Controversial Mexican Comic Depicting Memín Pinguín, 9 Issues

Memín Pinguín Mexican Comic

Periodical

Memín Pinguín comic series issued during the renewed public scrutiny that followed Mexico’s 2005 commemorative postage stamps depicting the character. Created by Yolanda Vargas Dulché in the 1940s, Memín was presented in Mexico as a mischievous and sympathetic schoolboy, but his exaggerated facial features and comic behavior drew criticism in the United States and from Afro Mexican activists as a continuation of racial caricature. Memín first appeared in 1943 in the comic serial Almas de Niño in the magazine Pepín. The stories drew partly on Vargas Dulché’s childhood memories of Mexico City’s Colonia Guerrero and peception of Cuban children during her travels. The series follows Memín and his school friends through comedy, melodrama, family hardship, and moral lessons. Alberto Cabrera illustrated the strip during its early development, and Sixto Valencia later became the artist most closely associated with the character; the original series was repeatedly republished and reworked across the second half of the twentieth century. These nine consecutive issues belong to Grupo Editorial Vid’s Edición Homenaje and preserve the series immediately after the stamp dispute turned a long running domestic comic into a subject of transnational argument about blackness, national identity, and the cultural ownership of racial imagery.

Memín Pinguín. Edición Homenaje. Mexico: Grupo Editorial Vid, 2006. Nine consecutive Spanish language issues, numbers 7 through 15.

[1] Memín Pinguín No. 7, January 16, 2006, “Chisme”
[2] Memín Pinguín No. 8, January 23, 2006, “Exámenes”
[3] Memín Pinguín No. 9, January 30, 2006, “La lavar”
[4] Memín Pinguín No. 10, February 6, 2006, “Secreto”
[5] Memín Pinguín No. 11, February 13, 2006, “Maracas”
[6] Memín Pinguín No. 12, February 20, 2006, “Hospital”
[7] Memín Pinguín No. 13, February 27, 2006, “Detenido”
[8] Memín Pinguín No. 14, March 6, 2006, “Fuga”
[9] Memín Pinguín No. 15, March 13, 2006, “Incomunicado”

The run appeared less than a year after the Mexican postal service issued five Memín stamps in 2005. The stamps prompted criticism from the White House, Jesse Jackson, and other American commentators, while Mexican officials and many domestic readers defended the character as a familiar cultural figure. Scholars have used the dispute to examine the different histories of racial classification in Mexico and the United States, as well as the limited visibility of Afro Mexican communities within national narratives of mestizaje. The present sequence records how Grupo Editorial Vid continued to market Memín through slapstick school and domestic situations while the covers retained the blackface derived physiognomy at the center of the controversy. Moderate rubbing, handling creases, edge wear, and occasional surface soiling; bindings intact and issues complete as examined. Overall good condition. A consecutive publishing record of how a midcentury Mexican comic stereotype remained commercially active after becoming the focus of a bilateral debate over race and representation.

Item #23688

Price: $450.00