Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth ...century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement. Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics 'beyond the page'. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities. Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies. Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America demonstrates the importance of studying how comics circulate in all manner of ways beyond print media. It also reminds us of the need to think about the creative role of comics in societies with less established comics markets than in Europe, the US and Asia.
From the oil pipelines that scar the Northwest Territories transforming the lives of First Nation communities to the forest fires that rampage across the Gran Chaco due to soy deforestation, the ...devastating impact of neoextractivism is writ large in the Americas. To the backdrop of ecological devastation and the struggle for natural resources, local peoples across the region are faced with the impact of cultural upheaval and displacement brought about by faceless multinational corporations. In this article, I address the way two comics artists have used the graphic form to address neoextractivism, highlighting how investigative comics can create counterimaginaries of exploitation by relating image-stories told by local inhabitants. In 2016, working in collaboration with Nelly Luna Amancio and Ojo Público, the Peruvian Jesús Cossio published the webcomic La guerra por el agua, a study of the impact of the Tía María mine in Ayacucho, southern Peru, an operation owned by the Mexican company Southern Copper, later also released as a newspaper-sized pamphlet version in 2018. And in 2020 the US-Maltese Joe Sacco – who spoke at the launch of La guerra por el agua – released his graphic work Paying the Land, an exploration of the upheaval caused to the Dene in the Mackenzie River Valley by both the Canadian state and mining enterprises. Though both journalistic works are cut through by social protest and political wranglings, they simultaneously demonstrate the power of the micropolitical – in which we might include the comic form itself – to transgress the narratives and imaginaries of big capital.
Latin American comics and graphic novels have a unique history of addressing controversial political, cultural, and social issues. This volume presents new perspectives on how comics on and from ...Latin America both view and express memory formation on major historical events and processes. The contributors, from a variety of disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, and history, explore topics including national identity construction, narratives of resistance to colonialism and imperialism, the construction of revolutionary traditions, and the legacies of authoritarianism and political violence. The chapters offer a background history of comics and graphic novels in the region, and survey a range of countries and artists such as Joaquín Salvador Lavado (a.k.a Quino), Héctor G. Oesterheld, and Juan Acevedo. They also highlight the unique ability of this art and literary form to succinctly render memory. In sum, this volume offers in-depth analysis of an understudied, yet key literary genre in Latin American memory studies and documents the essential role of comics during the transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Latin America’s long history of showing how racism can co-exist with racial mixture and conviviality offers useful ammunition for strengthening anti-racist stances. This volume asks whether cultural ...production has a particular role to play within discourses and practices of anti-racism in Latin America and the Caribbean. The contributors analyse music, performance, education, language, film and art in diverse national contexts across the region. The book also places Latin American and Caribbean racial formations within a broader global context. It shows that the region provides valuable opportunities for thinking about anti-racism, not least when recent political events worldwide have shown that, far from a 'post-racial' age, we are living in an era of intensified racist expression and racial injustice.
Comics Beyond the Page in Latin America is a cutting-edge study of the expanding worlds of Latin American comics. Despite lack of funding and institutional support, not since the mid-twentieth ...century have comics in the region been so dynamic, so diverse and so engaged with pressing social and cultural issues. Comics are being used as essential tools in debates about, for example, digital cultures, gender identities and political disenfranchisement. Rather than analysing the current boom in comics by focusing just on the printed text, however, this book looks at diverse manifestations of comics ‘beyond the page’. Contributors explore digital comics and social media networks; comics as graffiti and stencil art in public spaces; comics as a tool for teaching architecture or processing social trauma; and the consumption and publishing of comics as forms of shaping national, social and political identities. Bringing together authors from across Latin America and beyond, and covering examples from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay, the book sets out a panoramic vision of Latin American comics, whether in terms of scholarly contribution, geographical diversity or interdisciplinary methodologies.
Ever since the nineteenth century photographers have regularly turned to Latin American ruins to express a diverse range of scientific, colonial, aesthetic and spiritual desires. This article looks ...at photographs of Latin American ruins from the nineteenth century through several archaeological expeditions in Central and South America over the course of the twentieth century. Focusing in particular on photographs of ruins that include human subjects, I argue that the human-material interactions evident in these images undermine the traditional view of a split between the archaeological subject and the material object, serving as a reminder of the political actuality of 'classical' ruins, sites that have sometimes been left out of the West's contemporary fascination with the dark underbelly of modernity. Acknowledging that such politics is by no means always innocent, sometimes reflecting as it does the embedded power relations of neo-colonial desires, I argue nonetheless that ancient ruins in Latin America continue to be spaces around which social relations can be formed, not least through humour and pleasure.
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