The Transformative Power of Art: Mexico's Combat Cartoonist
Barajas, Rafael
Even though humor plays, or ought to play, an important role in daily life, few people consider the genre to be a worthy cultural product. Studies categorizing satire as second-rate...
...To rescue that graphic source of our common culture is to recover a NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10ESSAY / POLITICAL HUMOR Go Tell the People that They Have Voted...
...5. Mannerism is a painting style once described as a perversion of the high Italian Renaissance and now identified as a conscious revolt against Classicism...
...The genre varies so widely because the essential mechanism of the cartoon sums up the intention of all satirical work: to ridicule...
...Hoffman, La caricature, p. 14...
...The master of Mexican cartooning, Constantino Escalante, drew beautiful lithographs inspired by the style of Daumier and Gavarni in the late 1860s...
...From the beginning, cartooning Preparing a Great Function...
...The powerful who insist on committing abuses and who fail to modify their conduct often become, in the public eye, the image drawn of them by the caricaturist, undercutting their power in subtle but often powerful ways...
...A mad king-such as Lear-tended to have a jester who was out of his mind...
...From the nineteenth-century "combat cartoonists" to contemporary popular artists like Rius, Mexico's cartoonists have offered not simply humorous drawings, but tools of analysis that translate the complex world of politics into simple and tangible images accessible to all Mexicans...
...The Mexican Liberal politician and poet Guillermo Prieto tells of how newspapers were read out loud in plazas and at small gatherings and in caf6s, allowing ideas to spread to the point that they became real public opinion...
...This explains why in 1832 Louis Philippe, the Citizen King of France, offended by a lithograph in which Honord Daumier portrayed him as voratious gargantua, ordered him locked up not in a jail but in a lunatic asylum...
...in 1857, Ponciano Arriaga demanded land distribution...
...Political cartooning has a long and distinguished history in Mexico...
...This is an equally absurd argument, as it fails to grasp the extent to which the political activism of many artists is what inspires them and frees them to create and to carry out their art...
...Art theorist E. H. Gombrich put it well: "The cartoonist, however negligible his artistry, is more likely to impress in...
...It teaches people...
...These politically committed, romantic and passionate men produced the best journalism Mexico has ever seen...
...It was a terrain for intellectual debate, where the ideas of the romantic vanguard circulated, and where many of the achievements of independent Mexico's literature and art took form...
...The Conservative Party, which drew its support from the so-called noble families, the Catholic Church and some high ranking officers, was identified with the colonial regime...
...James D. Cockroft, Precursores intelectuales de la Revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico: SigloXXI, 1971), p. 76...
...Carlos Monsivdis adapted this classic phrase to the Mexican case...
...It is distinguished by barroom language [and] cheap shots," said Francisco Bulnes, a fervent supporter of dictator Porfirio Diaz, of the critical and satirical press, and particularly its cartoons...
...Two enormous flies represent congressional deputies, who engage in the following dialogue: "Now that the people's representatives have abandoned us, the temple of laws is good place to discuss just about anything...
...Cartooning also includes the entire universe of satiricalpolitical graphic art: anthropomorphizing, pastiches, visual distortions, absurd humorous images, absurd or ambiguous scenes, grotesque imaginings, allegorical engravings, burlesque portraits, graphic reflections and even comic strips...
...You are right, my friend...
...8 Combat cartoonists, content with the ephemeral glory of journalism, set aside the laurels of "high art" because they sought something more ambitious: to give their readers tools of analysis with which to transform their country and to become part of the history of their times...
...Fuentes para la historia de la Revoluci6n mexicana (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura y Economfa, 1955), p. XXIII...
...A prime example of Mexican romantic art was the combat cartoons, which pulled together all the requirements of romantic aesthetics: revaluation of one's own identity and place in the world, exaltation of the grotesque as an aesthetic value, praise of feelings (particularly nationalism), and above all, the profound love for freedom which is expressed in the liberal pantheon of ideas-especially in the ideal of a free press and in the model's revolt against the classical canons of beauty...
