Marco Antonio Guerra takes Amalfitano to Los Suicidas bar

Marco Antonio Guerra takes Amalfitano from the streets of Santa Teresa to Los Zancudos, a bar outside the city, in an episode that turns an apparently casual offer of a ride into an unsettling encounter with the city’s discontent. The journey sets the expanding urban landscape against Marco Antonio’s own bleak diagnosis: factories and maquiladoras promise work and growth, yet, in his view, Santa Teresa has no future. His talk of burning factories and sending the army to the highways gives that diagnosis a threatening edge; the outing ends with Amalfitano drawing him away from the bar and Marco Antonio saying he is armed.

An unexpected offer

After Amalfitano leaves a protest demanding transparency in the investigation of women’s disappearances and killings, a young man calls to him from a car. At first Amalfitano takes him for a student. The man introduces himself as Marco Antonio Guerra, the dean’s son, recalling their earlier meeting at his father’s office, where Amalfitano had been welcomed to the department. Marco Antonio offers to drive him home and says he has nothing to fear from him. That reassurance, delivered without an apparent cause, surprises Amalfitano.

Marco Antonio’s manner mixes courtesy with provocation. He is confident, smiling in a way Amalfitano finds mocking, and he crosses the busy street without looking for traffic. A pearl-gray designer jacket and a folder of papers lie on the back seat. Though Amalfitano declines a drink, Marco Antonio proposes going to his home instead; Amalfitano says he has nothing to offer, and Marco Antonio treats that as settled. Rather than heading directly toward Amalfitano’s home in Colonia Lindavista, he turns the car toward the city’s outskirts.

Through Santa Teresa’s expanding edge

The detour passes new houses and partly unpaved streets west of Colonia Lindavista, where open fields and warehouses interrupt the developing neighborhoods. Marco Antonio calls these places the city’s supposed future but says he believes the city has none. He drives across a soccer field toward enormous sheds enclosed by barbed wire. A canal or creek carries neighborhood refuse north; nearby, they pass an old railway line that once connected Santa Teresa with Ures and Hermosillo. A few dogs approach the car, and Marco Antonio lowers the window to let them sniff and lick his hand.

The route places the conversation within a city visibly remade by expansion. Elsewhere in Santa Teresa, the west is marked by unpaved streets and houses assembled from scrap, while the south includes rail lines, makeshift soccer fields, a garbage-filled gully, and the distant warehouses of the maquiladoras. The city’s poor districts press against industrial parks, and the built-up area seems to grow continually. The car journey does not merely leave the center behind: it carries Amalfitano through the uneven spaces where new construction, industrial employment, and inadequate infrastructure meet.

Los Zancudos and the mezcal

Marco Antonio says they are going to one of the few nearby places where genuine Mexican mezcal can still be found. Los Zancudos is a long rectangular establishment, three hundred feet by one hundred, with a small stage for corrida or ranchera groups on Fridays and Saturdays. Its bar extends at least one hundred and fifty feet; the toilets stand outside and connect to the restaurant by a narrow galvanized-tin passage. The room is sparsely occupied and dimly lit. Although Marco Antonio knows the waiters and calls them by name, none comes to serve them, so he goes to the bar himself.

He recommends a drink called Los Suicidas. Amalfitano agrees to have only a small one. Marco Antonio returns with two glasses and a half-filled bottle, saying there should be a worm at its bottom but that the waiters have probably eaten it. Amalfitano first finds the mezcal good, then judges it extraordinary. Marco Antonio says it is genuine and laments that it, like so much else in the country, is no longer made. The drink gives the encounter its moment of apparent conviviality, but it does not soften what follows: Marco Antonio turns his attention to Amalfitano and asks whether he has realized that they are going to hell.

Political diagnosis and threat

Marco Antonio says the situation is falling apart. He blames politicians who cannot govern, describes the middle class as wanting only to move to the United States, and points to the growing number of people arriving to work in the maquiladoras. Asked what he would do, he proposes burning some factories. He also advocates sending the army not into the streets but onto the highways, to stop more people from coming to the city. Amalfitano questions whether checkpoints are the only possible solution and says there must be alternatives. Marco Antonio replies that people have lost respect for others and for themselves.

The exchange is not an abstract debate detached from the setting. Santa Teresa is a large and rapidly growing border city with factories, maquiladoras, a cocaine cartel, workers arriving from other cities, Central American immigrants, and infrastructure unable to support its demographic growth. Its economy holds money and poverty together, while its inhabitants’ desire for peaceful work coexists with violence. Marco Antonio’s proposals turn those conditions into a program of destruction and restriction. The contrast between the scarce mezcal he presents as an endangered remnant and the industrial landscape around them sharpens his portrait of a city in which loss and growth occur side by side.

Departure and aftermath

While the men speak, three waiters whisper and glance toward their table. Amalfitano notices their attention and says they should leave. Marco Antonio responds with an obscene gesture and laughs; Amalfitano takes him by the arm and leads him out to the parking lot. Outside, beneath a large illuminated sign showing a long-legged mosquito, Amalfitano suggests the people at the bar may have a problem with Marco Antonio. Marco Antonio answers that Amalfitano need not worry because he is armed.

The remark changes the meaning of the ride and the bar conversation. What began as an unsolicited offer of help has led Amalfitano into a setting where Marco Antonio’s political anger, disrespect for the waiters, and declaration that he carries a weapon converge. Once home, however, Amalfitano quickly forgets Marco Antonio. The episode leaves the threat present but unresolved: it records no violence, only the uneasy proximity of ordinary hospitality, social grievance, and armed confidence in a city already marked by violence and rapid change.