Free The Black Minutes by Martín Solares

little more slowly. When he asked for newspapers from twenty years ago, the clerk didn’t know what to answer.
    “I’m new here. Let me see where they are.”
    Cabrera wondered what case from the seventies had caught Bernardo Blanco’s attention. Was it corruption in the Oil Workers’ Union? The activities of the September 23rd Terrorist League? The founding of the Cartel del Puerto? Any of those three subjects would mean some thorny territory.
    The girl came back with three dusty tomes tied together with a rope, and he could see the job was going to be grueling and long. Literally, he was going to dust off a case that others already considered buried and forgotten.
    He examined the first volume: January through February 1970. The majority of the articles seemed to repeat themselves in the same stilted, overwrought language of low-budget provincial newspapers: SEASONED SMUGGLER; OBSTINATE THIEF; PICKPOCKET ARRESTED; IMPRISONED FOR STEALING LIVESTOCK —invariably followed by a picture of a guy looking sad and, next to him, a thoroughly outraged OX —and, again, SKILLED SMUGGLER; OBSTINATE THIEF; PICKPOCKET ARRESTED; IMPRISONED FOR STEALING LIVESTOCK and then the picture of another sad guy, another cow.

    Since Cabrera didn’t have an exact date for the issue Bernardo was interested in, he began by examining the papers from 1970 and then the following year, advancing year by year. An hour later he thought he’d found something. By six that afternoon he had no doubt: eight months of newspapers confirmed his fears.
Puta madre
, he thought, what have I gotten myself into? At times, he felt like reality actually consisted of several layers of lies, one piled on top of another.
    Back then there were two newspapers that copied each other’s designs, logos, and corporate colors. The leading one in sales was
La Noticia
, owned by General García; it was a weak newspaper, and obedient, always backing the dominant Institutional Revolutuionary Party and critical of its enemies. Its competition was
El Mercurio:
an independent paper, faithful to the official version of events and, more than anything else, utterly sensationalist. It was easy to confuse the two, because both were tabloid size.
    Judging by the pictures, the city went through one of its most prosperous periods in the seventies. New oil reserves were being discovered, the government promoted private investing, and there was a boom in commerce. During that time of growth, the dollar exchange rate was at twelve pesos and fifty centavos, and because of the proximity of the United States, people would go to “the other side” as if they were picking something up at the supermarket.
    Kraft cheese was everywhere. Brach’s candies. Levi’s jeans. Nike tennis shoes. Gringo aspirins. New neighborhoods were built in front of the lagoon. Hotels and restaurants were opened. A new hospital was built with the most modern equipment for the Oil Workers’ Union.
    One night Mr. Jesús Heredia killed a tiger weighing more than four hundred pounds at his ranch. His horse reared when it sawtwo eyes stalking it in the bushes. Heredia barely had time to turn his flashlight on and shoot at the shape. They needed two donkeys to hang the cadaver from a tree and take the picture published in the papers.
    The article next to that one reported on a young mechanic who tried to abuse two teenage girls. One of the girls managed to escape and get help. The passersby almost lynched him. The image showed the mechanic with his lips swollen and a black eye. The headline read: V ICIOUS J ACKAL and it was the first time the word, jackal, popped up that year. In tabloid slang, jackal is used to refer to people who attack those smaller than them, like a predatory animal. The case didn’t cause any great commotion. Back then, three rapes a week made the news. The rest didn’t make the cut.
    A hurricane hit that year and killed hundreds of livestock. Many of the businesspeople in the area lost everything