Borduria

Borduria (officially the People's Republic of Borduria) is an imaginary European country located on the Balkan Peninsula, which appears in the comic series The Adventures of Tintinby the Belgian cartoonist and screenwriter Hergé.

Borduria appears in the adventures Ottokar's Scepter and The Tornasol Affair and is alluded to in Tintin and the Rogues. In the last two albums, she portrays herself as a stereotypical Eastern Bloc Stalinist country.

Appearances in Tintin books

In Ottokar's Scepter, Tintin reads a Syldavian tourist pamphlet which tells the medieval history of Syldavia and its relations with Borduria. In 1195, Borduria annexed neighboring Syldavia, which was under its rule until 1275, when Baron Almaszout expelled the Bordurians and proclaimed himself King Ottokar I. In the later Tintin stories, this ancient rivalry continues and the Bordurians They continually try to invade or destabilize Syldavia.

The Scepter of Ottokar (written by Hergé in 1939) recounts a frustrated attempt by the Bordurians to organize a coup d'état in Syldavia, trying to dethrone the king and invade the country with the support of Borduria's sympathizers in Syldavia.

In The Tornasol Affair (1956), Borduria is shown as a stereotypical Eastern Bloc country, with its secret police (the ZEP, led by Colonel Sponsz) and a Stalinist military dictator called Plekszy-Gladz, who promotes an ideology called "bigotism." A statue of Plekszy-Gladz, wearing a Stalin-like mustache and giving a Nazi-style arm salute, appears in front of a government building. The Bordurian military of this period are shown to be technologically inept, unable to stop a tank stolen by Tintin and his companions, since the mines and anti-tank cannons are defective.

In Tintin and the Rogues (1976), the South American banana republic of San Theodoros, governed by General Tapioca, has formed an alliance with the Bordurian government, which sends him military advisors, including the Colonel Sponsz. On an unpublished page that Hergé drew for this book, a bust of Plekszy-Gladz can even be seen in the office of a colonel of St. Theodoros. Finally, General Alcázar, Tintin's friend, deposes Tapioca and Sponsz is exiled.

Symbols

In The Tornasol Affair, Marshal Plekszy-Gladz's mustache is used as a national symbol, appearing on the country's flag, in its architecture, on the bumpers of Bordurian cars (like the car with which Tintin escapes in said album) and even as a diacritical accent in certain vowels. Police officers and officers wear red armbands with the mustache symbol in the center of a white circle. It is similar to that carried out by various organizations in Germany under the Nazi regime. Even the Hotel Zsnorr in Szohôd where Tintin stays makes reference to the mustache (snor in Dutch means 'mustache'). In Tintin and the Rogues, the mustache logo of the mustache can be seen in the decoration of buildings in San Theodoros. A common Bordurian oath is: "By the mustaches of Plekszy-Gladz!"

In Ottokar's Scepter, the Borduria flag is black, with a red circle and two black triangles. In The Tornasol Affair it is red and contains the Plekszy-Gladz mustache logo.

Culture

Borduria has or had Islam as one of its religions: in The Tornasol Affair, a minaret can be seen behind the modernist buildings surrounding the statue of Plekszy-Gladz. Other examples of architecture shown are old typical Yugoslav-style buildings and modern communist buildings.

Language

The Tintin books only present the country's language, Bordurio, in some fragments. Like Syldavian, the language appears to be based on Marols, a dialect of Dutch spoken in Brussels; For example, compare the Bordurian word mänhir (sir) with the Dutch mijnheer.