About Satiricón

Satiricón

Satiricón was an Argentine satirical humour magazine founded in Buenos Aires in 1972 by Oskar Blotta, with Andrés Cascioli as art director. Its first issue appeared on 10 November 1972. Its original run was broken by prohibition: in September 1974 the first stage of Satiricón ended, due to the prohibition decreed by the national government during the presidency of María Estela Martínez de Perón; the closure was lifted on 13 June 1975, the magazine reappeared in December 1975 in a second, brief stage, and its last issue of that era appeared in March 1976, only hours after the coup that began Argentina's last dictatorship. The title was revived in a third stage in the 1980s, from November 1983 to October 1986, but its fame rests on the convulsed first run of 1972 to 1976.

A rare-books description of its complete set called Satiricón an artistically important, subversive politico-satirical and humorous monthly published in Argentina in opposition to the regime, and noted similarities to the American MAD, to the French Charlie and the German Pardon, and elements of adult erotic humour comparable to Penthouse and Playboy. Its entire existence, that account stressed, was marked by its convulsed political context: it was born a week before Juan Domingo Perón's return to Argentina, it was banned by Perón's widow's government, and it died as the armed forces seized power. No Argentine magazine had a biography so completely fused with the collapse of a political order.

Founders: Oskar Blotta and Andrés Cascioli

Satiricón was founded by Oskar Blotta, with the collaboration of Andrés Cascioli as art director. Cascioli, born in Avellaneda in 1936, had worked in graphic design and advertising and placed work in comics publications before, in 1972, he and Blotta founded Satiricón together — the same partnership that, six years later, would create the even more famous Humor Registrado, with Cascioli as its editor and cover artist. Satiricón was therefore the first draft of one of the great Argentine editorial partnerships: Blotta's founding energy and Cascioli's graphic direction tested, in 1972, the formula they would perfect under the dictatorship.

The magazine initially featured experienced humorists such as Basurto, Oscar Blotta — the founder's namesake collaborator in the listings — Miguel Brascó, Flax and Faruk, the duo of Lino and Jorge Palacio, José Miguel Heredia, Landrú and Siulnas. Landrú alone connected the new magazine to the grand tradition of Argentine political humour: he had founded the satirical magazine Tía Vicenta in the 1950s. Satiricón was thus not a youth revolt against the old humour establishment but, at its launch, an alliance between that establishment's masters and a younger generation preparing to make humour more acid and irreverent.

First issue: 10 November 1972

The first issue of Satiricón appeared on 10 November 1972 — a week, as its bibliographic history emphasised, before Juan Domingo Perón's return to Argentina. Perón, exiled since 1955, returned briefly in November 1972 and definitively in 1973, winning the presidency that September; he died on 1 July 1974, leaving the presidency to his widow, María Estela Martínez de Perón, Isabel. The magazine's whole first life unfolded inside that sequence: the euphoric and violent return of Peronism, the death of its leader, the disintegration of his successor's government under the influence of José López Rega and the terror of the Triple A, and finally the military coup of 24 March 1976.

A satirical magazine born into that Argentina could not be innocent. Political violence was escalating month by month, guerrilla organisations and state-sponsored death squads were both active, and the country's institutions were visibly failing. Satiricón's humour grew, in the words of its bibliographic record, gradually more acid and irreverent as that collapse proceeded — of the experienced humorists of its first issues, only a few, such as Dante Panzeri, Oski and César Bruto, continued to work on it as its tone sharpened.

The model: MAD, Charlie, Pardon — and adult humour

The complete-set description of Satiricón placed its format precisely: line drawings and photographs, similar to the American MAD, and to its French and German counterparts Charlie and Pardon, and also similar in its adult erotic humour to elements of Penthouse and Playboy. That was a new mixture for Argentina. The country's great humour magazines — Rico Tipo above all — had been cheeky but essentially family properties; Satiricón imported the post-1968 international satire magazine, in which political mockery, absurdist graphics, parody advertising and erotic comedy coexisted, aimed squarely at adults.

The erotic element was not decoration; it was part of the magazine's modernity and part of its danger. In the Argentina of Isabel Perón and López Rega, where conservative Catholic morality was being enforced as politics, a magazine combining political subversion with sexual humour challenged the regime on two fronts at once, and gave the censors two vocabularies of offence to choose from. The magazine's bibliographic record noted that its entire existence was marked by limitations, censorship, prohibitions and closures from all governments — it outraged, in succession, every authority under which it appeared.

Oski, César Bruto and the sharpening tone

Among the contributors who remained as the magazine's humour became more acid and irreverent, the bibliographic record names Dante Panzeri, Oski and César Bruto. Oski — Oscar Esteban Conti (1914–1979), nicknamed El Maestro by his fellow cartoonists — had been a master of Argentine graphic humour since the 1940s, when his drawings for César Bruto's Versos y Noticias appeared in Rico Tipo. His presence in Satiricón linked the abrasive new magazine to the highest standards of the older art; the comics historian Paul Gravett recorded that Oski contributed to Satiricón, and that when Satiricón was forced to close by executive order in 1974, Oski chose to abandon political subject matter.

