Tequila: A Story of Success, Love & Violence, Tim Reuben, author
This book, dear reader, will glue you to your seat from page one until the very end. The title perfectly describes the novel. The intricately woven tale that begins in the mid 1900’s, and continues until the present time, takes you into the dangerous world of the drug cartels in Mexico and illustrates their power and their cruelty, exactly what has given them their awesome power and control over people and government officials. Sadism runs through the novel as a theme in both the cartels and the overly ambitious; those willing to do whatever it takes to succeed have no limits to their depravity. It goes without saying that when the criminal mind, possessing no moral compass, driven by greed, jealousy and the need for omniscience, does not possess a full deck of cards, madness appears in all the corners of their world. I cannot provide more than the barest outline, the most minimal details of the story, because it would definitely detract from the experience if any of its events were anticipated by the reader.
This is a tale about an honorable, hard-working Mexican family just beginning to make its fortune producing Tequila in the mid 1900's. At first, Sotero Ramirez attempts to fairly compete in the market, but soon, the need to grow took over. The more aggressive they became, the bigger their risk of offending competitors became. In the business world they traversed, Sotero knew the danger and did not want to cross the wrong people. Xiomara, his wife, however, was more daring. She wanted to expand their little enterprise once it started to become successful, not quite heeding the true threats that were out there. With her murder, witnessed by their daughter Marta, the family goes to ground, takes revenge and Sotero rebuilds his life, taking the business forward. Marta later becomes a powerful matriarch overseeing the business.
The story jumps back and forth from the past to the present day, following the progress of the family and the business. The granddaughter of Sotero and Xiomara, Marta's daughter Maria Ramirez, now heads up their mega powerful company that continues to grow. It distributes its own products and has expanded outside the world of Tequila production and sales. The main office is no longer in Mexico. It is now in New York, and Maria runs a tight ship. Her grandfather has set up a Trust that controls the private company so that it must stay in the hands of the Ramirez family. However, if there is even a whiff of illegality or incompetence threatening the business, that member accused and involved in such behavior will be excommunicated from the business and the family. The problem is that Maria’s siblings are not quite as honorable as Sotero was, nor are they as hard-working or intelligent. Both of her brothers, Miguel and Tomaso, leave a lot to be desired in the brain and character department. Their behavior begins to threaten the company.
The illustration of the magnitude of the power and fear the cartels arouse is authentic. The willingness of the people involved to participate in sadistic behavior to threaten and control their victims and extort huge amounts of money is palatable. Sometimes the descriptions of the tactics used by the cartels, and also those who wished to ignore their authority, were too difficult to read all at once, as were the revelations about the types of people who conducted the violence on both sides, the cartels and also those who attempted to compete with them for a greater share of the business. I was often forced to avert my eyes and take a deep breath before I could continue.
The story sometimes seemed over the top when it came to the tragedies that befell some of the characters, but all of the events hinted at reality, especially if they would have occurred in smaller bursts. Dealing with an attempted drowning, and then its aftermath that was followed up by a kidnapping by further forces of evil, was hard to swallow, but the knowledge that this could actually happen, even if only as just one act of violence, was just as horrifying.
Now, having finished the book, I realize that the violence and sadistic descriptions and language I found offensive were necessary to drive the message of this book home. The almost fairy-tale ending, between Maria and attorney Brian Youngman, did not even take away from the massive effect the book had on me as I read it. While it has been said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is also true that hope springs eternal. Yes, there was terrible violence that was an overriding theme in this novel of the hard-won success of the Ramirez family business dynasty, but there was also the idea that the future could always brighten if the right path and/or choice was made. Every action and reaction of each character, and every choice made, propelled the family either forward or backward, threatened their security or maintained it, but there was always another door that might open that would salvage whatever life threw at them.