Slide Show: Venezuelan Cartoonist Pedro León Zapata
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Gomez = Chávez
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Juan Vicente Gómez was a Venezuelan dictator for 27 years, from 1908 to 1935. On July 24, 2007, he would have been 150 years old. With this cartoon, Zapata equates Gómez’s government with Chávez’s military government.
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Poverty in a Rich Country
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With this cartoon Zapata contrasts the high price of crude oil around the world with the poverty suffered by most Venezuelans.
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A Submitted Society
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This cartoon, published in October 2000, provoked Hugo Chávez’s ire. Via TV, Chávez asked Zapata: “How much money did you get for this?" Zapata's cartoon uses a military expression—“firme y a discreción”—and refers to Chávez’s intention to create a military government, and a society that submitted to its authority.
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Nostalgia?
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In 2007, after eight years of Chávez’s rule, student protests increased when the Government closed the RCTV, an important TV channel. Chávez has often accused the opposition of nostalgia for past regimes, but Zapata points out that the students were too young to remember any regime but the current one.
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Sapos
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Chávez compiled the names of everyone who signed a 2004 referendum asking for his recall. Based on this list, the government fired thousands of people. Because Congressman Luis Tascón (from Chávez´s Party) spread the list via internet, it became known as Tascon’s list. According to Zapata, this cartoon represents Chávez’s party members as toads with epaulets and military boots. In Venezuela, sapo (toad) is a pejorative term for informants or tattlers.
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From Here to Eternity
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Behind the ballot box and the red ballot (the color of Chávez’s party) is the phrase “'From Here to Eternity,'” illustrating Chávez’s eagerness to change the constitution so he can maintain power indefinitely.
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Click on images to enlarge. Copyright 2011 Pedro León Zapata (all rights reserved)
Pedro León Zapata isn’t afraid to pick fights —even if his opponent is Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s authoritarian President. The Caracas-based artist, winner of the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas, has been a regular contributor to the popular Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional for nearly 50 years through his column, “Zapatazos.”
Interviewed by Elizabeth Farnsworth on PBS in 2002, he said, “How can you explain what is happening in Venezuela if even we Venezuelans can’t understand it? What is happening in Venezuela doesn’t have a logical explanation… In astronomical terms, El Comandante Chávez is a black hole… For me, cartoons are the perfect form for expressing fully all that happens to me inside as a consequence of what is going on outside.” Farnsworth describes Zapata as “a man with a strong appreciation for black humor and the absurd.”
Photo courtesy of Pedro León Zapata
In the ’40s, Zapata moved to Mexico to study with the muralists Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. Over the many years since his return to Venezuela, he has become a nationally known political gadfly and unique artist—painter, muralist, illustrator, playwright, radio host, actor, and musician—revered for both his humor and his implacable challenge to Chávez.
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In 2000 there was a confrontation with the Venezuelan leader, who publicly challenged Zapata about these cartoons, asking whether he had been bribed to publish them. Zapata answered the President with another question: “Mr. Chávez, did you accept money to refer to my cartoons, thus inducing so many people to rush out and buy the newspaper?”
Zapata is featured on Chávez’s list of “counter-revolutionaries”— a collection of artists, journalists and other “public enemies” the President recommends go into self-imposed exile.
Read an interview with Pedro León Zapata and other persecuted cartoonists in Sampsonia Way.
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