A Woman Who Adores Mexico?

I couldn’t help but be struck this week between the apparent similarities between Patrick B. Mullen’s reflexivity on his previous work and my work as a Mexican Cultural historian as a gringa. I never studied Mexico past the occasional high school Spanish class growing up, and I had no real reason to go to Mexico the first time I flew there. I had a friend who invited me, I never planned to transform my life after that short trip… but I did. Yet, I struggle at least once a week with being a gringa (and even worse a gringa who grew up in the North East only hours from the Canadian border and in a suburb almost as white as a snowstorm) and studying Mexico. Unlike many of my Mexican, and Hispanic, friends I find myself daily searching new cultural references, musicians, artists, and all things Mexican folk, that they intrinsically know. I wonder if I am able to step outside my work as Mullen has, however, to see how my status as an outsider affects my work. As of now, it seems a daunting and discouraging task.

What I am able to do is see what a firm knowledge of American popular and folk culture allows me to bring to the table that my Mexican counterparts cannot. Being established in one folk community and well versed in another I am able to make connections and comparisons that others are not. I work on Mexican comics, and growing up reading American comics has allowed me insight into defining what Mexican comics are through discussions of what they are not.

Similar to Mullen, I find my friends in Mexico and people I talk to about comics and Rius, mediate their discussions with me on multiple levels. I am a woman. Normally this would not set off alarms in the US, but in Mexico a woman in a position of academic authority is still not the norm. In addition, the comics I work with are not known as being conservative or reserved. They are sexually explicit and constantly use nudity and gross-stereotype, alongside political commentary and word play. So unlike Mullen who is able to common with his subjects and develop a relationship through locker-room humor, very similar concepts are limiting to my research. Some people are uncomfortable telling me what they most enjoyed or remember from the comics because they think they will offend me or that what they are saying will be construed as improper.  

These are the realities that mediate my experience as a New England raised-gringa-modern Mexican cultural historian working on at times vulgar and explicit comics in Mexico, but what can I say… Puritan folklore just did not interest me.  

- Sarah Howard