Sips and Giggles: Alcohol, Tragedy and Ideo-Aesthetics in La sombra del Caudillo

This article examines the ideo-aesthetic function of alcohol in Martín Luis Guzmán literary magnum opus La sombra del caudillo. Specifically, I read alcohol as a broader process of consumption, inebriation and affective transformation that concurrently reflects and influences individual and collective power dynamics at play. Rather than a mere object of consumption, it behaves as an active agent that participates in, ignites and transforms other processes in the text. Within the ideological domain, I focus on what the individual and collective drinking practices reveal about those who drink and how questions of gender, class and race are negotiated through literary representation. I then consider the aesthetic and symbolic function of alcohol in relation to the broader sociopolitical practice of state-building. I analyze how alcohol consumption becomes a double-edged sword with the potential to foster comradery or conflict and how its excess transforms social relations from amicable political encounters to violent confrontations. Ultimately, I argue that the ideo-aesthetic role of alcohol in La sombra del caudillo contributes to the work’s overarching theme of tragedy.