Los compas de Huevo Cartoon

I learned about Huevo Cartoon last December when I was visiting my family in Mexico. I was introduced to them by my nieces and nephews who are allowed to see it, unlike I would say, in the States, where kids are not allowed to play with stuff related to sexuality.

Anyway. I particularly liked the compadres "compas", and the way they talk, and act, and enact their "hard" macho masculinity when they are obviously gay, or at least like each other very much, as the compadre tells to his other compadre in the first cartoon: compadre, yo lo quiero mucho (compadre, I love you so much). but I love you in a pretty way compadre.

I have always been fascinated with los albures mexicanos, a form of verbal ping-pong initially reserved for working class males. There are several accounts about the origins of the Mexican Albur. Some have said that it was a way of the indigenous people after the Spanish conquest to make fun at the Spanish rulers and catholic priests, others have even said that albures existed even before the Spanish conquest, as a way for the lower classes to poke fun at the prehispanic emperors.

During the so called Mexican Reinnassance, after the Mexican Revolution when all the "leperada" and "perrada" were allowed to go out on the streets using their infamous language, around the 1930´s and 1940´s, upper middle classes in Mexico had the belief that if people were prohibited to speak bad words, they would stop having bad thoughts. Under that logic, albures were used by the lower classes as a way to speak badly without offending nice ladies and fine members of the upper classes, also as a way to express sexual thoughts without offending the ears of catholic priests and believers.

Albures have become a current way to speak for Mexican society in the last few decades, especially since the opening of television to other voices different than those from the former official party (PRI).  This kind of language is now widespread to women and to the upper middle classes in Mexico, although the prevalence of the right wing party in power since the year 2000, and the powerful and political catholic church, can overcome its mainstream use among people, as in the past. In traditional  "albures" basically two men would be exchanging clever sexual innuendos, sometimes in a joyful way, and others as a prelude for a violent fight. Basically, the one that "penetrates" the other verbally, wins the just. This form of "symbolic homosexuality" was developed in a nation that is praised by its "machismo" and the fact that men have to behave in certain macho ways. Macho behavior is expected by society´s very reduced scripts for male behavior.

The huevo compas comply to this macho behavior, but are in fact, homosexuals, as you can see.

 

Huevo Cartoon (Los compadres)

Huevos Compadres

Comments

[Erin]

Yay Toni is here!  Te quiero mucho comadre.

[jingejinge]

Very funny! We should show it in our gender and sexuality class.

[leah m-o]

[this is good] pero ¡qué locura! no sé qué pensar, estoy medio atónita, medio agrada, medio estupefacta, y medio ilusionada...y ya que van 4 medios pues, ¡resulta que me siento medio esquizofrenica tambien! qué cosa más curiosa...

[Tricia Wang]

[esto es genial]

[Toni Merchant]

Oh, that is an interesting question! (I learned this eufemism in grad school). 


Toni