...This cartoon by Santiago Herndndez appeared in La Orquesta on December 1, 1869 as the government was organizing a great reception for William Seward, the former U.S...
...E. H. Gombrich, "El arsenal de la caricatura," in Meditaciones sobre un caballo de juguete y otros ensayos sobre la teoria del arte (Madrid: Editorial Debate, 1988), p. 139...
...Although the genre has its Rafael Barajas, popularly known as El Fisg6n, is a political cartoonist with the Mexico City daily La Jornada...
...This is a theme tha appeared with great regularity in Mexico's opposition press up to the present day...
...A well-known saying has it that "a country that does not know its history is condemned to repeat it...
...The basic technique of satirical drawing is to isolate the physical, mental, social or moral defect of the subject and magnify it, something closer to magical realism than a search for aesthetic beauty...
...Louis Philippe was right to be upset...
...7. Antoine De Baecque, La Caricature Revolutionnaire (Paris: Presses du CNRS, 1988), p. 13...
...Many observers today try to discredit progressive or leftist journalists for adopting definitive political positions, as if believing in a cause automatically undermines their moral authority...
...But even as cartoons defy and mock the establishment, they are a pillar and a sword of that very liberal institution, the print media...
...In cultural terms, the cartoon has been scorned even more than satire...
...And finally, we must not forget that since 1964, Rius, Naranjo and Helioflores have criticized the antidemocratic, antipopular and repressive practices of the PRI...
...Jos6 Joaquin Ferndndez de Lizardi was right when he affirmed in 1821 that "the sovereignty of a nation resides in freedom of the press...
...Translated from the Spanish by Mark Fried...
...In Mexico, a rich and complex series of cultural phenomena developed in and around political cartooning...
...oose...
...The government had invented a pair of scissors, comments an observer, that "not only shears but fleeces its victims...
...Sometimes this relationship is direct, other times students learn from and are inspired by the published work of the masters...
...defenders, its detractors are ferocious...
...This is particularly the case with what was known as "combat cartoons" (caricaturas de combate), drawn by nineteenthcentury cartoonists committed to the liberal cause...
...That is why it was called "prensa de combate," or combative press...
...The program of the Liberal opposition has clear roots...
...The modern political cartoon emerged when seventeenth-century satirical artists, mostly in England, brought together the two cartooning traditions most used since the fifteenth century: Dutch allegorical engravings in which a crowd of characters represented the visual equivalent of a political situation and the Italian tradition in which deforming physiognomy is used to make a political statement.' Although cartooning refers to a specific drawing technique, the widespread embrace of the term led to its incorporation into popular usage as a synonym of humorous drawing...
...When the royal courts disappeared, the cartoonist inherited from the jester his consciously irrational character...
...Through cartoons we also gain a better understanding of the aesthetic, political and moral values of certain sectors of society...
...in 1884 there was a newspa- ncing t box per for every 53,858 inhabig the tants, and by 1907 there was n the one for every 9,337...
...1 This tenacious artistic approach turned out at times to be decisive in the history of Mexico...
...Studies categorizing satire as second-rate literature abound...
...This cartoon by Santiago Herndndez appeared in La Orquesta on April 2, 1870, toward the end of the Liberal "period of special pow- ers...
...From 1821 onward, Jos6 Joaquin Fernandez de Lizardi asked for free public education...
...friends v Many of the precursors circles...
...Consequently, these satirists strove for a political and cultural vision that exercised notable influence over several generations of Mexicans...
...Cartooning, as French historian Michel Vovelle states, "is not merely a passive reflection of the public spirit, but rather contributes to building that public spirit in powerful ways...
...Their cartoons offered tools of analysis laced with irony that, by translating the complex and often abstract world of politics into simple and tangible images, made them accessible to most Mexican citizens...
...Nor can we forget that between 1885 and 1906, Santiago HernAndez, Daniel Cabrera and Jesds Martinez Carri6n criticized-and helped defeat-the antidemocratic, antipopular and repressive practices of the presidentialist regime of Porfirio Dfaz...
