What are some of the events and social practices that occur in the city and in the jungle in the novel Lost City Radio? How can I analyze the...

One of the practices in the city portrayed in Lost City Radio is the beating of children. Alarcon writes, "The government counseled solid beatings of children, in the name of regaining the discipline that had been lost in a decade of war. The station ran public service announcements on the subject" (page 12). The government uses the beating of children to try to reinvigorate a sense of discipline after the wayward years of the war, and the city radio station supports the government's message in an attempt to regain order in the society.

The government has instituted other social practices, including the outlawing of traditional native rituals. For example, villagers use a hallucinogenic plant called "tadek" to identify criminals. After a crime has been committed, the villagers feed "tadek" to a boy who then points out the criminal. Then, the criminal's arms are summarily chopped off. Manau meets a man named Mr. Zahir who has suffered this fate. Alarcon writes of Mr. Zahir, "He motioned with a waving stump, and Manau saw the scarred flesh, dimpled and leathery, that closed around the place where his hands ended so abruptly" (page 94). Mr. Zahir's hands are a symbol of the ways of the jungle, which are both mysterious and sometimes savage. They are also a symbol of the current post-war state of the country, particularly the jungle, and convey a tone of sadness about the devastation that the civil war caused in the jungle, where countless people were murdered or disappeared. 

Another event that occurs regularly in the city is each Saturday night, Norma broadcasts her show, which helps people find others who were lost in the war. Alarcon writes, "And Norma listened, and then repeated the names in her mellifluous voice, and the board would light up with calls, lonely red lights, people longing to be found" (page 9). The red lights symbolize people hoping to find others, though some are impostors. This ritual brings hope, though some of it is illusory, to the people who live in the city and to the former inhabitants of the jungle who have fled to the city.