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

movies, radio, and TV by presenting ‘como “ideal” el sistema de vida Americano’. 137
The image that accompanies this caption is a young man with a heart over his head
(denoting love) looking at a soldier, a blond actress, a hippie, and a secret agent. Again,
through the act of humour, the author is pointing out that Mexican youth is overly
influenced by the USA (promoted by the Mexican authorities) and he is denigrating the
attitude of young people toward US culture, adoring and emulating it. After these
examples we can see that Mexican hippies and ‘contraculturos’ were not readily
accepted socially. They were rejected because of their way of thinking and they were
labelled as drug addicts and emulators of US youth. We described this phenomenon in
chapter two.
Another characteristic of the young was their activism, which was widespread
until 1971. Afterwards many young people participated in underground movements and
various belligerent activities, such as urban and rural guerrilla groups or the Mexican
Communist party. Although in Hermelinda Linda the characters and situations are
usually exaggerated, in some cases, when referring to youth, this distortion of reality is
focused not only on their emptiness but also on their demonstrations and other forms of
political activism. Hermelinda’s neighbour, Esteban, loses his mind and shows no sign
of intelligence. His children, who are in their 20s, arrive home and realise what the
situation is. The language of the son is similar to that of the hippies in one of our earlier
examples. He is portrayed as a lazy young man who lives at the expense of his father.
He asks about his father’s health: ‘¿Ya se alivió mi vetarro?’ and when he realises that
his father is still ill, he adds: ‘¿Quién me va a dar entonces para mi cine y mis
tortugas?’ 138 This exchange highlights the lack of concern of the son for his father.
When Esteban’s daughter gets home and learns that there is no money for her either, her
137 Los Agachados, 77, p. 21.
138 Hermelinda Linda, 378, p. 6.
124