Photos

Urban Confetti
City-dwelling Mexicans live surrounded by a confetti of periodicals. I didn't see a lot of book stores, but on street corner after street corner I saw vendors selling magainzes and comics. There were tiny, temporary displays on folding tables, and large, permanent stalls, like this one.

In front of some variety stores the displays of reading material burst out the front door, like the pulp of an overripe fruit, and spilled out into sidewalk displays. And in the coverd market, while you shopped for your vegetables and fish, you could buy last month's stuff -- or last year's -- all over again at the stalls of used magazines.

The Familiar
Much of the subject matter is familiar to those of us from Anglo America. There are the usual "women's magazines" with tips about couture and sex and how to lose weight, fashion magazines, sports magazines (including the infamous "luchador" wrestlers), and heaps upon heaps of celebrity gossip/photo magazines.

As in so many countries, there is soft core pornography (both straight and gay, by the way). There are familiar magazines devoted to cooking and hobbies, and everywhere you look there comics, comics, and more comics for the kids.

The Unfamiliar
But then there are the comics for the adults, many of which are extremely graphic in their portrayal of sex -- much more hard core than the porn magazines.

There are non-smutty adult comics as well, featuring adventures and gunfights, the supernatural and swordplay. These are interesting in that they seem to fall somewhere between American "graphic novels" and the old pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s.

There are also non-fiction crime publications, rife with infidelity, robberies, drug deals busted, or drug wars being fought. These often have photographs of bodies: faces destroyed by shotguns, limbs cut off, large sprays and small lakes of blood. They are not for the faint of heart.

The Girl
... stands before the newsstand, deciding what to buy. It's a hot day, the sun very bright, but for a moment she rests in the shade of the stall, making up her mind. There are hundreds of different fantasies in which she could immerse herself for the afternoon: romance stories, childish comics, celebrity lives. She catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye and glances over. Ah, just some gringo with a camera...

(Afternote: The photo is named after the magazine just above the girl's head, featuring the face of some demon.)