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

around them, in La Familia Burrón the images show people moving in every direction,
sometimes with kinetic signs indicating that they are in a rush. These elements give the
idea that Mexico City never stops. In this case, El Callejón del Cuajo is the allegory that
represents poor urban society. However, the Burrón family is not the poorest in the
neighbourhood. We can appreciate after reviewing many issues that their house is the
most comfortable and best looking of the vecindad.
As noted by Sergio Pitol, ‘La historieta de Vargas reproducía el melting-pot
vigente en la ciudad de México y su inmensa movilidad social a mediados de este
siglo’. 22 The characters are victims of a city that is growing and becoming a major
capital, with all the consequences that involves: travelling on crowded buses,
immigration, poor services, insecurity and crime, the abuse and corruption of the
authorities as well as their negligence. La Familia Burrón is a ‘familia de clase baja,
cuyas historias reflejan aspectos de la vida cotidiana’, 23 in which the characters lived
similar experiences as real people. The author ‘created typically Mexican characters and
placed them in an authentically Mexican environment’, 24 but El Callejón del Cuajo and
its inhabitants were portraits of life in the city, and they did not pretend to be a
synecdoche of life in the entire country.
That does not mean that La Familia Burrón did not include references to other
parts of the country and characters from different social strata. It includes a variety of
characters and situations that many Mexicans from different parts of the country would
find familiar, although they are presented from the perspective of a Mexico City
inhabitant. There are very rich people, peasants, caciques, politicians, authorities,
people in extreme poverty, children, etc. The main intention of Vargas was ‘describir la
22 Sergio Pitol, ‘Borola contra el mundo’, La Jornada, 26 May 2010, section Opinión
[accessed 12 June 2009]
23 Benítez Carrillo, Gabriel Vargas. Cronista…p. 18.
24 Hinds and Tatum, ‘Images of Women…’, p. 154.
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