A cursory look at some of the Latin American movies with the highest attendance in the history of their respective national industries reveals that comedies have been extraordinary successful
film efforts in the continent. Surprisingly, the cultures of Latin America - which for the first time developed a truly continental market with the circulation of Argentine and, above all,
Mexican comedies of the Golden Age (1930s-1950s) - have produced little historiographical or critical material investigating their rich past and current production at the intersection of
humor and cinema. Humor in Latin American Cinema addresses a variety of regional humor traditions such as exploitation cinema, Brazilian chanchada, the Cantinflas heritage, the comedy of
manners and light sexuality, as well as a variety of humor registers evident in different Latin American films. This book inquires how and if Latin American cultural criticism has so far
approached humor and its significance in the context of the construction of regional, national, and local identities.
