Héroes y bandidos: iconos populares y figuraciones - D-Scholarship ...

Heroes and Bandits: Popular Icons and Figurations of the Nation
in Latin America
Rafael Ponce-Cordero, Ph.D.
University of Pittsburgh, 2010
This dissertation explores the figure of the hero in Latin American popular culture from a
postcolonial-subalternist perspective. In the West, the conventional hero functions as a
role model, defends principles of justice and order, and symbolically represents the state
or at least the status quo. But what happens when—and where—the state is seen as unfair
instead of just, weak instead of strong, and dangerous instead of benevolent? Is the hero
different in Latin America, a marginal region in the world system living a heterogeneous
modernity, as compared with the hero of a central, hegemonic power?
Examining a number of real-life and fictional characters—from superheroes to
criminals—this dissertation aims to understand the role these icons play in the historical
processes of nation building, hegemonic domination, and subaltern resistance throughout
the region. The first section deals with two hugely popular Mexican superheroes: Santo el
Enmascarado de Plata and Chapulín Colorado. Santo is a straightforward, law-and-order
superhero, this during a time in which Mexico and other Latin American countries still
believed in, and pursued, economic progress via the developmentalist model, with a
strong state, a very instrumental culture industry backed by the government, and so forth.
Chapulín, by contrast, is the opposite of the regular superhero: weak, cowardly, and not
too bright. If he is to be read as a national allegory, it certainly shows a different face of
the Mexican state, in a time in which developmentalism was undoubtedly on its way out.
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