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Louis A. Pérez, Spain Rodriguez. Che: A Graphic Biography; Inverna Lockpez and Dean Haspiel. Cuba: My Revolution., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 5, December 2018, Pages 1602–1603, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy349
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Extract
The Cuban Revolution has been eminently susceptible to representation by way of graphic depiction, at home and abroad, by friend and by foe: as caricatures and cartoons in single-framed panels, at times as multiple panels in comic-strip sequences appearing in newspapers and magazines, often as full-length animated feature films, and most commonly as picture books.
There is a politics to this graphic production, of course, for the aesthetics of the art form is inscribed in the efficacy of its point of view. On the matter of the Cuban Revolution, graphic arts plunge headlong—and unabashedly—into attitude and point of view. No subtlety here. All frontal and straightforward: in-your-face/pro or con/with or against/black or white. ¡Patria o muerte!
There is no mistaking the meaning of graphic production in Cuba. Book-form graphic histories of the Cuban Revolution developed early into something of a literary subgenre: brightly colored illustrated narratives—comic books, we used to call them—designed to depict the heroic deeds and the epic achievements of the Cuban people in the struggle for self-determination and national sovereignty, mostly publications intended for children of various ages, and almost always located in the juvenile section of Cuban bookstores. The chronicle of Cuba is given graphic form in the service of didactic function, a medium through which to disseminate among young Cubans the master narrative of the triumphant revolution with an unambiguous moral: Mission accomplished.