That detail captures what the magazine cost its contributors. Oski, in his sixties, responded to the ban by withdrawing from politics altogether in his work, and as political violence worsened in 1975 he left for Barcelona and later Rome, returning to Buenos Aires only in 1979, the year of his death. The arc of the master's last decade — Rico Tipo's elegance, Satiricón's combat, prohibition, exile — is the arc of Argentine humour itself in those years, and Satiricón was its turning point.

Prohibition under Isabel Perón

In September 1974, the first stage of Satiricón ended, due to the prohibition decreed by the national government during the presidency of María Estela Martínez de Perón. Issue number 22 came out in September 1974; the following issue did not appear until December 1975. The prohibition was maintained for more than a year, until 13 June 1975, when the closure was lifted — a chronology worth reading carefully, because it shows a constitutional government, Perón's own movement's government, suppressing a satirical magazine by decree, more than a year before the military coup made suppression systematic.

Gravett's account dates the same event as the magazine being forced to close by executive order in 1974. The bibliographic history of the magazine attributes the harshest pressure specifically to the government of Isabel Perón and López Rega, the minister whose influence dominated that government and whose paramilitary apparatus was murdering Argentines while the magazine tried to publish. Satiricón's ban is therefore a documented episode of pre-coup repression: evidence that the destruction of Argentine press freedom did not begin on 24 March 1976, but was prepared, decreed and rehearsed under the elected government the coup overthrew.

The brief return and the last cover, March 1976

When the closure was lifted in June 1975, the magazine reappeared in December of that year, in a second but brief stage. Its last issue appeared in March 1976, whose cover read, in the bibliographic record's quotation, The devil rules us — a cover line that served as the magazine's farewell and its final diagnosis of the country. The complete run of the first and second stages comprised issues 1 to 26, November 1972 to March 1976, plus four extra issues.

The timing of the end could hardly have been more symbolic: the last issue appeared, as its history records, a few hours after the coup — the military takeover of 24 March 1976 that installed the dictatorship. Satiricón did not publish under the dictatorship. The magazine that had been banned by Isabel Perón's government and had returned to mock the devil in March 1976 exited at the exact moment Argentine satire entered its most dangerous years. Its founders' response came two years later, in a different form: Cascioli founded Humor in 1978, carrying the partnership's satirical project into the dictatorship with a new title, a new publishing house and hard-won knowledge of what the state would do to a magazine that mocked it.

The third stage, 1983–1986

The seed record for this profile dates Satiricón simply 1972 to 1976, and its fame does rest on that period; but the bibliographic record of the complete set documents a third stage, and a verified profile should record it. After the dictatorship fell and democracy returned in December 1983, Satiricón reappeared: issues 27 to 61 ran from November 1983 to October 1986, completing the set that booksellers describe as the magazine's first, second and third stages.

The revival appeared in a transformed country — elected government, free press, the junta leaders about to be tried — and a transformed market, in which Cascioli's own Humor was now the dominant satirical magazine. The third-stage Satiricón could therefore be an homage to its own legend as much as a competitor, proof that the name still meant something to readers who remembered 1972–1976. Its end in October 1986 closed the title's publishing history for good; no later revival is recorded in the sources consulted.

Buenos Aires and the satirical tradition

Satiricón was a Buenos Aires magazine, produced in the capital in the tradition of Argentine political satire that ran from Caras y Caretas through Tía Vicenta — Landrú, Tía Vicenta's founder, was among its initial contributors, a living bridge between the traditions. Argentine comics histories name the country's main comic magazines as Patoruzú, Rico Tipo and Satiricón, which places the short-lived, twice-suppressed monthly in the company of two giants that ran for decades: an indication that influence, in magazine history, is not measured only in years.

Its Buenos Aires was a specific and terrible one: the city of Perón's return, of Ezeiza, of the Triple A, of a government banning jokes while death squads worked. The magazine's offices and kiosks stood in that city, and its readers bought, each month, a drawn and photographed refusal to take the collapsing order seriously. That refusal, sustained until hours after the coup itself, is the magazine's essence.

Legacy and present status

Satiricón is a closed magazine, remembered through its complete runs — described by the rare-book trade as rare, artistically important sets — and through the careers it shaped. Its historical importance is threefold. It introduced the international adult satire-magazine model to Argentina. It documented, in its own suppression, the pre-history of the dictatorship's assault on expression. And it served as the apprenticeship of the Blotta–Cascioli partnership, without which Humor Registrado, the defining satirical magazine of the dictatorship years, would not have existed in its historic form.

For this directory, Satiricón completes the trilogy of classic Argentine humour magazines in this batch: Patoruzú's innocence, Rico Tipo's urbanity, and Satiricón's fury. It was founded in Buenos Aires by Oskar Blotta, with Andrés Cascioli as art director, on 10 November 1972; it was prohibited in September 1974, returned briefly in December 1975, published its last issue of the era in March 1976 as the coup struck, and was revived for a final stage from 1983 to 1986. Few magazines anywhere have had their dates dictated so completely by the fall of a republic — or have answered that fall with a cover announcing that the devil ruled.