Juan Acevedo (cartoonist)

Juan Demetrio Acevedo Fernández de Paredes (Lima, November 26, 1949) is a Peruvian cartoonist, famous for his character "El Cuy".

Biography

Since 1969, he has created comic strips, caricatures and graphic humor vignettes, which have been published by the main magazines and newspapers in Peru: Caretas, Oiga, La Crónica, Expreso, Última Hora, Correo, EL Comercio, Marka, Vaca Sagrada, Monos y Monadas, Collera, La Calle, EL Diario de Marka, El Observador, El Búho, El Idiota Ilustrado, EL Zorro de Abajo, La Razón, ¡NO¡ - supplement to SI magazine -, El Mundo, Somos, - magazine of the newspaper El Comercio-. Some of those series later gave rise to books.

In the 70s, the alternative, ideological, left-wing comics expanded. Juan Acevedo is one of the captains of this course, but with one difference, if another classmate makes comics, Juan also teaches how to make them.

He was a professor of art history at the universities where he had studied (1971-72). He curator at the UNMSM Museum of Art and History (1972-73) and Director of the Ayacucho Regional School of Fine Arts (1974-75).

In 1978, Juan Acevedo published "To make comics", a book reissued and translated numerous times, and the first of its kind written in Spanish; Libro - Bandera, Libro - Insignia, to which hundreds of popular comics workshops in Latin America have climbed, thousands and thousands of children, students, residents of the slums, taken by it on a trip towards the conquest of the territory of the image and the word. In person, Juan has led a dozen workshops and organizes popular comic strip networks in Latin America.

In November 1979, he published the first episode of El Cuy on La Calle. The "Guinea Pig" It is one more example of his spontaneous ingenuity and expansive humor (his character of him has all the international recognition, the Cuy was recently studied at the University of Tempe, Arizona). But not only does man live from Cuy, Juan Acevedo has engendered comic strips as varied as they are memorable, recognized around the world as jewels of what some call the ninth art.

In 1997 he was named honorary professor at the University of Alcalá, an institution that hopes to consecrate the "Quevedo" prize, for those dedicated to graphic humor. They have previously been honorary professors, the Argentines Quino and Fontanarosa, among others.

Starting in September 2008, Acevedo resurrected the "Cuy", his most iconic character. Since then he has published it as a daily strip on the blog El Diario del Cuy, where a new generation of readers is rediscovering an endearing character whose books had disappeared from circulation since the 1990s.

He currently publishes political humor strips in the Diario Peru21 on Fridays in the "El Otorongo" and on Saturdays the famous strip of him & # 34; Love Story & # 34; a parody of shadow plays on national politics.

Legacy and influence

In Bolivia, the educational reform program chose one of his comics titled Tupac Amaru as reading material for thousands of children in all primary schools. There they go for the fourth edition, while in Peru, his native country, the Ministry of Education dismissed that same project when it was presented at its due opportunity. Finally, in an article resulting from the dialogue between Hélard Fuentes and Juan Acevedo, the Arequipa historian stated the following: "Juan Acevedo is the living reflection of perseverance, understanding, social expression, and the balance that we perceive in the figures patiently configured in the idyllic plane of the different aspects of daily life, project an artist who speaks to us about the human, about the encounter with ourselves, about being local without opposing the universal. An artist who uses traditional and digital media in his trade and for this reason calls himself “tradigital”.

List of comics

1.- To make comics (1978) 2.- Paco Yunque (1979) 3.- Hello Cuy! (1981) 4.- Adventures of the Guinea Pig (1982) 5.- City of Kings (1983) 6.- Tupac Amaru (1985) 7.- Luchin Gonzalez (1988) 8.- Tweety (1989) 9.- Adventures of the Guinea Pig - Cuban Edition (1990) 10.- Cuy in München (1990) 11.- The Convention on the Rights of Women (1995) 12.- The History of Latin America from Los Niños (1995) 13.- Anyone's Children (1997) 14.- Poor Devil and Other Stories (1991) 15.- Children first (2005) 16.- El Diario del Cuy (virtual publication, 2008) 17.- The Spider No (2009) 18.- El Cuy: All his adventures (2009) 19.- The Guinea Pig Throws (2011)