Black Americana Stamps in Mexico Honoring Memin Pinguin

elchrist

Stamps Renew Racial Tensions With Mexico
Source: Associated Press

U.S. activists called on the Mexican government to withdraw a postage stamp depicting an exaggerated black cartoon character known as Memin Pinguin, saying the offense was worse than recent remarks about blacks made by President Vicente Fox.

Mexico defended the series of five stamps released Wednesday, which depicts a child character from a comic book started in the 1940s that is still published in Mexico.

But the Rev. Jesse Jackson said President Bush should pressure Mexico to withdraw the stamps from the market, saying they "insult people around the world."

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Great point regarding Speedy Gonzales and the unmentioned (as usual) Slow Poke Rodriguez.

Although this is indeed controversional in PC America, it's not as if Mexicans will be mailing them to blacks in the United States in jest. Or will they?

verbal · Posted: 30 Jun 2005 10:47 AM Post subject:

The US really has to stay off other countries business.

Outside a holacaust or genocide any nation should enjoy their sovereignty.

Plus, its good humor.

JackintheBoxster · Gots My GED Joined: 05 Oct 2004 Posts: 118 Location: LA

Wow.

I don't collect them, but I have to get myself a set of these stamps.

Big Slick · Back in Calecia Joined: 08 Apr 2005 Posts: 193

these muthafuckas need to stop trippin already...if they did their research, they'd know that this character has been a part of mexican cultures for decades...they need to stop worrying about shit like this and focus on today's real problems...

Decrevi · Posted: 10 Jul 2005 03:50 AM Post subject:

They are now worth some $. If only Al can get on this $ MAKER. Man if I only had BLOOD from V. Cruz. Puro Norteno. No more stamps.

Asesino Koolarrow · Posted: 19 Jul 2005 10:53 PM Post subject: MEMIN PINGUIN STAMPS

IF ANYONE HAS ANY, PLEASE CONTACT ME AT Alex_the_kid_2001@hotmail.com I WANT TO OBTAIN SOME AND I HAVE CASH $$$

elchrist · Posted: 20 Jul 2005 07:32 PM Post subject: Re: MEMIN PINGUIN STAMPS

451PC · Posted: 21 Jul 2005 08:28 AM Post subject:

next thing the USA is going to request that all the memin pinguin ice cream carts running around Mexico be seized and destroyed Laughing

elchrist · Posted: 21 Jul 2005 09:57 AM Post subject:

Here's an interesting read:

Memin Pinguin and Mexico’s national myth
Source: People's Weekly World Newspaper

The Mexican government’s decision to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the comic strip character Memin Pinguin by putting it on a postage stamp demonstrates forcefully the nationalist and racial illusions that the Mexican establishment propagates in its ever-more-difficult quest for relevancy, with the increasingly irrelevant and arrogant Vicente Fox at its helm.

Karl Marx noted that those with economic power also hold intellectual power. Their illusions and images surround us and seek to control us.

Cartoon character Memin Pinguin is a monkey boy with exaggerated lips and nose and bulging eyes, who lacks language and social skills, and who is mocked by “normal” white establishment characters.

A clownish savage, with a stereotypical “mammy,” Memin Pinguin is representative of and apparently inspired by the environment of institutionalized racism of the 1940s U.S., where similar racist characters abounded. It also reflects the lingering Spanish concepts of “limpieza de sangre” (pure blood) and other European racial fetishes of Mexico’s mostly criollo (Mexicans claiming Spanish ancestry) ruling establishment. Africans are foreign and alien to Mexico, so Mexico’s establishment would have us believe. With Memim Pinguin’s stereotypical racist representation, Black people could be laughed at as “naive outsiders” and “cultureless enigmas.”

But in fact Africans are a vital component of both past and present Mexico.

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verbal · Posted: 21 Jul 2005 10:12 AM Post subject: