Drugs Symbol Analysis

Various characters’ dealings with illicit drugs symbolize the ways in which Spanish Harlem’s residents are systemically oppressed and effectively forced to break the law. Julio’s best friend, Sapo, drops out of middle school and starts dealing drugs after he’s provoked into a fight with a racist teacher. Years later, selling drugs is seemingly Sapo’s only option to earn a sufficient living. After all, Julio is a high school graduate and college student, yet he still struggles to make ends meet with his low-paying job at a grocery store. Sapo’s life of crime thus represents the general lack of opportunity and economic desperation that young Latinx people face as the education system consistently overlooks or antagonizes them. Sapo even ropes Julio into his dealings, occasionally asking him to look after or deliver packages that almost certainly contain drugs. Julio’s reluctant yet steadfast support of Sapo in this way reflects the unfortunate reality that people in Spanish Harlem are often forced to choose between abiding by the law or remaining loyal to one’s friends.

Further, when City Halls refuses to aid antihero Willie Bodega in helping allocate more resources to the neighborhood, Bodega is forced to resort to running heroin (among other criminal endeavors) in order to fund his charitable work. Again, an otherwise staunchly moral and altruistic man resorting to drug-dealing symbolizes the ways in which the system neglects and marginalizes entire Latinx communities. Good people like Bodega are more or less forced to turn to lives of crime if they want to bring about lasting change. In this way, the drugs that circulate in Spanish Harlem aren’t solely an indicator of crime and degeneracy—they’re a marker of people desperately trying to better themselves and their fellow residents in the only way they can.