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

eaction is no more compassionate. The girl says: ‘¡Y luego se asombran de que hayan
motines y manifestaciones…!’ 139 Both their reactions are unreasonable and out of
bounds, and the exaggeration in the language they use is a means to poke fun at the way
young people spoke. However, in the social imaginary of some social groups, this act of
humour can also be considered as means of showing disapproval of the students’ actions
and the lack of sense of their demands.
In the story in which a spoiled young man is driving his motorcycle outside
Hermelinda’s house, since Hermelinda cannot gain justice through the authorities, she
hypnotises him, so that he thinks his motorcycle is cursed. During his hallucination, the
boy thinks he will die, and he yells: ‘Morir tan joven y sin haber encabezado una
manifestación’ 140 The comment surprises the reader, triggering a comic effect. In this
passage, the situation is also generalising about youth and implying that all young
people used to participate in demonstrations. We see that they disguise this pursuit with
revolutionary aims. Nevertheless, their claims are clearly not social, and they are
portrayed as a selfish and spoiled generation.
This portrayal of youth shows how, even after the repressions of Tlatelolco in
1968 and the Halconazo in 1971, some sectors of society still clung to the 1950s idea of
a lost generation rebelling against the status quo and the authorities for no reason, or
simply following US values. This shows Mexico’s deeply-rooted traditionalism and the
lack of understanding of a generation that was echoing a shift in global values.
Yet there are other characteristics of young people in La Familia Burrón, such
as the case of Avelino Pilongano, who accuses his friends (los inconformes) of being a
gang of criminals and not guerrilleros, 141 and also Burrón’s children –Macuca and
139 Ibid., p. 23.
140 Hermelinda Linda, 377, p. 27.
141 I will analyse this example in the section called ‘Speaking the Unspeakable’.
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