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

ningún lugar me dan razón del Señor Ruperto Tacuche’. 217 Regino Burrón suffers a
similar fate when he is detained by the police in the episode in which his wife builds a
castle in the vecindad. In the last caption of the issue, as we see Regino in jail, we read:
‘El maestro peluquero permanence incomunicado más de un mes’. 218 We know that
depriving someone of their freedom was a practice used by the authorities against their
opponents, and to find references to it is an interesting phenomenon. We find funny the
situation in which Regino Burrón ends up because all the situations in the story are
illogical. We understand that we are witnessing an act of humour in which, in fact,
nobody is hurt. Finally, and this is probably the most important reason for finding these
tragedies funny and being able to laugh about the fate of the characters is that comic
characters overcome every tragedy. Indeed, they are immortal: ‘it seems that nothing
can really get to them, which somehow contradicts the realistic view of the world that
comedy is supposed to promote’. 219 It does not matter how big the explosion, such as
when Borola throws a match inside a gas tank with terrible results, 220 or how brutal the
torture, the comic character will reappear in the following issue in the same spirit, ready
to live new adventures. And also to suffer new tragedies, which perhaps will make us
laugh once again.
Guerrilla
Even when the Mexican authorities denied the existence of guerrillas, some of the
comics made reference to them. In La Familia Burrón, Avelino Pilongano, the
bohemian poet of the vecindad, belongs to a group called ‘Los inconformes’ which is a
group of young people who discuss current events from a left wing, almost communist,
217 La Familia Burrón, 17164, p. 15.
218 La Familia Burrón, 17196, p. 34.
219 Zupancic, ‘The “Concrete Universal” and…’, p. 181.
220 La Familia Burrón, 17189.
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