...They all called for respect for the constitution, democracy, credible elections and institutionalized mechanisms for the transfer of power...
...To understand any historical period, it helps to understand what made people laugh, and cartoons are the best medium for that...
...In Mexico, the Liberal Party fought for a federal, democratic republic, and for the liberty of thought...
...Surrounding all this was a generous humanism that laid the basis for the nationalist struggle...
...Michel Melot, L'oeil qui rit (Friburgo: Office du Livre, 1975), p. 171...
...Alejandro Casarin, and contemporary artists such as Rogelio Naranjo, a master portrait satirist of the Mexican political class, whose elegant drawing style is matched with an acute sense of irony...
...Benito Jubrez (center) grasps the scarce hairs of "the people, " which one of his ministers prepares to cut, while another mocks the shaved head of the previous customer, the Catholic Church...
...people Though some have criti- t has cized the didactic character of the nineteenth-century press, this was in fact one of its principal merits...
...On occasion their influence over political decisions was surprising, given that they were nearly always considered to be mad...
...So, the cartoonists of this combative press-which were referred to as the "combat cartoonists"-were central to Liberal propaganda...
...The procedure is nearly an act of exorcism, with the difference that cartooning does not seek to remove the demons, rather simply to portray them...
...They openly defended their principles, they criticized what they believed had to be criticized, and they never ceased in their struggle for liberty...
...During this period-as in many su -candidates for public office were nominated vho, for this purpose, formed groups known as In this image, a figure representing "the p by the friendly circles of three candidates for o the cartoon reads: "The people are free to ch is warning that the next electoral contest, ra g democracy, will once again crush the people...
...There is a good reason for this: Cartooning was born in Italy in the early sixteenth century, during the Mannerist period as a rebellion against the academy and its aesthetic canons...
...And since many of the people the Liberal press tried to reach were illiterate, one of its most effective weapons was cartoons...
...Historian Maria del Carmen Reyna has pointed out that in the 1830s, "Each newspaper had a limited circulation...
...The distorted images in satirical cartoons border on the absurd...
...Cartooning is one of the few effective critiques possible under a barbaric government, though it is often more savage and aggressive in more tolerant free societies...
...This observation is particularly valid for the cartoon since it tends to be excessive and, in order to ensure its effectiveness, it must be joking, ironic, irreverent, iconoclastic, acidic, satirical, subversive and-when the subject merits itit even has to be heartless, cruel, violent, intolerant and rude...
...What's more, in virtually the entire universe of satirical-political graphic art, the technique employed is cartooning...
...The opposition press drew upon the considerable anti-U.S...
...As with every judgement that refuses to admit exceptions, this one cannot be sustained...
...The didactic strength of the humorous press was enormous...
...a press run of four or five hundred copies was more than enough to cover the demand of the public...
...For combat journalists there was no division between politics and journalism-both activities formed part of the same search for truth and freedom...
...His book on the history of political cartooning in Mexico, La historia de un pais en cari- catura, from which this article is adapted, is forthcoming from the Mexican National Fund for Culture and Arts...
...Nearly all of Mexico's important painters, such as David Alfaro Siqueiros, Diego Rivera and Francisco Toledo, did some cartooning...
...Intellectual cartoonists like Escalante, Santiago Herndndez and Daniel Cabrera made fundamental contributions to the Mexican The Whale who Swallowed Jonah...
...The importance of the genre in Mexican politics and society can be explained in several ways...
...This cartoon by Santiago Hernmndez questa on January 18, 1871 during the perik Republic...
...l 2 Although cartooning is generally considered to be a "lower" art form, a number of the greatest artists in history, including William Hogarth, Honor Daumier and Saul Steinberg, spent most of their time and talent drawing comics...
...Seldom has the social role of humorists been as clear as in the Middle Ages when jesters used humor to express veiled critiques of the king and his court...
