Pancho Jaime and His Gonzo Journalism
| Autor | X. Andrade |
| Páginas | 59-98 |
Chapter Two
Pancho Jaime and His
Gonzo Journalism
Did a vehicle
Come from somewhere out there
Just to land in the Andes?
Was it round?
And did it have
A motor
Or was it
Something
Dierent?
Frank Zappa , Inca Roads ()
“G ” a notion that refers to the journalistic and l iterary
style of Hunter S. ompson (-) aer his chronicles about politics in
the United States during the s. Its main features are, according to writer
Kevin T. McEneaney’s book Hunter S. ompson: Fear, Loathing, and the Birth
of Gonzo (), a highly idiosy ncratic form of reporting political events using
a rst-person na rrative; a n iconophobic rejection of authoritarianism; and
a satiric, personal, visceral, and bodily engagement with the events and the
everyday life contexts where politics takes place . Similar to ompson, P.J. was
very much imbued with the counterculture spir it that served as the basis for
critical forms of journal ism that arose from a particula r historical conjuncture.
Although a characteristic of gonzo journalism is having no claims to objec-
tivity—which contrasts with Pancho Jaime’s systematic reiteration about the
truthfu lness of his writing—thi s notion helps me to deconstruct, in this and the
following chapter, P.J.’s principal legacy as a political journalist by tu rning my
ethnographic questions towards the materia l quality of both texts and ima ges,
and the principal strateg ies of writing and drawing that informed such mate-
riality. Keeping a distance f rom the huge inuence ompson had on writers,
journalists, a nd contemporary comedy, the humor derived from exaggeration,
the iconoclastic bravado, pranking , and making fun of authorit ies, are common
ground between the materials u nder study and the emerging traditions of gonzo
journalism in the late t wentieth century.
is chapter explores Pancho Jaime’s life and work in order to understand
his status as a cultu ral producer of textual and visual representations about
politics in Ecuador during t he 1980s. I rst focus on his biographical aspects ,
paying particu lar attention to rock music and religion. In the second sec-
tion, I provide a detailed overview of his politica l magazines—Censura and
Comentarios—and analyze them in relation to the larger political context
in which public performances of masculinity were an essential par t of the
political debate. Jaime’s mastery of selective elements of “popular culture”
—such as foul language, nick names, and exposing public gures’ inti macy—
made him legendary in Guayaqui l. Between 1984 and his death at the hands
of unknown enemies in 1989, Jaime illegal ly produced his proscribed legacy
of nearly a thousand pages and hundreds of car icatures. Jaime’s writing style
followed local patterns of speech and embelli shed sexual stereotypes, in sults,
gossip, and rumors concerning the elite and powerful gures. Due to their
controversial nature, Jaime’s works are not available at any public library in
Guayaquil or anywhere else in Ec uador.18 During va rious visits to Guayaquil
between 1995 and 1999, I collected most of them from readers, acquaintances,
private collectors, and ex-collaborators, in addition to locating a few in ea
markets and second-hand bookstores. Due to their controversial nature,
some of Jaime’s works are only recently available at public libraries in the
cou nt ry.19 Many of my contacts, however, have held onto individual issues,
Although I have not been able to verify the number of volumes of Censura that were published
between and , the last one I managed to obtain is the th issue. With certainty, twenty
editions of Comentarios were published between and . In the U.S., P.J. mentioned that
a library at Berkeley at some point held a subscription to these materials. Eorts to nd out
about that collection ultimately proved unsuccessful. Complete private collections are scarce,
but I was lucky enough to meet the late Carlos Calderón Chico, a bibliophile in Guayaquil and
a well-known author, researcher, and professor, who was working for the Archivo Histórico del
Guayas. He was kind enough to give me access to his private collection.
Internet searches revealed issues that are located in the Archivo Histórico del Guayas as
of July, . Twelve seem to correspond to P.J.’s original magazines.
treating them as if t hey were rare collectibles, and were happy to share these
materials for their ethnogr aphic value.
Although his articles were generally well documented, one of Jaime’s
main strategies was to revea l the politicians’ corruption by making con-
nections between their conduct in public oce and their allegedly “dev i-
ant” sexualities. Seizing on particu lar events involving public gures from
key institutions in Ecuador, such as the mainst ream press, Congress, and
the Catholic Church, Jaime critically assessed local a nd national politics
through extensive tirades lled with heavily charged, obscene langu age. He
presented these texts alongside scandalous images of his political targets
in a variety of both homosexua l and heterosexual positions. Portraying his
enemies as grotesque characters driven by shameful, “perverted” instincts,
Jaime crit icized the es tablishment by creat ing carniva lesque representations
of political life in Ecu ador.
In this chapter, machismo—a term both agreed upon and contested
locally—is used to describe a hegemonic and politica l form of public mascu-
linity. Jaime’s work aids in elucidating local political mea nings, the mascu-
line language th rough which these meanings are expressed in everyday li fe,
popular perceptions of the masculi nity embodied by elites and authorities,
and the extent to which people take for granted that corr uption and vulgarity
(the subjects of Chapter Five) are inherent in the sexual practices of those
who exercise political power.
My approach emphasizes issues relating to the production, circulation, and
consumption of political meanings , and as such can be described as an eort
to understand a “political economy of images” and representations of power
(see Poole 1997, 8-13). Working against the notion of “political cult ure”—see
Chapter One—and following Deborah Poole’s discussion on the history of
visual imager y in the Andes (ibid), the concept of “visual economy” helps
to put conicting views into a larger, more systematic framework to better
understand the ways in which people’s ideas of power relations, elites and
their own social position, relate, although not directly, to the construction
of certain visu al imagery. In addition, the concept of “political economy” (of
images and representations of power) aids when analyzing the material cha r-
acter of these magazines and perceptions regardi ng both the public imagery
of politicians and the politica l caricatures set forth in Jaime’s magazines as
commodities that circulated w ithin unequal systems of political ma rketing.
Focusing on broader processes of cultural product ion, as well as on the ways
in which local audiences read these materia ls—a subject I explore in detail
in Chapter ree—I analyze how obscene images a nd vulgar discourses are
used to forge a link between machismo and p olitics. Br iey, to recapitulate
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