Viva Obama Artist Gets the Academic Treatment

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The new issue of Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies has arrived in the Utne Reader library, and the work of award-winning editorial cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz graces the cover. Inside, Alcaraz, who is the creator of the syndicated comic strip La Cucaracha, talks about his efforts to create images of Obama that would resonate with the Hispanic community during the 2008 campaign:

I was angered by the mainstream/right-wing media’s attempt to again divide the brown and black communities by spreading the racist talking point: “Latinos will NOT vote for a black man. …Obama’s national field director Cuauhtemoc Figueroa, who visited forty-two states during the 2008 campaign, reported that he would inevitably find a … Viva Obama poster in even the most remote Midwestern towns, hanging in the mercado window or an activist’s living room. Viva Obama was a grassroots runaway hit. Voters wanted it. Campaign workers distributed it far and wide. Youths would snap cellphone photos of it at my signing events and email the photos to their friends.

Source:Aztlán

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