...3 By defending that right, Mexican journalists fought not only for a principle, but also to piece together a new nation and help found the Mexican state...
...It would be fair to regard some Mexican artists who engaged in Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY / JUNE 2000 9ESSAY / POLITICAL HUMOR combat cartooning as civil heroes who defended their ideas and their right to spread them at any cost...
...The first great critical essay of Mexican society, El Gallo Pitag6rico, a moralistic review of the social and political vices of mid-nineteenth century Mexico, was published in a newspaper...
...8. Highet, The Anatomy of Satire, p. 18...
...It cannot, in spite of the ambitious claims of one of its masters, rival tragic drama and epic poetry...
...The first group to encourage a Mexicanist vision and ideology-so necessary for the idea of the nation-was primarily made up of journalists, including Riva Palacio and Juan A. Mateos...
...From the first appearance of the genre in 1826 until its consolidation in 1872, a period stretching from the beginnings of the Liberal struggle against the Conservatives up to the formation of the Liberal opposition to the young Mexican state, the press played a fundamental role in the profound changes of Mexican society...
...This cartoon, probably drawn by H. M6ndez in 1856, denounces the absenteeism and demogoguery that had reduced legislative debate--recently restored by the Liberals-to the useless buzzing of flies...
...4. Carlos Monsivais, "La distorsi6n es la semejanza," in Aire de familia (Mexico: Catalogo del Museo de Arte Moderno, 1995), p. 30...
...Mexico's great Liberal journalists-above all the combat cartoonists of the nineteenth century-were immoderate in their combativeness, quick to defend their causes, and took sides on all issues...
...It must not be forgotten that after 1867, Constantino Escalante, Santiago Hernindez and Alejandro Casarfn, the pioneers of combat cartooning, criticized-and helped defeat-the antidemocratic, antipopular and repressive practices of the presidentialist regimes of Benito Juirez and SebastiAn Lerdo...
...This was the forerunner of the Mexican Liberal Party, whose program is widely considered to be the inspiration for the 1917 Constitution...
...The first genres of comedy-satire and political cartoons-were also born in the militant Liberal press...
...The Liberal Party struggled for decades to install a free press...
...ety...
...an art transform society...
...Linked to specific political movements, those artists of irony contributed through their art to political and social change in Mexico...
...Satire is not the greatest type of literature," wrote British historian Gilbert Highet...
...Cartooning, in effect, cuts the powerful down to the size of the rest of us mortals, converts them into human beings with all our defects and turpitude...
...Most satiric writing," said British essayist Gilbert Highet, "contains cruel and dirty words...
...He was awarded Mexico's National Journalism Prize for political cartooning in 1999, and has published several books, including iMe Ileva el TLC...
...The combat cartoonists inspired the popular art of Posada, author of the calaveras-Mexico's famous skeleton cartoons-as well as the politically committed art of the muralists and engravers of the Popular Graphics Workshop, which sought to develop a project of graphic art "for the people...
...Today, nearly all of Mexico's mass press considers itself "impartial," "moderate" and "objective"-even though it never is...
...Villasana was the mentor of Jesds T. Alamilla and Jos6 Guadalupe Posada, who formed the tradition of combat cartooning that nurtured the elegant work of Ernesto Garcia Cabral, the most popular Mexican cartoonist from the 1910s to the 1950s, a virtuoso of drawing who popularized artnouveau and art deco as well as the more violent work of Jos6 Clemente Orozco who, before being acknowledged as a muralist and master of expressionism, worked as a political cartoonist...
...None of them ever asked what the purpose of art was, but they were well aware of the utility of their talents and their work in the task of spreading and defending what they believed in, including freedom of expression...
...Some products of the genre have become widely known, like Posada's calaveras, appeared while others-such as od of the bsequent those of Alejandro by their Casarin, who revitalized "friendly Mexican cartooning in eople" is the 1870s-have been ffice...
...In either case, cartooning can have powerful effects...
...Rather, they reflect the small miseries of everyday life and the outstanding events of the day...
