Abstract
<jats:p>Abstract: This article explores how Fiesta en la madriguera (2010) by Juan Pablo Villalobos constructs a narco-banquet that serves as a de-foundational device in which culinary rituals articulate a gastro-politics that subverts traditional national fictions. Through the childlike gaze of Tochtli, the novel reveals how the narco-state reconfigures Mexican gastronomic practices—such as pozole, herbal infusions, and political banquets—and transforms them into technologies of domination, exclusion, and the pedagogy of power. Combining tools from food studies with contributions from narco-literary criticism and theories of power, the article argues that Villalobos dismantles the foundational fictions studied by Doris Sommer to expose how the narco-state does not simply threaten the nation, but rather de-founds it through the capture and perversion of its most basic cultural rituals.</jats:p>