Jennifer Clement (author of Prayers for the Stolen)
Jennifer Clement (born 1960) is an American-Mexican author. Clement has written several novels, including Gun Love (2018) and Prayers for the Stolen (2014), and published several collections of poetry and the memoirs ‘Widow Basquiat’ (2001)and ‘The Promised Party'(2024). She is the first and only woman president of PEN International, elected in 2015.
Born in 1960 in Greenwich, Connecticut, Clement moved in 1961 with her family to Mexico City, where she later attended Edron Academy. She moved to the United States to finish high school at Cranbrook Kingswood School, before studying English Literature and Anthropology at New York University. She received her MFA from the University of Southern Maine.
Wikipedia / Photo by Hobbsansak – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Guerrero, Mexico
Guerrero is one of the 32 states that comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 81 municipalities. The state has a population of about 3.5 million people. It is located in southwest Mexico and is bordered by the states of Michoacán to the north and west, the State of Mexico and Morelos to the north, Puebla to the northeast and Oaxaca to the east. In addition to the capital city, Chilpancingo and the largest city Acapulco, other cities in Guerrero include Petatlán, Ciudad Altamirano, Taxco, Iguala, Ixtapa, and Zihuatanejo. Today, it is home to a number of indigenous communities, including the Nahuas, Mixtecs, Tlapanecs, Amuzgos, and formerly Cuitlatecs. It is also home to communities of Afro-Mexicans in the Costa Chica region.
Guerrero is the number one producer of poppy flower in Mexico. On a global scale, Guerrero shares the first place with Afghanistan. Mexico provides more than 90 percent of US’s heroin. The poppy flower has become an economic support for many families in the “Sierra de Guerrero” (Guerrero mountain chain), since it is much more profitable than any other crop. Due to the high poverty rates, many peasants prefer to grow the poppy flower in order to cover their basic needs.
The movie and part I of the book are set on the outskirts of Chilpancingo, a city about an hour northeast of Acapulco.
Chilpancingo de los Bravo (commonly shortened to Chilpancingo) is the capital and second-largest city of the Mexican state of Guerrero. In 2010 it had a population of 187,251 people. The municipality has an area of 2,338.4 km2 (902.9 sq mi) in the south-central part of the state, situated in the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains, on the bank of the Huacapa River. The city is on Federal Highway 95, which connects Acapulco to Mexico City.
The heat and humidity almost become a character in Prayers for the Stolen.
Mexican Federal Highway 95, near Chilpancingo. The highway features prominently in the book Prayers for the Stolen.Chilpancingo / Encyclopedia Britannica
Poppy Cultivation in Guerrero
EL CALVARIO, Mexico — With her nimble hands, tiny feet and low center of gravity, Angelica Guerrero Ortega makes an excellent opium harvester.
Deployed along the Sierra Madre del Sur, where a record poppy crop covers the mountainsides in strokes of green, pink and purple, she navigates the inclines with the deftness of a ballerina.
Though shy, she perks up when describing her craft: the delicate slits to the bulb, the patient scraping of the gum, earning in one day more than her parents do in a week.
That she is only 15 is not so important for the people of her tiny mountain hamlet. If she and her classmates miss school for the harvest, so be it. In a landscape of fallow opportunities, income outweighs education.
[…] Nowhere is the toll of that surge more apparent than in Guerrero, the country’s most violent state, where rival drug factions perpetrate a war of bloody competition and silent disappearances that have paralyzed the region. Here, farmers are increasingly opting to grow poppies, cloaking remote mountainsides in the robust crop to eke out a living in places like Calvario where, as far as most are concerned, the government barely exists. To meet the demand, children are enlisted in the harvest, out of necessity and convenience. […] Not that anyone in Calvario much cares for — or even knows — of the broader debate over the drug trade. Villagers see little harm in cultivating opium. No one here uses the drug, or its derivative heroin, and the day rate for labor in the poppy fields is many times what is paid for shucking corn.
In the village of around 100 people, there is limited awareness of the outside world. Some farmers are not entirely clear what opium is even used for. […] José Luis García, a farmer in Calvario who leases his land for opium cultivation, asked more than once what exactly it was about poppies that drove Americans so crazy. After hearing of the epidemic of addiction in the United States, Mr. García paused for a moment to reflect on the ethics of growing poppies.
“The fault is not with those who cultivate the opium,” he said. “It’s with the idiots who consume it.”
Paraquat … is a toxic organic compound with the chemical formula [(C6H7N)2]Cl2. It is classified as a viologen, a family of redox-active heterocycles of similar structure. This salt is one of the most widely used herbicides worldwide. It is quick-acting and non-selective, killing green plant tissue on contact. It is also toxic (lethal) to human beings and animals. Its lethality is attributed to its enhancing production of superoxide anions. It has been linked to the development of Parkinson’s disease
Paraquat is toxic to humans (Category II) by the oral route and moderately toxic (Category III) through the skin. Pure paraquat, when ingested, is highly toxic to mammals, including humans, causing severe inflammation and potentially leading to severe lung damage (e.g., irreversible pulmonary fibrosis, also known as ‘paraquat lung’), acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and death. The mortality rate is estimated between 60–90%.
During the late 1970s, a controversial program sponsored by the US government sprayed paraquat on cannabis fields in Mexico. Following Mexican efforts to eradicate marijuana and poppy fields in 1975, the United States government helped by sending helicopters and other technological assistance. Helicopters were used to spray the herbicides paraquat and 2,4-D on the fields; marijuana contaminated with these substances began to show up in US markets, leading to debate about the program.
Use in suicide and murder A large majority (93 percent) of fatalities from paraquat poisoning are suicides, which occur mostly in developing countries. For instance, in Samoa from 1979 to 2001, 70 percent of suicides were by paraquat poisoning. Trinidad and Tobago is particularly well known for its incidence of suicides involving the use of Gramoxone (commercial name of paraquat). In southern Trinidad, particularly in Penal, Debe from 1996 to 1997, 76 percent of suicides were by paraquat, 96 percent of which involved the over-consumption of alcohol such as rum.
