Graphic humorists of different styles and ages reflect a Cuba in crisis and without filters through a hybrid exhibition that honors the long tradition of social and political caricature on the island, while serving as a record of the last three years, in a country where censorship and persecution make it increasingly difficult to do independent journalism from within.
“It is a way of continuing to denounce the lack of expression that exists right now in Cuba,” he told the voice of america José Jasán Nieves, director of El Toque, an independent Cuban publication that had to move its newsroom out of the country due to pressure from the Havana government.
‘A pencil tip’inaugurated in the physical space of the Green Library at Florida International University (FIU) -which sponsored the printing of the works-, can also be seen on-line on the publication site. Its authors range from established artists such as Gustavo Rodríguez ‘Garrincha’, Ramsés Morales and Alex Lauzán, to the youngest Brady Izquierdo, Mary Esther Lemus, Irán, Fabián Sotolongo and Wimar Verdecia.
The exhibition includes drawings that scathingly comment on the events and personalities of the Cuban reality from 2019 to date, in an exercise without editorial censorship that served as a learning point for both the artists and the El Toque team.
“A pencil tip It serves to show the quality and great work of Cuban humorists who work supporting independent media. They are very talented people, who have drawn the political crisis of the last three years in Cuba week by week in El Toque, but also in other digital media,” said Nieves.
The exhibition also takes advantage “to denounce the repression of which these artists are victims, who due to the quality and repercussions of their work have suffered and still suffer, because some of them are still in Cuba and have not managed to leave,” he said.
“They have been prevented from their right to work, their right to create, their right to express themselves, just for having used their art to accompany the struggles of the Cuban people in recent years,” said Nieves, who had to leave island along with his colleagues due to his journalistic work.
Screaming at the top of a hill
The Touch was one of the first means emerged outside the state press Cuban. His multimedia way of telling the country, through the concerns of its inhabitants and in a pleasant, objective and truthful way, was what quickly distinguished him from the rest and attracted the attention of the government, which did not welcome the contrary coverage. to his speech.
El Toque began to publish the weekly section of graphic humor xel2 (read “for the two”) in 2019 to “deal with aspects of Cuban reality, from the most everyday to the most important.” The last issue of it came out in 2022, when it closed “due to pressure from Cuban State Security.”
The witness then took it Rattle starting last October with cartoonists from Xel2 and additions like Garrincha. All the cartoonists who participate in this project live outside of Cuba.
“I feel that my drawings can connect because they come from a personal and free experience. What I show is a bit of my individual freedom when it comes to creating. I draw from my personal freedom and I think that is felt”, says Mary Esther Lemus in the presentation video of the sample.
Lemus, author of the cartoon chosen for the exhibition’s poster, highlights the importance of spaces such as the sections of El Toque, because in Cuba there is “no way to publish periodically.”
“The fact of collaborating with other artists, of seeing your work published weekly, of telling the news, that allows your work to grow,” he said.
Lemus is the author of one of the drawings with which the chief editor of El Toque identifies most. The image of a girl at the “tip of a hill” letting out a scream, which for some can be frustration and relief for others, resonated with Nieves, who has lived in Miami for a few years.
“This image is not in the exhibition, and it is possibly the last one that she (Lemus) posted on Xel2 before she was forced to resign, but it conveys that so strongly, a cry of liberation, that I identified with it a lot,” he explained. Snow to the VOA.
Counting and drawing Cuba from outside
In the midst of an openly hostile environment for independent publications within Cuba, El Toque moved its newsroom off the island. Currently there are 24 of the original members, spread over seven countries. The Xel2 cartoonists also marched in search of greater creative freedom.
The government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel has defended itself by assuring that independent journalists seek to “impose an interventionist agenda” and has accused them of receiving foreign financing. Nieves was presented on Cuban state television as a “destabilizing agent” along with his team.
“The printing format of paper publications in Cuba is completely controlled by the (Communist Party of Cuba) and by the official media, which have a censorship on the creators and the topics that Cuban graphic humor addresses,” he said for his part Wimar Verdecia, who served as director of Xel2 and now lives and creates from France.
For Nieves, “living outside of Cuba has pros and cons. It is a disadvantage to be outside the space that allows you to feel the temperature of the situation” but according to him “social networks and the transfer of the virtual to the physical state make it not impossible “.
“It also happens that you are freer to create because you don’t have State security breathing down your neck, or directly bothering you all the time with the intention of preventing you from functioning as a human being, and much more, as a journalist and independent creator,” he insisted. the reporter.
A journey that only begins
After his tenure at the Florida International University (FIU) headquarters in Miami, ‘At Pencil Point’ She will continue her journey at the University of Houston, Texas, where El Toque will take her as part of a presentation on the role of the independent Cuban press.
The exhibition at the FIU included files from the house of higher studies on pieces, books and figures from the rich tradition of Cuban graphic humor, including the renowned Conrado Massaguer and his Social magazine.
“We are knocking on doors because we believe that it is an exhibition that we believe should be taken to many more places, we intend to take it to Washington, to Boston, but we are also looking to take it to Spain and Mexico, in addition to continuing to move it around the United States, definitely because It’s a good trigger to talk about Cuba,” Nieves said.
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