Condorito
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Type | Week magazine |
| Format | Tabloid |
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| Owner | Televisa |
| Editor | René Rios |
| Founded | 1950 |
| Headquarters | Santiago, Chile |
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| Website: www.condorito.com | |
Condorito is a famous cartoon character, a personification of a funny condor living in a fictitious town named Pelotillehue, a setting typical of many small Chilean provincial towns. Contrary to common belief, he is meant to be a representation of the Chilean people exclusively.
Condorito was created by the Chilean cartoonist René Ríos, known as "Pepo". In spite of his Chilean origin, Condorito is very popular in several Latin American countries, in which the character is considered part of the general popular culture.
Condorito and his friends are also featured monthly in a magazine that carries the name of the main character, as well as a deluxe magazine entitled Condorito de Oro.
One peculiar characteristic of this cartoon is that, at the end of almost every strip, the character that goes through the embarrassing moment or serves as the butt of the joke always falls backwards to the floor in a characteristic out-of-frame "flop take", accompanied by the PLOP! sound effect. From time to time, this is replaced by the victim of the joke saying I demand an explanation! (Exijo una explicación!)
Other characters in this cartoon are: Yayita (Condorito's fashionable eternal girlfriend), Compadre Chuma (Condorito's best friend), Pepe Cortisona aka "Saco de Plomo" (Condorito's nemesis), Coné and Yuyito (his young nephew and Yayita's niece respectively), Washington his dog and Huevoduro ("Boiledegg"), an eggheaded (and completely colorless) character which Rios claims is based upon a Canadian ambassador.
[edit] Condorito and Politics
In 1942, the Walt Disney Company created the animated film Saludos Amigos depicting Donald Duck and a cast of anthropomorphic characters representing various nations of the Americas. In the film, while the Disney characters are represented as humorous versions of charros, gauchos, etc., Chile was represented as Pedro, a small airplane engaged in his very first flight, whose attempt to fly over the Andes to pick up air mail from Mendoza is humorously pathetic. Pepo created Condorito in response to what he perceived as a slight to the image of Chile. Despite Rios' anger with Disney, however, his first Condorito character resembled Donald Duck.
Condorito through the 1960s and 1970s held to a conservative perspective on Chile and its society, poking fun at both the new left-wing poets and the hippies. In his adventures there was a chauvinistic undertone to the jokes, with blacks often represented as villains and women relegated to domestic roles. After the military coup of 1973, some Chilean cartoonists were censored by the military regime, yet unlike other publications (such as the Argentinian Mafalda), which combined both criticism of society and humor, Condorito's publication continued, possibly due to its humor-oriented lack of social criticism. Since that time, many Chilean comics with a political view on society (e.g Hervi's Super Cifuentes) have been forgotten.
Today Condorito, now owned by the Mexican multimedia corporation Televisa, remains as the best-known Chilean comic book title.
