Guest Column

By Victor Landa:
San Antonio Express-News
July 11, 2005
When I was a boy, there were three revistas that I read as often as I could. At the time we lived in downtown Nuevo Laredo, and once a week I'd find an excuse to walk to the newspaper stands that stood along the nearby plaza.

Every week I'd look for the latest issue of Los Agachados or Duda. Agachados was a satirical comic book written and illustrated by Eduardo Del Rio Garcia, who published under the pen name Riuz. He was admired because he tackled the controversial issues of the day.

Mostly though, Agachados, meaning the crouched ones, was popular because it unmasked Mexico's political class pretensions. Most of what I read in Agachados was beyond my understanding, but I read it as a challenge and out of a pesky curiosity to find out what I didn't know.

The other revista I looked for was Duda, which literally means doubt. Duda was about all things supernatural, and I loved it. It dealt with UFOs and unexplainable phenomena, psychics and oddities such as the Abominable Snowman. I read it because of the way it draped mystery with a veil of pseudo-science and intense drama.

The third publication I read was a comic book about a mischievous little boy who managed to get himself into hilarious predicaments but always found a good-natured way to solve his problems. It was called Memin Pinguin, now considered a classic of the Mexican comic book tradition.

There were others, of course. I remember Kaliman, a turban-wearing superhero dressed in white who wore a cape and fought evil with a combination of physical strength, mental prowess and strict moral values. I also remember Hermelinda Linda, a hideous and raunchy character who conjured potions and managed to turn every situation on its head.

My favorite, though, was Memin Pinguin. My friends and I would smuggle the comics into our classroom and pass them around when the teacher wasn't looking. We'd trade issues with each other and talk about Memin's latest troubles and schemes.

It never occurred to me that the character may have been racist. That's what leaders of the African American community in this country are saying now. Mexico has issued a commemorative postage stamp honoring one of its most beloved comic book characters, and the African American community finds it offensive. I clearly see why.

Memin is a caricature of a black child. He is drawn in a style that mirrors the stigmatized Sambo of America's ugliest and most blatant racist history. In the context of America's past, Memin is clearly offensive. But Memin is not American; he is Mexican, and in the context of Mexico's past he is a classic.

It's clearly a difficult situation, and it reveals interesting questions. There are those in Mexico who see the issue as another instance of Americans imposing their own values on the rest of the world. And there are others who understand the cross-cultural significance of images and the feelings they conjure.

In the Mexican context, popular publications are ingrained in the social fabric. Mexico's humor, laden with satire, social criticism, self-deprecation and double-entendres, has always found an outlet in its comic characters. Within that context, Memin Pinguin is an iconic figure. And as such it was honored.

I used to read Memin more than three decades ago, and the world is a very different place now. The line that separates the United States and Mexico was once a friendly border; it's now a line of contention. I've always maintained that borders are meant to be boundaries, but they are porous just the same. Commerce and contraband cross the border, as do culture and misunderstandings. Thirty years ago no one in this country would have noticed the little boy in the Mexican comic book. But 30 years ago he wouldn't have been on a postage stamp. Now he is, and some people find him offensive.

As a gesture of cross border good will and acting as a good neighbor, Mexico should discontinue the stamp, but not because it is racist. Rather, the stamp should be discontinued as an acknowledgement that the ties that bind our nations are strong, and the offense taken by African Americans should be respected.
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Contact Victor Landa at: vlanda@sbcglobal.net

(HispanicVista Editor’s note: The postage stamps were a one time issue of 750,000. They have been minted, sold and minting discontinued.)

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