Chosen for my read around the world challenge, this time in Mexico.

This is a story told from the perspective of Tochtli, a boy with a unique point of view - his father Yolcaut is a powerful figure in the cartel business with plans to make it to the tippy-top of the organization through any means necessary. It is a cartel, after all. Throughout the majority of this book, Tochtli is preoccupied with obtaining a Liberian pygmy hippo, all while plunking down insidiously creepy or odd facts about his life in the palace that he's very rarely allowed to leave.

The childlike phrasing and the use of vocabulary words, is incredibly creepy, considering all the goings-on (i.e. "One of the things I've learned from Yolcaut is that sometimes people don't turn into corpses with just one bullet.") See again: cartel.

There's a lot of commentary about machismo from Tochtli's point-of-view, which is informed by what his father says and does:

And: "The other day a man I didn't know came to our palace and Yolcaut wanted to know if I was macho or not. The man's face was covered in blood and, the truth is, I was a bit scared when I saw him. But I didn't say anything, because being macho means you're not scared and if you are scared you're a faggot.

This was a quick, interesting read but I wish that I had chosen something else for Mexico - what most non-Latinx Americans (aka me) know about the country is horror stories about violence and cartels, driven by the bombastic media and overall racist reporting. I suppose I wanted to learn something else, too.