Rosario Tijeras

 

Rosario Tijeras

by Jorge Franco

"Since Rosario was shot at point-blank range while they gave her a kiss, she confused the pain of love with that of death".

Rosario Tijeras the soap opera was released in 2010, and just like any other soap opera, or as we call it, novela, it was a hit. It was transmitted on national television and it was so popular they put it on Netflix several years later. As Colombians, we are used to narco shows; the salt on the wound that is our history, which never lets us forget. But Rosario Tijeras was different.

The number one Rosario Tijeras watchers weren't the usual middle-aged women who didn't miss an episode of a novela. It was us, the upper-class pre-teenagers and teenagers, who plunged ourselves into the side of the city that did not correspond to us, a side of Medellín we couldn't relate to. We shamelessly fell in love with the story of a hitwoman, one of the several faces that terrorized our country. Why was this? Was it because Rosario was never scared or because we fantasized about the never-ending thrill of her life? 

Whatever reason it held, we posted her pictures, looked for her outfits, and repeated clips of the show. I dyed my hair red because it reminded me of her and Googled it looking for any type of new information about the show. It was on this frantic research where I encountered Rosario Tijeras by Jorge Franco, the book whose author created Rosario, the one who shaped her, the one who gave us this tragic yet exciting story. 

I was just a few months in from settling into a new country because of the gangs in Medellín - kind of an inappropriate read if you think about it - my head was all over the place with opinions, memories, and pain. I have picked up the book almost four years later, now in a completely different state of mind. I have now stronger opinions and the pain has made me more resilient and mature. Though the memories still are bittersweet, I can't deny I am not fourteen/fifteen years old anymore. It's harsh, because reading it and watching the show, I thought I understood it all, and God, was I wrong. I do not understand Rosario Tijeras, I cannot relate to her, to her backstory or sorrow, but still, I can try.

This book parts from a love so deep we could even call obsession. Antonio and Emilio, which are upper-class young men from one of the best universities in town, meet Rosario, a lower-class woman who has had a difficult life and sacrifices herself for 'money'. Here we begin learning, in a swing from the complicated past and the uncertain present, about Rosario Tijeras. We never learn her last name, or even if that is her real name, but we do know that she is one of a kind. 

"She is one of those women that is the poison and the antidote at the same time: who she wants to kill, she kills, who she wants to heal, she heals."

Antonio is Rosario and Emilio's best friend, and he has to deal with being the one who has less of her out of all the men in her life. She has deep love and affection for him, but we never learn whether it is platonic or romantic; they talk for hours, she tells him a million stories about her life, and he listens every time. These stories Rosario tells Antonio, Antonio tells to us. We learn that she is an extremely complicated woman: she scratches a teacher's face with scissors, she mutilates her rapists' penis (which is fair due to the terror he inflicted on her), she has a binge eating disorder, goes on long drug benders, is a prostitute and a hitwoman. But she has this thing, this charm, just a certain appeal to her that captivated Emilio, Antonio, her ex, the Narcos, and ultimately, the reader. She is flawed, but she is magic.

The story possesses many graphic details about rape, drug abuse, prostitution, and murder. This is not a book for everybody and I understand that. And as much as I liked this book, I would not want a foreigner to read it if he likes Narco stories. This is not a story to romanticize as we did with the novela when we were younger, and the last thing we want is another Pablo Escobar fan club (which I have a lot to say about but I guess I will leave it for another entry). 

The story can be romanticized so easily because Rosario is so beautiful and magnetic; however, you know how with a tv show, you are always on the protagonist's side? We are on the thieves' side with La Casa de Papel and we hate the police, but if the police were the protagonist then we would love them to death. This happens here. But we cannot overlook details. She is a murderer, no matter how much she regrets later and stuffs herself with food. She kills, no matter if she kisses them before so they have a 'last kiss'. She steals sons, brothers, boyfriends and throws them in a casket, and so does her beloved sibling Johnefe. She and the other people involved in her world terrorize the streets. We cannot overlook this like Antonio and Emilio just because she is Rosario. That is our duty as readers who see everything from both sides of the coin. 

Another thing we cannot simply overlook is the way our country ran in the 1980s. Is it not crazy how people valued more making money over morals? And is it not extremely sad how they got to such a bad place, this was the path they followed in order to get out? We cannot only blame them for killing for money, but we also have to blame what left them in that place of necessity, the goddamn necessity, the damn poorness and pain that made young Colombian boys think this was the only way they could achieve an apartment in the best part of town. It was and is a reality. La Oficina de Envigado existed. Bombs exploded. Thousands of people died. Gangs still exist. There is a price for head, a price for a bang. 

I really think that this is an amazing read if you are mature enough. Kudos to Jorge Franco in every single way possible: thank you for making your characters so paisas, I felt at home. Thank you for describing my city in both terrible and beautiful ways. Thank you for making me understand struggles I have never endured and making me feel comprehended for the ones I have. Thank you for giving us love, sex, pain, agony, unpredictability, and so much more. Thank you for not letting everyone forget how it used to be. Thank you for flawing Rosario. Thank you for making me nostalgic and sad. And above all, thank you for embracing your Colombian talent for writing which always makes me proud to read.