Militarización, violencia y crimen transfronterizo en la novela Ask a Policeman de Rolando Hinojosa

Hinojosa's border mysteries live off the tension that results from the portrayal of the border as a landscape that denotes separation, but which at the same time constitutes a special geo-political space where interest groups meet and interact in spite of, because of, even regardless of, 'the border.' In particular, Hinojosa's mystery novels deal expressly with recent ideological constructions of a border-crisis narrative. Hinojosa's main character, chief inspector Rafe Buenrostro, serves as the author's mouthpiece in the deconstruction of this simplistic narrative by creating a public forum for a debate on border issues by actually trying to get at the motives for border crime, by de-escalating and appeasing the antagonisms, and by scrutinizing the evidence for the elusive truth. What he finds is that the 'undesirable element' that is responsible for the violence “from across” are not the wetbacks and the undocumented workers. In Ask a Policeman, for instance, organized border crime is in the hands of a few, traditionally moneyed Mexican families who own houses in Texas where their money is always welcome. They have impressive bank accounts in Texas, buy their expensive cars from Texas car dealers, send their children to American schools, seek treatment in U.S. hospitals, and sell their cocaine to the well-to-do on either side of the border. Methodologically, my examination of how Hinojosa's texts expose and debunk the hidden agenda of recent alarmist narratives of a border crisis hinges on critical studies of the border such as José David Saldívar's Border Matters: Remapping American Cultural Studies, or Timothy Dunn's The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border.