Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dreamland, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Pain Management and the Normalization of Narcotics
The Drug Business
Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic
Community as a Remedy to Addiction
Summary
Analysis
The Xalisco Boys refine their system in the 1990s. They emphasize no violence, which stands in contrast to other drug gangs, like the Bloods and Crips, who deal crack cocaine in Los Angeles. The Xalisco Boys build and expand their business in opposition of these violent tactics. Polla, a Mexican man in his 40s operating out of Boise, is a part of this expansion.
The Xalisco Boys’ lack of violence makes them attractive to the new market of sheltered, middle-class heroin users that come out of the opiate epidemic. These users appreciate the safe, professional business demeanor of the Xalisco Boys.
Themes
Ed Ruplinger, a narcotics investigator in Boise, becomes interested in the Xalisco Boys as he starts arresting more and more Mexican traffickers selling heroin out of their cars. These dealers are easy to arrest, but they never serve time because, as Dennis Chavez also noted, they carry such small amounts of heroin. Ruplinger realizes that all these dealers are from Nayarit, and he sees how quickly arrested drivers are replaced with new men.
Xalisco dealers could avoid serving time because U.S. law enforcement prioritizes busting large-scale drug operations. The Xalisco operation could afford to replace drivers quickly because there was no shortage of young men back home who were eager to enter the trafficking business and get ahead in life. Again, this shows how the Xalisco drug trade operated according to basic economic principles, like any legitimate business.
Themes
Ruplinger identifies Polla as the cell’s boss. The cell operates successfully in Boise until Christmas 1996, when a post office’s drug-sniffing dog reacts to a package that contains a Santa Claus doll filled with black tar heroin. The narcotics team follows the package to its delivery address and busts a group of clean-cut Mexican men sorting through heroin. All of these men are from Nayarit and bear the last name Tejeda. This seizure marks the beginning of the end of Polla’s reign in Boise. However, Polla’s cell is almost immediately replaced by a new group of dealers and drivers from Xalisco.
The fact that these men all have the last name Tejeda shows that they are related to David Tejeda, who is credited with starting the first stage of Xalisco expansion outside of L.A. The fact that Polla’s cell is easily replaced speaks to the efficiency of the Xalisco Boys’ business model: they anticipate issues and can quickly adapt to changes in the market.
Themes
In researching Dreamland, Quinones comes across a woman who was married to one of Polla’s drivers. She tells him how her husband helped Polla form a new cell in Salt Lake City before breaking off from him and starting a competing cell in Boise. She also notes that the Xalisco Boys especially enjoyed using their drug money to purchase Levi’s 501s, which were a sign of wealth among young men in Xalisco. The Xalisco Boys acquired these jeans from addicts who would trade shoplifted jeans for drugs. The woman goes so far as to claim that “this thirst for Levi’s 501s […] is part of what propelled the Xalisco system as it began to expand out of the San Fernando Valley.” Quinones compares the men’s consumerism to a junkie’s addiction to dope: “just as an addict couldn’t choose not to use dope, these men couldn’t not return to sell it.”
The fact that many Xalisco Boys were motivated to sell drugs by a “thirst for Levi’s 501s” emphasizes the greed and excess of business culture and capitalism. Quinones frames the problem of excess as a disease when he compares the Xalisco Boys’ drive to sell drugs to an addict’s drive to use drugs. In this way, he suggests that the accumulation of wealth can become a damaging addiction and a societal ill, just like opiates.
Themes
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Ruplinger can’t keep up with all the new cells popping up. Eventually, he wiretaps Polla’s phones and gains new insight into the extent of Polla’s businesses, which extend to Portland, Salt Lake, and Honolulu. Ruplinger notes how “massive and connected the Xalisco network [i]s,” as well as Polla’s practice of “just-in-time supply” and his emphasis on quality customer service. By 1997, Boise hosts a half-dozen Xalisco crews. In addition, Ruplinger’s wiretaps reveal that Polla runs other crews all across the Western U.S.
Again, law enforcement observes the “just-in-time supply” strategy that the Xalisco Boys implement, as well as their emphasis on customer service. The wiretaps reveal how far the Xalisco system has spread over the decade. The extent of the Xalisco Boys’ expansion foreshadows the expansion of opiates across the U.S. that will occur over the next decade.
Themes
