By IPS Correspondents
LIMA, Aug 20 1996 (IPS)

Historians are debating whether or not the first “cartoons” were the cave paintings of Altamira or “Yellow Kids”, a comic strip published in a North American newspaper in 1896.

But does it matter, really, in the end?

“If the print media were to disappear, would cartoons also disappear? This is a real question,” said Juan Acevedo, a noted cartoonist and author who has done much to promote and encourage deeper appreciation of the form.

Speaking to IPS on his return from an international meeting of cartoonists held last month in Extremadura, Spain, Acevedo admitted that the destiny of cartoons seemed tied to that of the printing press.

And the printing press was itself threatened by the expansion of other information systems, including cable and satellite TV and electronic newspapers on the internet. These systems did not seem to make room for the comic strip, though the internet and television theoretically belonged to the world of animation.

But Acevedo, who has written several books and essays about the subject and a history of Latin America from a child’s point of view, done in comic-book style, said the issue was deeper than that.

His book, “How to make cartoons” records his methodology. Based on his contribution, in 1975, to a workshop on people’s cartooning in Villa el Salvador, a sprawling Lima neighbourhood, it has been translated into English, German and Portuguese. This year a fifth edition was published in Spain.

“It’s true there is a contraction in the worldwide market for cartoons — most likely a reflection of the international crisis of the print press — but narration through drawings in sequence goes beyond the mass communication media, as it is also a means of popular education,” Acevedo says.

The crisis was in the commercial cartoon dominated by U.S. distribution syndicates and which imposed a linguistic and thematic model through chain sales to newspapers.

“It no longer has the same importance with the public as it had in the 1970s, when it was revitalized with the new blood of the underground movement,” says Acevedo. “Spain, for example, has seen more than 95 percent of the specialized publishers go out of business.”

“If you ask a Spanish editor what causes this, he will probably blame the authors and maintain that their excessive experimenting caused the readers to flee,” he says. “The cartoonists, on the other hand, blame the editors’ excessive dependency on the market, which impedes the revitalization of this species.”

“There are many related causes. In the first place, there is a lack of imagination that concerns all sectors with a role in the process, namely authors, editors and readers. Also there is the impact of television and video games, that are replacing children’s literature,” says Avecedo.

Underground comics reflected the youth rebellion in the 1960s and 70s. These were swallowed up in a tide of commercialism and they abandoned their role as alternative avenues and turned into merchandise. As such they had become subjected to the pressures of the market.

“The other alternative form, popular comics, meaning those created by generational and other social groups, such as youth groups, community or ideological groups, with a message and a specific proposal, continue to have a broad reach.”

In his report to the Iberoamerican meeting held in Extremadura, Acevedo places the origin of the popular Latin American cartoon at the time of the massacre of students in the Plaza of Three Cultures in Mexico, 1968.

“To overcome the silence of the Mexican press and television, small cartoon series appeared, badly printed and even more badly narrated, about all that was happening, and those (cartoons) that followed took on other themes – economic and social problems. These cartoons had a great impact on me and I still have a few of them,” Acevedo said.

It was after discovering the possibilities of the cartoon as a vehicle for raising consciousness that Acevedo decided to try and exploit to the fullest the graphic advantages of the medium at special workshops.

“The workshops start from the idea that anybody can make a cartoon, and we can all learn to draw the graphic schema typical of this format. The student is taught how to conceive of the story and lay out the drawing,” he said.

Several magazines emerged as a direct result of the Workshop of Popular Cartoons, organized by Acevedo in Villa el Salvador in 1975. Mimeographed by neigbourhood youths they focussed on community issues.

“When I edited the book about the Villa el Salvador experience in 1978, Peru was ruled by a rightwing military dictator, some of whose officers considered it subversive that we taught cartooning to slum dwellers,” Acevedo recalls. “They confiscated the print run and locked it up in some warehouse.”

In 1980, the Tarea association published the book in installments that it sold at cost. Some of them were seen in Spain, where the Popular Editorial house printed it in 1981.

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