Editorial cartooning International

Daryl Cagle reports on his trip to Columbia

Skip to comments

Alan Gardner February 25, 2010 1 minute 1 comment

The ever traveling Daryl Cagle returned recently from a trip to Columbia to attend a conference of cartoonists.

I gave lectures at colleges, to the public and to groups of journalists in Bogota, Medell’in and Cartagena. I was impressed with the audiences; they understood everything and laughed at all the same things an American audience would laugh at. (Here’s a nice Colombian interview of me with a video in English.) There were lots of questions about censorship and about where cartoonists “draw the line” on topics they won’t touch. I encouraged everyone to think of editorial cartoons as a barometer of freedom. In many countries, cartoonists never draw their leaders; cartoonists in Venezuela aren’t allowed to draw Hugo Chavez; cartoonists in Cuba never draw Fidel Castro. In Colombia the cartoonists ridicule their president Uribe every day and their lack of respect for their president speaks well of healthy press freedoms in Colombia.

Cartoons are important in Colombia and it is great to see the respect that cartoons command and to see how they have an important spot in so many newspapers and magazines; even so, Colombian cartoonists complain about many of the same business problems that plague American cartoonists. Business is bad for newspapers and cartoonists are poorly paid.

>