Troka

Troka El Poderoso: Cuentos Infantiles. Mexico, D.F.: El Nacional, 1939. First edition.

A delightful artifact of avantgardist propaganda, the android Troka the Powerful (Troka El Poderoso) first appeared as the protagonist of a series of popular Mexican children’s radio programs written by the poet German List Azurbide for the Secretaría de Educación Pública’s radio station XFX (1932-1933). Never explicitly named as a “robot”, Troka is a giant synthetic automaton, a mechanical spirit announcing the triumph of humans (technology and industry) over nature (religion and superstition). In stories that take the didactic form of parables, Troka embodies the call in the first Estridentismo manifesto (1923) to “exalt … the beauty of machines.”

The present compendium of Troka stories was published seven years after the radio broadcasts and, according to scholars, probably includes new material not originally broadcast. In these android hero advocates for modern industrial machinery, teamwork, the city, electricity (its abdomen includes a hydroelectric plant), and science.

Prieto’s wonderful illustrations, some of which seem to synthesize futurist and social realist elements, are an integral part of Troka’s pedagogical sci fi in a post-revolutionary Mexico aesthetic environment that relied heavily on realism.

The original cover artwork and a copy of the first edition of Troka El Poderoso were included in the 2013 Museo Nacional de Arte exhibition, Vanguardia en México 1915 – 1940.

OCLC identifies 6 copies in US institutional holdings. Most in California or Texas.

See Juan Solis, “Troka, el poderoso. Disección del espíritu mecánico de una época”. In Vanguardia en México 1915 – 1940, MNA, Mexico DF, 2013. Ed. Gonzalez Mello, Renato, Ed., et al.

19.5 cm; 203, [5], pp.; cover illus. signed “Duhart” though credited to Pruneda, title page illustration by Pruneda, b/w plates by Prieto throughout. Newsprint uniformly toned and fragile as expected. Color printed paper wrapper glued to boards, all edges worn, especially at corners and foot. Forward edge of rear board with 1 cm dent. We have not found an explanation for the aberrant cover signature. Was Duhart a known pseudonym of the caricaturist Pruneda?

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