Art as resistance

Los Angeles-based artist and satirist Eduardo Lopez, known as cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, continues to garner attention for his gripping political cartoons which demand equality and justice for immigrants, Latinos, and so-called minority communities.

A son of Mexican immigrants, Alcaraz has drawn editorial cartoons for L.A. Weekly since 1992. He is the creator of the nationally syndicated daily political comic strip La Cucaracha, which appears in the Chicago Sun-Times.

His work has received several awards, including the Southern California Journalism Award and the Rockefeller New Media Fellowship.

Alcaraz illustrated a book by Ilan Stavans titled Latino USA: A Cartoon History. A published collection of his own work is titled Migra Mouse: Political Cartoons on Immigration.

In an interview in La Prensa San Diego, he noted the distress he felt in seeing the way his parents were mistreated and the way the police would follow them around because they were poor.

Alcaraz's frustration was also fueled by the fact that his high school did not make a conscious effort to work hard in graduating students of color, an issue that hits close to home at NEIU. In college, he drew cartoons to help raise money for Cesar Chavez to come speak on campus.

Alcaraz wrote an essay called Generation Mex in which he explains that he travels between two very different cultures and ends up splitting the difference. He adds that we dismiss the mainstream just as much as we offend our elders.

His thought-provoking cartoons have sparked hate letters, even from other Latinos. He is criticized for his use of the much-loathed cockroach to represent Hispanics but counters by saying that these are simply "irony deficient" Latinos.

He is not afraid to tackle Chicano stereotypes head-on. Chicano yuppies, whom he dubs "Chuppies," took issue with his cartoon "How to Spot a Mexican Dad" because it did not depict a Mexican dad as an attorney. Alcaraz says that he doesn't see the average Chicano in those positions.

One could ask why they do not also criticize the word "Hispanic," which Alcaraz describes as being a phony Eurocentric label created by the Nixon administration, intended to lump all Latinos into one mushy ball of Wonder Bread dough.

The cartoon "Army of Juan" draws attention to the eager recruitment of Latinos into the United States military. The intention of his political cartoons is to bring awareness to our culture in a sharp and humorous way.

Lalo Alcaraz also helped create and edit POCHO Magazine. He co-wrote The Mex Files, which appeared as a stage production at California State University in Northridge. It is a satire about today's Chicano in mainstream America.

His work is an example of the endless ways one can resist, through art, the growing hostility against those who are now the largest minority in the United States.