The title references the hostel slash refreshment tienda in the coastal town of Santa Marta where Nicholl spent an eventful few months as a journalist in the 1970's. During this time he met and accidentally stumbled upon the shady world of the cocaine business. A few years later he returns to the country with the explicit task of writing a book on the subject.
While Nicholl finds his book-smarts of the language, politics, and culture are up to par, most of the drug trade is still and ever-shifting mystery to him and he learns on his feet. While the information surround the illegal operations of producing and transporting "coca" is fascinating, I found Nicholl's descriptions of places he ends up in the most captivating. One of my favorite passages finds him in a bar waiting for an elusive contact in a sketchy part of Bogota, the capital city.
"The Paso Doble was a small, murky cafe-bar off the Caracas Avenue. If was one of a rwo of tumbledown, single-storey houses under a tangle of overhead cables. A bus lurched up the dirt street, listing like an overladen boat. This was a bad part of town...The cafe was quiet. Three dusty workmen sharing a half of aguardiente, an old woman in black nursing a bowl of milky coffee, a pair of corner boys lounging at the doorway, and the inevitable children running in and out, the dark-eyed grubby children that play round the edge of every scene."
Published in 1985, the situation has obviously changed much since then - production methods, politics, anti-drug enforcement, etc. - but the spirit of Nicholl's adventure, no doubt remains. While dated, this memoir is both interesting and educational. From this tiny part of the world, stems problems as far away as the U.S., Canada, and much of Europe. The game may have changed in the last twenty years, but there is no doubt it remains in play.
Sergio del Limonar
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