Filiberto García, the protagonist ofThe Mongolian Conspiracy, the sixty-year-old Mexico City police hitman, orpistolero, orguarura, as they are called nowadays, says “¡Pinche!” a lot, which Katherine Silvers translates as “Fucking!”Pinche past!Pinche furniture!Pinche gringo!Pinche Tame Tiger!Pinche professor!Pinche goddamned captain!Pinche jokes! Those are just thepinches found in the novel’s first three pages. Mexican profanities, such aschingar, are famously variable, their meanings subject to context and tone and conjugation, andpinche can be used in lots of ways in Mexican Spanish, for example even relatively genteel parents might say, “Pinche brats, go to bed,” but probably very few of their English-speaking American counterparts say, “Fucking brats, go to bed.” But “fucking!” is certainly the best possible translation of thepinches in García’s inner monologue, an explosive expression of rancor and mockery—including of himself—sarcasm, humiliation, bafflement, defiance, weary or bitter sorrow and resignation, all of which barely suggests the full range of hispinches. Let’s just take a look at what the “fucking” “pinches” of those first three pages tell us about Filiberto García:
“Fucking past!” García has a sordid job and knows it, called upon by his police and politician superiors—who claim to be repulsed by killing and to belong to the modern world of legality and laws—whenever they want someone rubbed out. But García got his start as a killer as a youth in the Mexican Revolution, fighting with Pancho Villa and “the Centaurs of the North,” when killing was manly and served a noble cause. “Here [in Mexico] all they teach us is how to kill,” Filiberto García reflects later
