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
In Chimayo, agents Chris Valdez and Jim Kuykendall struggle to make much progress with their investigation into the heroin trade: none of Chimayo’s three main heroin clans ever served much jail time, and there isn’t much to go off of. Kuykendall forms a team of local law enforcement to target Chimayo’s main dealers. Specifically, he pores over medical reports of overdoses and immerses himself with the stories of addicts and their families. Many family members want and need to talk about the addictions that have ripped apart their lives. In the end, the grand jury indicts over 34 people, “including Felix Barela, Josefa Gallegos, ‘Fat Jose’ Martinez, and his brother ‘Donuts.’” On September 29, 1999, Felix Barela’s land and assets are seized by law enforcement.
None of Chimayo’s main heroin clans served much jail time because, like the Xalisco Boys, they dealt with relatively small amounts of heroin, and law enforcement prioritized larger scale drug busts. Kuykendall’s tactic of speaking with families of addicts who had overdosed or died shows how important it is to destigmatize and talk more openly about addiction. Because families came forward, Kuykendall was able to make more headway in his investigation.
Themes
In April 1999, several months before this major drug bust, the badly bludgeoned body of Xalisco Boy named Aurelio Rodriguez-Zepeda is found in the trunk of an abandoned car outside Santa Fe. At the time, Xalisco meant little to authorities; however, they discover that the car in which the body was found is registered to Josefa Gallegos. Additionally, they discover that numbers entered into a cell phone found on the boy’s body are connected to a Phoenix heroin case.
This development in the case shows that the Chimayo heroin clans were purchasing their product from Xalisco traffickers, which reinforces how widely the Xalisco business network had developed in the past several years.
Themes
Kuykendall calls the Phoenix FBI office and discovers that their officers are in the midst of tracking heroin distributors from Nayarit. Of particular interest to the Phoenix FBI is how these traffickers differ from conventional distributors in larger cities like Chicago or Miami—these dealers operate out of mid-size towns like Boise, Omaha, and Salt Lake. Ed Ruplinger has been involved in investigating the traffickers who set up shop in Boise. Upon further investigation of the Chimayo clans’ phone records, Kuykendall discovers that the clans ordered their drugs from a dispatcher who then called Aurelio Rodriguez-Zepeda. It seems that the murdered boy had been “some kind of black tar deliveryman.” At this point, Kuykendall realizes that the Chimayo clans are part of a much larger, connected network of heroin distributors.
Law enforcement across the country begins to connect the dots to see how widespread the Xalisco Boys heroin distribution system is. The Xalisco tactic of avoiding large cities with established heroin distributors allows them, in part, to avoid attracting much notice from law enforcement up until this point.
Themes
