hybridity, Mexico, migration, Pinzón, photography, superhero.
Dulce Pinzón’s ‘The Real Story of the Superheroes’, celebrates Mexican and Latina/o migrant workers in the United States by radically re-imagining the figure of the superhero. Pinzón’s work is a striking combination of documentary photography and fantasy, as her subjects go about their everyday jobs dressed as superheroes. Pinzón’s choice of the visual motif of the superhero raises the paradox that these popular cultural icons are frequently engaged in defending the United States from alien invasions, which are often thinly veiled references to fear of immigrants, especially after 9/11. This chapter contends, however, that Pinzón employs the hybridity inherent in these characters, and which has marked photography in Mexico from its inception, to present alternative heroes using a language that is normally associated with U.S. hegemony and oppression.