Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

authorities as ‘ignorant’. By making fun of them, we enjoy the benefits described
earlier.
Similar phenomena appear in Hermelinda Linda, and with the same aims. When
Hermelinda uses dough to create a child, she asks the reader whether he/she is
wondering if the baby will grow up and have a normal life, since it is made of flour. She
clarifies: ‘otros parecen haber sido hechos de cemento, con cerebro de estropajo, y
andan dando lata por ahí… en la “polaca”…’. 85 By laughing we might agree with
Hermelinda’s caustic comments about politicians. We ascribe the insult to ourselves and
commit the offense indirectly 86 knowing that we will not be punished, since it was
Hermelinda who said it.
As can be seen, witty comments against political figures can be a good way for
the population to express freely their feelings and concerns. Comedy seems to be a
perfect means to insult them. Through humour, defects can be exaggerated in order to
make them more hilarious, to make it clear that we have recognised them, or to
highlight a flaw which should not exist or should be corrected.
The diputados are one of the favourite targets when comics attack public
servants, apparently expressing what the population really thinks about them. Another
characteristic attributed to them is dishonesty, a very serious accusation and hard to
prove –especially during the authoritarian PRI’s rule. Yet it was a vox populi at the time
– a common belief manifested through the jokes in the comic books, where opinions
about dishonesty could be presented without proof of the kind journalism would
normally be required to demostrate. We can assume that such ideas belonged to the
contemporary social imaginary when the comic books were published.
85 Hermelinda Linda, 178, p. 32.
86 Umberto Eco, ‘Los Marcos de la “libertad” cómica’, in Umberto Eco, V.V. Ivanov and Monica Rector,
¡Carnaval!, trans. by Mónica Mansour (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1984; repr. 1998), p. 10.
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