...1, p. 128...
...During the first half of the nineteenth century, every time a Liberal government took power, periodicals flourished, and every time the Conservatives were in office, newspapers were closed...
...The study of Mexican nineteenth-century combat cartooning demonstrates how artists committed to the Liberal Party helped to bring about substantial transformations in the society in which they lived...
...These qualities assured the coherency of their political commitment and made them models of intellectual honesty...
...Riva Palacio, who was also an achieved novelist, poitician, satirist, poet and diplomat, conceived, and partially wrote, Mexico Across the Centuries, a historical encyclopedia that gave a complete overview of Mexico's past...
...This cartoon by Santiago Hernmndez, denou, fraudulent electoral practices, appeared in La Orquesta on June 30, 1869...
...As Ireneo Paz, founder of the satirical newspaper El Padre Cobos, described it: "There is not, nor could there be, a more successful machine gun than the press when it is wielded with irony, with ridicule, with sarcasm...
...Silliness set before the eyes," Goethe once said, "has magical powers...
...His work inspired many notable cartoonists, including some of his own day, such as Santiago Hernmndez, Jos6 Maria Villasana and ee Circles...
...The combat press, La Orquesta in particular, con- sistently opposed the congressional authorization of extraordinary executive powers which placed limits on freedom of the press...
...to treat the mausoleums which house our patriotic glories as if they were urinals...
...There was a clear line of continuity between the political demands combat cartoonist Santiago Hernandez made of the Judrez government in La Orquesta, one of the most important Mexican satirical newspapers published between 1861 and 1876, and the demands Daniel Cabrera and Jestis Martinez Carri6n made of Porfirio Diaz in El Hijo del Ahuizote, the satirical newspaper that courageously opposed the dictatorship despite constant censorship and the persecution of its authors...
...Cartooning, as Vovelle says, is "the art of committed men and women...
...If he is right, then it is also true that a country that does not know its cartooning, is condemned to adopt foreign ways...
...Their ideological stance gave them a theoretical basis for analyzing national reality, and they created their own media for publishing and spreading their ideals and principles...
...From 1867, the opposition used the press to call on the government of the Republic to use the power that the people had deposited in its hands to divide up property, generate new sources of jobs and create institutions of public education...
...he "combat cartoonists," motivated by the conviction that the people make history, addressed, if not the masses (who were mostly illiterate), then the largest possible number of readers...
...This was not always the case...
...A figure representing "freedom of the press," pen in hand and broken chains around one arm is fleeing a terrible beast formed by a head representing Finance Minister Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, a body representing Benito Ju.rez and a tail representing Minister of War Tomis Mejia...
...Political cartoons are the best thermometer of freedom of expression throughout the world, and Mexico is no exception...
...If in the nineteenth century it was an essential weapon of the combative Liberal press, by the end of the twentieth century cartooning's influence had been well established in Mexican politics by artists such as Eduardo del Rio, more popularly known as Rius, and Rogelio Naranjo...
...The Mexican press faced the titanic undertaking of making the country aware of itself, and among the most urgent tasks was to encourage the development of a national culture for the country...
...According to nineteenth-century historian Jacinto Octavio Pic6n, the cartoon is perhaps "the most powerful corrective tool, the form of censure employed most by the oppressed against their oppressors, by the weak against the strong...
...They have also contributed to the demystification of privileges and institutions, and to the nurturing of some of the most profound changes in Mexican political life...
...It also shows that when combat cartoonists sought consciously to dedicate their work to a particular school of thought, their cartoons became a sounding box for a sector of soci"Silliness set before the eyes," Goethe once said, "has magical powers...
...As savage capitalist agriculture spread and the situation of the peasantry worsened during the Porfiriato, the liberal opposition grew increasingly radicalized...
...By portraying the errors of the politicians of the moment, these cartoonists decisively influenced national public opinion...
...But despite the small press runs, the influence of the press was significant...
...Cartooning is an act of freedom, like the free association of ideas in a dream or a nightmare...
