For the first group of reading
sessions, we provided the secondary school students in our study with
the text: Justicia Divina (Divine Justice) by Francisco
Haghenbecki,
a successful Mexican author with a long trajectory in the world of
graphic narrative. This book was published by the Department of
Literature of the Iberoamericana University, a unusual case, as there
are those who believe that academic insititutions only edit works of
theory or criticism.
What is Justicia Divina? As
indicated in the Prologue by Alberto Chimal, it is a ‘hybrid story’,
between a written and graphic narrative in which the author makes an
ironic and parodic construct of supernatural stories, underneath
which lie legends and horror stories. However, this text convokes not
only ghosts and phantoms, it also flirts with our reality and its
problems, everyone knows about the violence that is afflicting Mexico
and how it particularly targets young people. The protagonist is a
witness of the fears and terrors of our days and of our nights, as
the text rightly puts it: ‘this city already has its own spectres:
assaults, police, kidnappings, authorities […] today the price of
the dollar is this is more frightening than the Coco.’ (27). The
Coco is one of the legendary apparitions that appear in the book,
along with the Llorona, the Mad Monk, the Goatsucker, the Wolf Man
and the Female Vampire.ii
Victor Serrano Bellosilo, our principal narrator, represents himself:
‘I am a conservative, Catholic, virgin and I like Luis Miguel,iii
I know, I am fucked for life. But I can’t aspire to anything more.
Not only was I born with a dark gift but with the stigma of being
middle class.’ (12)
The ironic spirit floods the textul
paths of the text, as well as the streets, buildings and dives
represented in a game of mirrors that reformulates reality. The
creator weaves his story with ambiguity, ruptured forms and genres.
For example, the author deconstructs the prototipical image of the
Devil, in a way that entertains and alerts the reader to the absurd
transcendence of the relevations that the demon makes to Victor, who
later comments:
He didn’t tell
me anything new. I was expecting that he would resolve my life, that
he would explain to me the reason of my gift. The reason why life
laughs at us. But like everyting bad, the only reason is just
because. But I understood why they call him the Devil… he left me
with the bill for a capuchino for a hundred pesos.iv
And those prices really are sinful. (95)
When Justicia Divina was
presented this year, at the Feria de Mineriav
in the D.F. in the Salon de la Academia, it was full of young people
who knew the author and wanted to find out about his new book, in
fact, almost all the copies were sold. Haghenbeck dedicated the text
to everyone who bought it, drawing a picture of Victor, the detective
of the paranomal (his alter ego) who speaks wth both the dead
and the living.
This effect on Haghenbeck’s readers
led us to select this text for the student in this project and
although we expected they would like it, we were still suprised by
their reaction. We had asked them to read the first sequence only,
but when we went to speak to them we found that three of them had
alredy finished the book and were talking about it with great
enthusiasm, infecting their peers. It had caused them to laugh, they
had understood the allusions to the bad guys and the sinister dark
worlds which they represent, in fact, one of the boys commented that
this book was about both ‘the fears by day and the fears by night’.
From their enjoyment of the text, comprehension was derived in a
natural and simple manner and, above all, it was appropriated into
their lives and their own worlds.
i
Haghenbeck, F. 2013. Justicia Divina.
Mexico, D.F.: Universidad Iberoamericana.
ii
All of these are ghosts or monsters from Mexican legends: the ‘Coco’
is a Bogeyman used to threaten naughtly children; the Llorona is a
woman who wanders the streets crying for her dead children; the
Goatsucker does just that, it is a monster that sucks the life out
of goats!
iii
Luis Miguel is one of the most successful pop singers in Latin
America.
iv
About 10USD
v
An international book fair in Mexico City.