Cartooniana

A former president was about to be arrested for accusations of receiving bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. When a prosecutor arrived with the police at his house, he fatally shot himself in the head.

So... what type of story is this? Is Alan Garcia the victim, as he declared himself in a purported suicide note refusing the humiliation and misery from political "enemies"? The very notion of his death would by some place him as an untouchable such as by fellow former corrupt presidents of this world, along with a number of darkened souls or bored ones immediately coming out of the wood work when Bonil drew the cartoon above, crying "Upset! Uproar!"

We know the drill and in terms of noise level it is efficient. So is it relevant, or rather the right thing to do to draw him posthumously?
Alan Garcia declared himself the victim, but do we have to take his word for it? His death was in direct line of how he governed his life. His death happened d…

Yes! Yes, of course! This is a cartoon completing an image and all the more forceful for not straying from its original content. An image known so well that the original is all but depleted of content, but Angel Boligán proves the strength of cartooning that there is always a new layer and another angle to a subject. 
The punch in the precision of his cartoon is hitting us all the stronger in that The Second Adam was always meant to be executed and his life taken by the powerful; the two forces that are creating the axis before us on the picture place. 
That Second Adam just makes for a backdrop to their deal, leaning outwards and away.
Job done. The prophecy has been fulfilled. Humankind has but to voice with the crucified: 

"Why have you forsaken me?"



The cartoon shown is courtesy of Angel Boligán and must not be reproduced.

A concentrated 3/4-profile self-portrait is how we always meet the artist exposing their inner strengths and weaknesses and just as the great cartoon will create life with just four lines, Pedro X. Molina has defined the anatomy of what the cartoonist does in just four lines too:


"A colleague has said: "We cartoonists are like guard dogs at night, we bark at EVERYONE who seems suspicious to us. Three out of four times it will be a squirrel or a cat, but that fourth time it will be a thief or a murderer". This is exactly it, YES! I am a DOG... and will continue to be one."

The cartoonist may be distracted by the noise of the day, but when the villains are nailed, it is so worth the barking that may have gone before.

Guard dogs are protectors. They react on a background of something grander beyond their own being. Humankind and its rights to live, first and last.

In this we have proof of why cartooning is not limited within its national borders. References are local…

- and as of yesterday, Bouteflika has at long last stepped down as the president of Algeria.
Stepping down is overstating it. He was wheelchair-bound and largely unseen and unheard in public from a stroke long before his present term. He was about to announce his fifth term, when enough was enough for the Algerians. The present wheelchair created by Amine Labter in 2017 was not directed at the wheelchair-bound in general. This was a specific situation in which the president was a useful prop for those actually in power. It is placed at a 3/4-angle full-scale portrait, yet it is empty and just a shadow, just as his presidency.
A portrait takes on an reality of the one portrayed, and had the not not been part of the statement, it would have been a provocation in itself, speaking in blunt terms. The presence of the NOT made it a situation of anger and call for action. And now art provoking reality has become reality.




The cartoon shown is courtesy of Amine Labter and must not be reproduc…