Condoriencuentros: emociones, trauma y memoria (Chile, pasado y presente)

As embodied by its polysemic title, Condoriencuentros, this book presents a multi-faceted study and interpretation of the iconic, evocative and popular comic strip that is firmly ingrained in the cultural heritage of Chile and Latin America: Condorito. The fictional Chilean condor was created in 1949 by illustrator René Ríos Boettiger (1911-2000), better known as Pepo. From the convergence of cultural and social history and in dialogue with comic studies, this research examines the presence of hunger and the universe of food, the question of fear in turbulent times, and laughter—ranging from agency to irreverence—in the Condorito comic strip. Exploring various thematic and temporal avenues, complete with their respective social interactions, the study covers the strip from the first issue of Condorito in 1955 to No. 250 in 1995. Through a selection of strips examined from and for the present, the research proposes renewed perspectives that intertwine emotions, trauma and memory through an intersubjective dialogue between Condorito and local and global history. Complementing press and oral history testimonies, it takes onboard the voices of 68 young people from Nuevo Horizonte, a school located in Chile’s most populous district, Puente Alto, in the southeast of the Santiago Metropolitan Region. These young people participated voluntarily in an exercise of interpreting and unraveling the comic strip, contributing to a polyphonic record that confirms the validity of comics as an object of historiographical study; introduces innovative experimental research methodologies that produce a novel source based on the interpretation of another, namely, the musings of young people on the Condorito universe; and creates a story that positions the eponymous character as a driving force behind encounters that were and will be.