Untouchability

Untouchability is the power to act as though ordinary consequences do not apply, secured not by isolation from institutions but by influence within them. The novel gives the idea two sharply contrasted forms: the political protection surrounding Tío, also known as Miguel Ángel Barrera, and the authority Art Keller acquires through law-enforcement cooperation. Neither is absolute. For Tío, the word is a warning about a network that can shield him; for Art, it becomes an ironic description of a position that cannot keep him safe from exposure, exhaustion, or the history connecting him to his target.

The Word Applied to Tío

At Art’s office, Colonel Vega rebukes him for allowing Ernie to use Miguel Ángel Barrera’s name irresponsibly. Vega describes Barrera as a respected businessman with many friends in government. Art observes that those friends apparently include the Municipal Judicial Federal Police. The exchange makes protection tangible: the issue is not simply whether Barrera has committed crimes, but whether naming him can be separated from the powerful relationships that surround him.

Vega asks whether Art is Mexican and whether he speaks Spanish. When Art confirms that he speaks Spanish, Vega invokes intocable and applies it directly to Barrera: he is untouchable. Vega then leaves, as if the warning itself were enough. The term does more than identify Barrera’s status. It marks the boundary around what Art’s investigation can safely do, and it comes from an official whose position makes the warning part of the machinery of power rather than a distant rumor.

Protection in Public

A gathering at Talavera’s gives the word a visible social setting. García Abrego, head of the Gulf Cartel, arrives in a Mercedes; Güero Méndez appears in cowboy clothes; Chalino Guzmán wears an ill-fitting suit, mismatched pants, and green boots. Art sees the meeting as a gathering of cartel godfathers, yet the men do not seem worried about police interference. His conclusion is carefully qualified: they think they are safe, and they are probably not wrong.

The scene places apparent security beside the presence of law enforcement rather than beyond it. Art can observe the men, but observation does not mean that their confidence is misplaced. The meeting’s public ease echoes Vega’s private warning: protection is made credible by the connections that let powerful people behave as if intervention will not reach them. The scene does not establish that every institution is controlled by the cartel; it shows why Art reads the gathering’s composure as evidence of protection, not carelessness.

Art’s Countervailing Authority

The novel then transfers the language of untouchability to Art. Ernie names an informant Source Chupar, who gives Art a bank account among the law-enforcement agencies operating along the border. Those agencies deny receiving anything from the informant, yet they owe him and depend on local cooperation. In Art’s assessment, the Drug Enforcement Administration cannot function without that cooperation; agencies that want it must avoid interfering with him. Art, too, is becoming intocable.

This status is not a simple reversal in which the investigator acquires the same kind of power as his quarry. Art’s leverage comes through the practical dependence of agencies on a source and on cooperation, not through an assurance that no harm can reach him. The narrative immediately breaks the apparent triumph: he is not, in fact, untouchable. The qualification distinguishes institutional influence from personal safety. Being difficult for other agencies to disregard does not make his operation secure, nor does it dissolve the risks attached to pursuing Tío.

The Cost of the Illusion

Art’s work against Tío depends on concealment. He leaves his family late at night, keeps his activities secret, and hides his past, while anticipating that Tío may trace the operation back to him and remind him of their former relationship. The pursuit therefore undermines the safety that Art’s growing influence seems to promise. The closer he moves toward the target, the more he exposes the private history that makes the operation dangerous.

The strain registers in ordinary physical and domestic details. Art is not eating or sleeping; he and Althea rarely make love, and she criticizes his irritability, secrecy, and emotional closure. At four in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, he has thrown up the leftover chicken mole he ate at three-thirty. He thinks of the word again: untouchable. His thought rejects the comfort it might offer. The past is not simply catching up with him; he is moving toward it, step by step, toward an abyss.

Meanwhile, Tío is also awake at night, trying to identify the informer. The leaders of the Federación—García Abrego, Güero Méndez, and El Verde—have taken serious shots, and they are putting enormous pressure on Tío to act. His protection does not remove pressure or uncertainty; it places him inside a network of expectations and danger. Set against Art’s sleeplessness, this detail makes untouchability less a condition of invulnerability than a precarious position maintained amid competing demands.

A Protection That Cannot Protect

The novel’s repeated use of the word links authority to relationships rather than to a stable exemption from consequence. Barrera’s government connections make the label a threat to an investigation. Art’s usefulness to agencies makes it briefly sound like a badge of influence. In both cases, the protection depends on other people and institutions, and in neither case does it end danger. Art’s agency access cannot spare him the bodily and marital costs of secrecy; Tío’s standing cannot spare him pressure from cartel leaders or the search for the informer.

That contrast gives the word its force. Untouchability can describe the appearance of safety produced by power, but the narrative refuses to let appearance settle the matter. Art’s repeated thought of being untouchable is followed by the recognition that he is not; his position may make him influential, but it cannot separate him from the past he is deliberately approaching. The concept thus binds political impunity to personal vulnerability: protection may change who can act, who can interfere, and who must cooperate, without making anyone beyond consequence.