Jul.11.2008 Mexico’s pretty good at racism too
The handsome little fellow below is known as Memin Penguin in Mexico and his comic adventures have come under fire for being sold at some Wal-Marts across the country.
Shawnedria McGinty was taken aback by “Memin Pinguin” comics she found at her local Wal-Mart. The series, by Mexican illustrator Valencia Burgos, tells the story of a young black boy who often gets into trouble and isn’t too bright. The character is something of an iconic cultural image in Mexico, much like Bugs Bunny is over here. McGinty did a little research in order to try and better understand the comics and was disappointed to find that her gut instincts were correct: The comics? Are kind of totally racist:
“They are calling him names. They call him an animal in one section. His mom is spanking his butt and it looks like they are drowning him,” said McGinty, who went so far as to buy a Spanish dictionary to better understand the comic books.
She found one passage particularly offensive. In the frame, Memin Pinguin is being kicked by a light-skinned man and called “a black troublemaker.”
“Memin Pinguin” caused a stir in the States a couple of years back when the Mexican government issued a postal stamp commemorating the character. The comic book was then reissued after not having been published for a number of years. So it’s a wee bit surprising, given the blacklash those stamps received, that Wal-Mart would decide to carry it in its stores. In the United States nonetheless! Now they are feeling the wrath of the African American community.
Yeah I mean this caricature isn’t exactly flattering but when that stamp was released, Mexico made a good point about Speedy Gonzalez being a complete atrocity of racism but for some reason that’s okay because we’re America and he’s a mouse. Perhaps if Mexico had made Memin into some sort of monkey racial stereotype named “Jorge Curioso” and had him engage in adventures with a human character called “El Gringo en el Sombrero Yellow-o” then it’d be cool.
I want to know more about this dude though, from Memin’s wiki:
Ernestillo: The intelligent and hard working one. His mother died when he was young and has since been raised by his father, an alcoholic carpenter. Ernestillo is so poor he has no shoes.
Man, this sounds like a really funny comic. Dead parents, drunken carpentry, a lack of shoes. At the very least, the adventures of Ernestillo should replace Beetle Bailey. We get it, the military is incompetent.
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It’s a poor cuban child.. black, living in Mexico. While Memín suffers a degree of racist taunting, especially in the first issues, the characters mocking him are depicted as either cruel or ignorant. As the story progresses, his race becomes less of an issue. Whole history of this comic found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mem%C3%ADn_Pingu%C3%ADn