CARACAS.- In Spider-Man in Superman They save the day. There is no happy ending in the comics with which illustrator Lucas García Pars gives voice to victims of human rights violations in Venezuela.
His vignettes, with high contrasts between light and shadow, are stark: a gigantic military boot threatens to crush protesters in the 2017 protests against dictator Nicols Maduro; Fishermen mistaken for guerrillas are pierced by bullets fired by soldiers and police in the El Amparo massacre, which occurred more than 35 years ago in a small town on the border with Colombia; A man is executed by an officer wearing a skull mask in a poor neighborhood.
García Parés’ comics were born in collaboration with Human Rights organizations such as the Venezuelan Program for Education-Action in Human Rights (Provea) due to the need for a language, an iconography, that was closer to the people, he told AFP. 50-year-old artist, in the small studio he has in his apartment in Caracas.
“If you had told me 10 years ago that this was the genre with which we were going to deal with central issues of what is happening in the country, I would not have believed it,” he confesses.
Venezuela has a long tradition in caricature, with great exponents of political humor in Latin America such as the late Pedro León Zapata (1829-2016) or Rayma, but comics have been a little explored territory.
“There were no superhero comics or great graphic fiction novels made here,” García Parés reviews.
Maduro, who will seek reelection next year, faces serious accusations of Human Rights violations and as a result of the repression against the 2017 demonstrations, with more than a hundred dead, the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation that is still ongoing. course.
“A good experience”
How do we explain what is happening to these young people who are facing the protests in a way that is simpler, closer? was the question that, according to Marino Alvarado, director of Provea, drove the series. Comics of the rebellion in 2017.
The aim was to overcome a suffocating climate of censorship that the press union denounced with these free, although not massively distributed, comic strips.
Its impact led to new collaborations between Provea and García Parés in the following years: Path to justice summarizes the investigation reports of the ICC prosecutors and What is told is not forgotten He brings emblematic testimonies of victims to the pages of comics in a book of the same name.
“It has given us a good experience,” Alvarado told AFP.
The protectionpublished this year, recalls the massacre of 14 fishermen on October 29, 1988. The two only survivors, even today, ask for justice in a case in which there is not a single detainee.
García Parés has also collaborated with other Human Rights organizations such as Reacin (Network of Activism and Research for Coexistence), as well as with information websites; and he has just published his own book: The topic. A graphic memory on Human Rights.
“Empath”
García Pars remembers that when he temporarily migrated to Spain in 2012, in the midst of the massive exodus due to the Venezuelan crisis, he gave away all the books in his library, except for the comics that he had treasured since his adolescence.
“It’s a super interesting medium… I wrote and now I don’t write anymore, because I’ve realized that what I like is making comics,” explains this illustrator, whose first contacts with Human Rights organizations occurred as a designer or communication advisor
As he worked with these groups, his perception of Human Rights evolved.
“You become more sympathetic towards the other… really, what happens to the other begins to hurt you,” he narrates, hoping that his readers experience that same metamorphosis. “People tend to see that (the issue of Human Rights) is a problem that happens somewhere else and happens to other people and really what is happening to others is happening to you.”
FUENTE: AFP