...The Transformative Power of Art 1. Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy of Satire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 3. 2. Werner Hoffman, La caricature, de Vinci a Picasso (Paris: Editions Aimery-Somogy, 1958), p. 11...
...On the other hand, the Liberal Party was organized basically as a reaction against the Conservatives and it united a vast number of social forces that ranged from rich NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 8ESSAY / POLITICAL HUMOR land owners who believed in free trade, to unskilled farm workers...
...The work of the combat cartoonists confirmed the idea that "being subversive lies in the very nature of humorous drawings...
...part of the country's lost memory...
...was an axis around which political debate turned in Mexico...
...This cartoon by Constantino Escalante was published May 8, 1861 in La Orquesta, a paper supportive of the political project--but not the economic policy--of Liberalism...
...it is an act of voluntary insanity...
...It is the genre that people like best, the one that everyone understands and that Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY / JUNE 2000 11ESSAY / POLITICAL HUMOR New Style Deputies...
...Many intellectuals and artists joined the Liberal side because they knew that to enjoy free expression they would have to fight with those who defended freedom of the press...
...Revolution: Using their art, they publicized among the people the demands for agrarian reform, employment, free education and the welfare state-demands that would later be taken up by Emiliano Zapata and his followers, who called for "agrarian reform, freedom, justice and the rule of law...
...As a result, most Mexican cartoonists consciously embrace the originally scornful moniker, "moneros," or drawers of monkeys...
...The study of Mexican combat cartooning offers a solid material basis for the old polemic on the role of the artist and the importance and utility of art in society...
...Cartooning, like all satirical works, has always been a weapon that is offensive in all the senses of that word: it attacks and it tries to offend...
...The Mexican Revolution and the Constitution of 1917 would not have been possible without the programmatic and theoretical contribution of these intellectuals, who used the cartoon press-from La Orquesta, El Hijo del Ahuizote and El Colmillo Piblico-to champion and publicize their cause...
...Since they were unable to cover their costs with sales, most newspapers were financed by political parties and interest groups...
...If it is true that [ridicule] kills," says one historian of cartooning, "then without a doubt the cartoon is its sharpest weapon...
...A brilliant king tended to have a brilliant jester...
...Judrez and his cabinet are covering the National Palace with the U.S...
...Vovelle, Prologue to La Caricature Revolutionnaire, p. 11...
...A country that does not know its history," he says, "is condemned to cartooning...
...The battle for a free press was crucial in the war between Conservatives and Liberals, and only an aggressive and tenacious press could flourish...
...This trend continued even during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz (1876-1911...
...At the foot of the cartoon we read the words of Judrez: "Go tell the pe that they have voted and that thus speaks the Supreme Government...
...of the genre in Mexico, crushed such as Constantino foot of Escalante, Santiago Orquesta Herndndez, Jos6 Maria Villasana and Jesds Alamilla, were artists who achieved great recognition in their day...
...The press encouraged freedom of thought, spread ideas and artistic currents, but it also helped to formulate public opinion, encouraged Mexican citizens to read, and gave writers a place in society...
...For the ruler, Daumier's drawings did not challenge the laws of France, but the laws of reason-and in particular, the laws of reason of the state...
...And in many ways, the history of Mexican combat cartooning is also the history of the Liberals, of their press and of the struggle against censorship...
...Newspapers-and in particular the humorous pressprovided Mexico with its first images of itself as a free nation...
...and even by moralists against the corrupt...
...The press also provided an outlet for the work of popular graphic artists, encouraging the creation of a visual political culture and developing the first iconography of the nation's independent life...
...One school of thought insists that an artist's opinions should never interfere with his or her creative work...
...This is clearly the case in Mexico, where cartooning has always been one of few journalistic commentaries to which the illiterate and semiliterate majority has had access...
...Indeed, as one historian put it, "cartooning lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from the ideal of beauty, and constitutes its total negation...
