A reminder that Lalo Alcaraz will be presented with The Herblock Prize tonight at 7:00 Eastern time.
It was announced last month that Lalo had won the Prize.
Michael Cavna, at The Washington Post, has an article about Alcaraz today.
Lalo Alcaraz was 13 when his father, a landscaper and plant nursery worker in the San Diego area, was killed in a Tijuana car accident. As the child of non-English-speaking immigrants, young Lalo was soon calling his father’s clients to let them know. Instead of expressing sympathy, though, one customer coldly asked him for the phone number of a replacement gardener.
Stunned, Alcaraz yelled, “That’s my dad!” before slamming down the phone with rage. The sting of the exchange was formative — a pain that would affect his career path.
“That made me a good, pissed-off political cartoonist,” Alcaraz says by phone now, speaking from the Los Angeles area. “That’s what I draw about: My dad was being treated like just a machine, not even a human.”