Artemisa

Nuez's fruitful and extensive work was characterized by his permanent commitment to just causes and his ability to reflect, with fine humor and a singular critical sense, the neuralgic problems and core milestones of our time. His caricatures, of sharp political edge, dedicated, among many other topics, to the fight against Batista's tyranny, and to the historical conflict between Cuba and the United States which are exponents of this. -During the October crisis in 1962, he drew them from the same trenches as militiaman- as well as the wars of Angola and Vietnam. 

He made more than a thousand cartoons in favor of the struggle of the Vietnamese people and was even, at some point, a kind of war correspondent. He also referred to the events of Mariel, the Nicaraguan Revolution and came to collaborate with the Sandinista Gazette, before the triumph in 1979, the campaign against bureaucracy, the problem of foreign debt, nuclear war, the “special period” or, more recently, the cause of the 5 Cuban patriots unjustly imprisoned in the United States and recently liberated. 

It is not possible to imagine a stage of the Cuban Revolution in which Nuez has not been present, in one way or another; with his imaginative cartoons, discovering the essence of certain political situations or revealing unique features of the Cuban identity. He did so from his famous “El Loquito” character and those who came later from his magic hand, such as, for example, Don Cizaño, who represented the fight against the reactionary press in the germinal years of the Revolution; or Mogollón, born in the heat of popular campaigns against laziness. His classic drawing “El Barbudo” (a bearded man with a gun in hand) which today is associated everywhere with revolutionary Cuba, was designed by Nuez as a counter-figure of Liborio, the peasant bent by Uncle Sam, a symbol of the neocolonial Republic, and that Commander Fidel Castro himself mentioned in a memorable speech a May Day in front of a million Cubans in the Revolution Square. Nuez told me about “El Barbudo” in the aforementioned interview: 

This character was born in 59, as a response to Liborio, a classic character, who represented the people of Cuba, but those who were very passive, endured everything, did not own themselves, or the country, anything, symbolized the people that someone ruled. “El Loquito” had already died shortly after the triumph of the Revolution. It would still play a role in the first moments, in the great struggles between the revolutionary and reactionary press; but then, there was no need to speak in code, it was not logical to do it, things could be said differently, “The Loquito” was a bit inoperative, it only occasionally came out. -I use “El Loquito” in the revolutionary stage just for a while, and then I substitute him by “El Barbudo”; I have used the latter since then until today. When I want to represent the Cuban people, I do it with this bearded man, who has a yarey (small Cuban palm) hat, and a militia uniform, because he is no longer like Liborio, a poor and helpless peasant; in any case he is an armed peasant, not only with the machete, but also with the rifle, as the situation comes-.