...Diderot and D'Alembert's L'Encyclopedie defined cartoon as "licentiousness of the imagination," 2 and for many dictionaries the Spanish word for cartooncaricatura-means a poorly made sketch...
...a campaign of hatred than even the mob orator and the columnist...
...Maria del Carmen Reyna, La prensa censurada durante el siglo XIX (Mexico: Instituto Nacional Antropologia y Historia, 1995), p. 14...
...Jos6 Joaquin FernBndez de Lizardi, Defensa de la libertad de imprenta (Mexico: Imprenta de Jose Maria Benavente y Socios, 1821...
...Its contribution did not arise from spectacular bursts of genius or audacity, but rather from simple, unrelenting work linked to a detailed review of the country's political reality...
...Vovelle, Prologue to La Caricature Revolutionnaire, p. 39...
...leaves the most lasting marks on the spirit...
...Through cartooning, politically committed artists have contributed to the creation of a popular political culture...
...Another school of thought, remembering the sad examples of artists who placed their talent at the service of deplorable regimes and the dogmas of the moment (the Stalinism of Siqueiros, for example, or the courtesan artists who labor on behalf of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party), affirms that political activism limits the work and undermines the artistic integrity of journalists and artists alike...
...We can devote ourselves to our own pleasure because despite our deputies' well-known patriotism, there hasn't been a session for ten days for lack of a quorum...
...During the nineteenth century in Mexico-just like in Spain and other Latin American countries-two political parties fought a long-term battle to control the nation: Conservatives and Liberals...
...To freely express themselves as artists they had to make a political commitment, and Mexico's embryonic world of journalism contributed effectively to the triumph of the Liberals over the Conservatives...
...In fact some of Mexico's best-known artists-Jos6 Guadalupe Posada, Jose Clemente Orozco and The Thr in La Or Miguel Covarrubias, to Restorec name a few-were pro- periodsfessional cartoonists...
...And since they are as unchallengeable as an act of insanVol XXXIII, No 6 MAY / JUNE 2000 7ESSAY / POLITICAL HUMOR The Supreme Government, after shaving the Church down to its eyelids...
...Ireneo Paz, Algunas campahias (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura y Economla, 1997), Vol...
...In an open ballo labelled "urna electoral" Judrez and his finance minister receive votes from pesos leaving National Treasury...
...3. M. Gonzalez Ramirez, La caricatura politica...
...Cartooning does not kill, but it does make carnage of its prey...
...6. Hoffman, La caricature, p. 17...
...This titanic task created the foundations for Mexican nationalistic ideology...
...But as depositories of the madness of the court, they were the only ones who told the king the criticisms no one else dared to voice...
...From the point of view of cultural prestige," he admits, very much in spite of himself, "cartoons are not taken seriously, because they belong to the field of humor, a genre [considered] useful but abject...
...The Liberal journalists of the early nineteenth century-despite the divisions, attacks and exiles they suffered for decades-carried out a ferocious, heroic battle for freedom of expression, a battle in which they ultimately emerged victorious by mid-century...
...They supported the idea of a centralized government, tried several times to impose a Mexican monarchy and did everything to preserve the privileges of the Catholic Church...
...E. H. Gombrich, "El arsenal de la caricatura," p. 139...
...and in 1862, Constantino Escalante wrote a document urging the government to distribute land, to create new jobs and to fund public education...
...1 The term "caricatura" comes from the Italian caricare, which means to exaggerate, and it was first used as a personal hobby by the Carracci brothers, Mannerist painters of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries...
...sentiment generated by the war of 1847 to denounce the "pro-Yankee" sentiment of the Liberal group in power...
...Some of the artistic, cultural and political contributions of combat cartoonists were fundamental in the birth, evolution and transformation of the Mexican nation...
...he study of history, of ideas, of literature and of art in modern Mexico must take into account the nineteenth-century press...
...The first costumbrista novel, a literary genre dealing with local customs, El Periquillo Sarniento, was written by a journalist...
...5 It never pretended to be "high art," but rather a way of poking fun at art's yearning for prestige...
