Estudios de Teoría Literaria (Nov 2020)
The denouncement of agents of power and its effects. Building bridges between south and north, past and present: Rodolfo Walsh and Lydia Cacho
Abstract
The Mexican journalist-writer and activist Lydia Cacho (*1963, Mexico City) can be considered one of the bravest contemporary reporters following the journalistic and literary line of Rodolfo Walsh, which also includes a civil commitment of the writer him/herself. This article approaches her denouncement of the “putrefaction of the system” under the influence of Rodolfo Walsh in her periodismo narrativo books, where we can identify the basic writing principle of the Argentinian author, described by Herrscher as “the long and fruitful tradition of muckraking the power” (261). As she describes in Memorias de una infamia (2007), after the published accusations in Los demonios del Edén (2005), Cacho was persecuted and tortured. While investigating the pederast Jean Succar Kuri, the journalist uncovered an extended network of collusion and complicity in which several Mexican businessmen and politicians were involved. Both the suffered persecution and her unexpected popularity influenced her further writing, as we can observe in her next investigative-report, where she uncovered several global mafias by tracing the criminal network behind the trafficking of women and forced prostitution known as white slave trade or “trata de blancas” (Esclavas del poder, 2010).
