Dreamland

Dreamland

by

Sam Quinones

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Dreamland: Part 1: Enrique Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
In the summer of 1999, a young, well-dressed Mexican man uses a fake ID to cross the border from Mexico into Arizona. He takes a cab to the Yuma International Airport, where he flies to Phoenix. When the young man arrives at the airport, he sees a group of Mexican men dressed in dirty, faded clothes. He assumes that they are illegal immigrants: hard workers, but with nothing to show for it. This man sometimes goes by “Enrique.” He grew up poor in a village in Nayarit, Mexico, where his father was a sugarcane farmer. Now, though, Enrique has a business, “with employees and expenses.” His success allows him to purchase “his first Levi’s 501s.” With his fake ID, he can cross the border freely.
Quinoes depicts Enrique as a hardworking man with smart business sensibilities to draw attention to the double standard applied to illegitimate narcotics (heroin) versus “legitimate” narcotics (OxyContin). With his “employees and expenses” and his motivation to succeed, Enrique is very similar to pharmaceutical industry figures like Arthur Sackler. Yet, for a long time, drugs sold by illegal traffickers were stigmatized while very similar drugs sold through the pharmaceutical industry were condoned. 
Themes
The Drug Business Theme Icon
Stigma, Shame, and the Opiate Epidemic  Theme Icon
Enrique waits for his plane and sees an immigration officer ask the other men for their IDs. The men cannot provide identification, so they are escorted away, likely to be deported. Enrique sympathizes with the men. He knows that hard, honest work isn’t enough to get ahead in the world, and he uses this knowledge to justify his own line of work. Enrique later boards his plane to Phoenix. From there, he travels to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Enrique’s desire for economic prosperity overrides any moral qualms he has about selling heroin, much like Purdue Pharma’s greed fueled their aggressive, erroneous marketing of OxyContin in the mid 1990s.
Themes
The Drug Business Theme Icon