...in other words, constitutional government, effective suffrage, and a ban on reelection-the slogans that gave rise to the revolution led by Francisco I. Madero in 1910...
...When in 1810 Miguel Hidalgo started printing El Despertador Americano, the weekly of the insurgent rebels, there was no cultural tradition of journalism in Mexico, nor was there a tradition of humor or graphic art...
...Their great journalistic legacy lies in the courage they showed in defending their opinions...
...There was an intimate relationship between these cartoonists and the country's revolutionary movements...
...The debate over the relationship between art and politics continues to rage with fury...
...9. Jacinto Octavio Pic6n, Apuntes para la historia de la caricatura (Madrid: Establecimiento Tipogr6fico Carlos, 1877), p. 7. 10...
...3 Mexican cultural critic Carlos Monsiv.is is one of the few intellectuals who has given cartooning its due-to the point that he has become an erudite collector of comics...
...6 With all of its errors and limitations, the early Mexican press constituted the primary means for spreading ideas, artistic schools of thought and modern cultural trends...
...La A vital part of ther than Mexico's political, cultural and popular image of history is to be found in the combat cartoons...
...La Orquesta is denouncing the purchase of votes by the ruling Liberals i 1869 elections...
...Combat cartooning also inspired cartoonists like Rius, one of the most influential political comic book authors in the world, and Helioflores, a master of political black humor...
...it lies at the center of mobilization...
...Cartoons do not portray the glorious fate of military caudillos and their followers, as in the official iconography and heroic paintings of Mexico's past...
...Some important intellectuals even state that artists should be apolitical...
...In Mexico, for years political cartoons were accorded scant value even by the few historians and intellectuals who wrote about them...
...The first book of romantic poetry, El ensueho del tirano, played an important role as a propaganda weapon in the political struggle against the dictator Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna...
...Between 1902 and 1903, the anarchists Juan Sarabia and the Flores Mag6n brothers, Ricardo and Enrique, prominent members of the Mexican Liberal Party, ran a political and cartoon magazine called El Hijo del Ahuizote, a medium through which they championed their party's ideas and organized acts of resistance to the Porfiriato...
...The fundamental principle of cartooning is simple-fear of ridicule modifies behavior...
...It is where the political imagination is created...
...4 Nor have those who do not consider cartoons to be a form of "high art" paid much attention to those who draw them...
...The fact that the genre of cartooning is scorned as having little influence on society turns out to be an advantage for political satire professionals, especially those who labor under authoritarian regimes...
...But as we have seen, part of the greatness of the journalists and combat cartoonists of the last century is based on the fact that they always engaged in their craft based on their political convictions...
...Despite the country's material limitations, the press grew in influence, particularly in the second half of the nineteenth century, as its readership expanded...
...The Liberals' struggle against the Conservatives was also a war for freedom of thought and artistic freedom...
...secretary of state...
...El tratado retratado (Editorial Grijalbo, 1993...
...For these popular artists, art was their formal commitment and their political and moral battlefield...
...In 1900, the socialist Camilo Arriaga founded the Ponciano Arriaga Liberal Club in honor of his great-uncle...
...The cartoonist sees only the despicable essence of his prey...
...The work of the combat cartoonists must become enshrined as part of Mexico's historical memory...
...ity, they admit no discussion...
...Like the trades of old, cartooning is passed on from master to apprentice...
...The history of combat cartooning is the history of the critical consciousness of an important sector of Mexican liberals...
...After seizing Church property, the Liberal government raised taxes on the poor and proposed a seizure of communal goods, a measure that mainly affected indigenous communities...
...The press was an elite product, but opinion belonged to everyone...
...This multiplied the impact of their work and established an intimate relationship between the artist and the public...
...The entirely forgotten...
...flag, affixed with giant tacks representing the Liberal "Convention of 1868, " the "administraton of justice" and the "economic situation, " all of which take their cue from or depend upon the United States...
Vol. 33 • May 2000 • No. 6
