Childhood and violence

kidnappers and comics for adults in Mexico (1945-1950)

Abstract

This article explores the cultural consumption of adult comics by Mexican children, focusing on comics that considered the figure of child kidnappers (robachicos) in the context of the mid-twentieth century. In a time, when mass culture offered a wide range of cultural productions, children were active consumers of high dose violence stories, that had children as protagonists. The comics studied here show the tension between the world of adults and children. In particular, the comics exposed an adult world related to children through physical and symbolic violence where children were abused, not heard and silenced by the injustices and the dangers of urban life. Finally, I analyse
how emotions related to fear were commercially exploited in these comics and how the autonomous use of the city by children became, during the forties and the fifties, a risky activity for them.