3 - National Identity in Colombian Comics: Between Violence and New Configurations

Summary

Caricaturas, monos, or monachos (comics) have been produced in Colombia by Colombian authors for almost a century, but their production seems sporadic and scarce when compared to that of Argentina, Mexico, or Brazil, which are Latin American countries with robust and long-standing comic traditions. Studies and accounts of Colombian comics have also been infrequent, in most cases leaving it up to the artists themselves to chronicle, theorize, and analyze their medium, as a quote from comics artist Truchafrita's Decálogo para el dibujante de historietas en Colombia may illustrate well: “No hay historietas en Colombia, pero seguiremos dibujandolas” (Jimenez Quiroz 1; We have no cartoons in Colombia, but we'll keep drawing them). Daniel Rabanal, a prominent example of the comics artist / historian, attributes the differences in the development of the comics industry in Colombia visa- vis other Latin American countries mainly to three factors: (1) the belated development of a modern urban culture, translated into a lack of potential audiences for these types of publications; (2) the absence of institutional support; and (3) the comparatively lower cost of imported comics (Rabanal).

The comic strip Mojicón by Adolfo Samper is commonly credited as the first work of the genre published in Colombia by a Colombian author (Rabanal; Forero Baron; Garzon; Guerra, “Panorama,” “Para entender”; Jimenez Quiroz). Appearing between 1924 and 1930 in the pages of the independent newspaper Mundo al Día, Mojicón was an adaptation of Walter Berndt's Smitty, a comic strip published in the United States. The humorous stories of Mojicón were set in a developing Bogota in which the downtown area operated as the hub of activity for all daily matters. It emphasized love and friendship among its protagonists and awarded a central role to the family. What Mojicón lacked was a distinct sense of identity that critics find emerging only later on, during the sixties and seventies, with the work of Ernesto Franco, Carlos Garzon, and Jorge Pena. Much of the production spanning the almost two decades of this second stage consisted of political cartoons or graphic humor distributed nationally through newspapers like El Tiempo and El Espectador. Copetín, declared in the year 2000 to be the most exemplary symbol of Colombian comics, was published by Franco in the pages of El Tiempo for more than three decades starting in 1962, reaching a wide audience.