From the Mexican Onda to McOndo: The Shifting Ideology of Mass Culture

Abstract

Since the introduction of radio in Latin America in the 1930s—and, later, of television in the 1950s—mass culture has become a vital part of Latin American identity, and as such has also become an important part of Latin American narratives. It is possible to view two different reactions regarding the significance of this new medium of information and leisure in these narratives. On one hand, the texts of the 1960s Mexican Onda authors, including José Agustín and Héctor Manjárrez, give the cultural imperialist argument, in which mass culture serves as a part of the hegemonic domination of Western or North American ideology, a place of central importance. However, as the nature and access to mass culture changed in the early 1990s, authors like Alberto Fuguet discarded the cultural imperialist criticism to give way to a postmodern aesthetic that focused more on the individual’s interaction with the text than on the societal implications involved.