impact on the way the character “sees.” The books that the Journalist lends him provides him with more words and a different language and, therefore, open a new possibility to his poetic creation, beyond the language of power. By the time the Artist returns to the city for the first time after establishing residence at the court, the town appears under a different light, and new things —mainly the problems and distresses of the population—, were revealed to him, “as if a callus had peeled off his eyes, and now his whole being was fixed on details that before were lost like a blurred photo” (86). Finally, toward the end of the book, the Artist is asked to perform a service for the King: he is commanded to go to a rival’s celebration and inform if there were any traitors. While in the party, the Artist sees the similarities between both courts, between both spaces. What is more, he sees the King under a new light, signaling a substantial change in his perception of the authority: “He had a meticulous vision of the King’s face, as with a magnifying glass, he saw the slack consistency of his skin, a constitution as precarious as that of any of the people in that place” (102).
The images and passages that engage with the gradual enhancing of the Artist’s vision point to his gaining the ability to think critically about his reality. A mutual transformation process leads the Artist to be affected by the new, better-seen world while he becomes a decisive actor within that same world, transforming it via the poetic language. The Journalist is the first character to underscore the difference between the Artist and the rest of the court. The protagonist’s uniqueness consists of the capacity to transcend the court and the limits of the official artist’s role. By the end of the novel, the transformed Artist finally frees himself from the court and the subjection to the King’s power.
He falls from grace at the court because of a spontaneous corrido he wrote and distributed immediately after leaving the rival boss’s party. However, that same circumstance completes his transformation process, first, by allowing him to see the unfairness of the King, who needs an instrument, a mere machine to produce laudatory and intimidating stories in order to rule effectively. Second, by having to run for his life since his art displeased the authority. At that moment, the Artist regains his individuality, and now he is neither Lobo nor the Artist, but Lobo, the artist. He succeeds in taking full control of his poetic language and grasps the power contained in that language, the threat it supposes, its radical potentiality to transform reality.
The King is arrested, his Heir takes over the Kingdom, but there is only space for the Artist in the new regime. Therefore, after refusing to continue the empty labor of praising whoever takes over as King, Lobo is forced into exile. From that moment on, “no king would give name to his months” (132), since now “he owned every part of himself, of his words, of the city he no longer needed to seek, of his love” (135). In this manner, by owning his words, his new language, and the freedom it entails, Lobo rejects the voluntary servitude to the new King’s authority. He gains his voice, his words, and, as he says, even his own death.
Bibliography
Herrera, Yuri. Trabajos del reino. Editorial Periférica, 2008.
Notes
[1] All translations from the Spanish original are my own.
