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Vampires, Lice and a Dose of History: Juan Padrón and Cuban Animation

John A. Lent relates the new atmosphere of Cuba's still thriving animation community through the eyes of Juan Padr, one of the island nation's leading animation forces.

Juan Padrón, one of Cuba's top talents. © John A. Lent.

Juan Padrón, one of Cuba's top talents. © John A. Lent.

Cuba's premier animator Juan Padrón was near the end of a tour he was giving a couple of us of the animation facilities of Instituto Cubano del Arte y Industria Cinematograficos (ICAIC). "And here are our two cameras," he said, "This one is from 1928." Almost off-handedly he explained it was recovered from an American plane that crashed in Cuba.

Forced Ingenuity

That the 1928 camera is still used attests to the Cuban's ability to cope under very difficult situations -- to make do through ingenious improvisation with whatever is at hand. This skill has been sharpened during the more than 40-year embargo imposed by the United States, heightened since 1990 when the collapse of the Soviet Union and its bloc further stranded Cuba economically. The latter economic crisis is called Período Especial.

"Most of these are museum pieces," Padrón proudly stated, but "Cuba is one of the best places to repair cameras. Many parts of the 1928 camera were created here." Pointing to the second camera, obtained from Mexico in 1995-96 in exchange for producing some of that country's films, the affable animator said, "Usually it takes an engineer to reassemble a camera like this, but Cubans love doing this -- putting difficult stuff together to defeat imperialism."

Thumbing their nose at imperialism: The rebuilt 1928 camera that is still used today. © John A. Lent.

Thumbing their nose at imperialism: The rebuilt 1928 camera that is still used today. © John A. Lent.

Padrón elaborated on the Cuban's resourcefulness: "For example, we go to Panama, rent a stereotype, bring it here, see how it works, take it back and then make our own. We have to live this way; that's why you see 1940s' and 1950s' American cars running everywhere."

A Long History

Animation, like all aspects of Cuban culture and the arts, had a low priority in the financially-strapped Cuba of the 1990s, resulting in the virtual dismantling of the television animation department (ICRT Cartoon Aniha) and the drying up of much of the state money allocated to ICAIC. Actually, Cuba had four studios simultaneously at an earlier time, the other two being those of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Education.

Before the Revolution in 1959, there were still other studios, for animation in Cuba goes back to at least 1937, when Manuel Alonso, with help from Nico Lürsen and Lucio Carranza, converted his comic strip, "Napoleón, el Faraón de los Sinsabores," into a two-minute, 35 mm, black and white cartoon. Others such as Leopoldo Roseñada and Lucio Fontanillas also spent their savings doing animated shorts.

In the 1940s, Luis Castillo Barzaga produced Coctel Musical (1946) and El Jibaro y el Cerdito (1947), while César Cruz Barrios established the animation firm, Productora Nacional de Películas de Santiago de Cuba. From Cruz Barrios' studio came three experimental short films (Restituto el Detective, El Gato con Botas, and El Tesoro de Todos) and E1 Hijo de la Ciencia (1947), the first animated cartoon entirely produced in Cuba. But, all of these projects were doomed because of low fees paid by distributors who used cartoons as movie theater fillers.

At work at the ICAIC. © John A. Lent.

At work at the ICAIC. © John A. Lent.

After Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, animation settled mainly in ICRT's animation department and in ICAIC. ICRT's animation department was the largest with 120 staff members in the early 1970s. Between 1970 and 1990, about 900 separate titles were produced, varying from 40 seconds to an hour. Half of these were in black and white and, according to David Jaime Veitia, who has been with ICRT animation for decades, these were shelved when color television was introduced in 1977-78. Topics often included children's songs, good manners, military and other patriotic aspects, literature, science, and history, a popular example of the latter being Papobo, a story done with puppets of an African slave child in Cuba during colonial times.

The End of an Era?

Veitia said that before Fidel's Revolution, United States animation promoting a "North American way of life of neocolonialism, of the U.S. being superior to Latin Americans, blacks and Indians" was prevalent in Cuba. After the Revolution, animators worked within the Revolution, providing songs for Cuban children, showing sites of the island nation, and borrowing from Cuban literature. Veitia said previously, for children to understand José Martí's literary works, they had to be about eight years old, but animation made the pieces understandable to four and five-year olds. "In the 1970s, Cuban children had a chance to see themselves on television, with their songs, habits, ideologies, language," he said; "From 1970-90, we were able to produce a national product and praise Cuban values." Luis Castillo, who started in animation in 1945 and was director of ICAIC Animación at one time, felt the animation helped form an entire generation of children.

Much of the animation was tied to the Revolution's ideology and goals. For example, the popular puppet cartoon Esceptíco (Skepticals) poked fun at those skeptical about Cuba's ability to have a successful harvest early in the Revolution. Puppets were often used, stemming from a special puppet department established in 1969.

According to Padrón, during Período Especial, television stopped doing animation and, "The good ones came to ICAIC; it broke the tradition of TV animation." Although a skeletal staff of 30 is kept on, they have little to do, except for an isolated project from time to time.

Veitia said the problems today are: "Costs are very high, and we have no budget to operate animation. Also we used cinematographic technology and this has been replaced by computers and video. Cuban television needs $30,000 for new equipment, but does not have it." He and Castillo fear that what they fought for from the 1970s to 1990s -- to create cartoons with Cuban educational and entertaining content to replace those of North America -- was for naught. Veitia explained, "The North American cartoons are back, and they will affect children of this generation."

The comic book Aventuras de Elpidio Valdés published in 1985. © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC.

The comic book Aventuras de Elpidio Valdés published in 1985. © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC.

Diverse Talent and Product

ICAIC was started within three months of the triumph of the Revolution, and from its origins was directed to fighting ignorance and underdevelopment and exploiting the country's rich culture. Animation production started before the first year ended, the first short being La Prensa Seria (1960) by Jesús de Armas. Others followed in the next few years -- works by de Armas, Modesto García, Harry Reade and others, often experimental with an adult audience in mind.

In 1972, ICAIC, following the conclusions of the Primer Congreso de Educación y Cultura the previous year, paid closer attention to children, dividing them into two age groups -- 2-7 and 8-14 year-olds. For the first group, realistic works with a simpler cinematographic language were called for, resulting in El Pájaro Prieto (1976) and El Cocuyo Ciego (1979) by Tulio Raggi and Feucha (1978) by Mario Rivas. The older group was to have cartoons with a more articulate structure, more dependent upon words.

A young comic strip and gag cartoon artist, Juan Padrón, provided fare for these youngsters with his already popular character Elpidio Valdés, which first appeared in the weekly magazine Pionero, August 8, 1970. Elpidio Valdés revisits Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain with historical precision and with what former ICAIC Animación director (1970-84) Manolo Perez calls Cuban-style humor.

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Photocopy of the feature animation film Elpidio Valdés Contra Dolar y Cañon (Elpidio Valdés Against Dollars and Cannons). © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC. The poster for the short film Elpidio Valdés Contra la Policia de Nueva York (Elpidio Valdés Against the New York Police). © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC.

The first of these were the shorts Una Aventura de Elpidio Valdés and Elpidio Valdés Contra el Tren Militar (1974). By the mid-1970s, Padrón as a director was responsible for a number of titles, including the first feature length animated film Elpidio Valdés (1979), and its sequels, Elpidio Valdés Contra Dólar y Cañón (1983) and Elpidio Valdés Contra el Águilar y el León (1996).

Padrón had just turned sixteen in 1963 when he was offered a job on the prestigious periodical Mella. There, in the company of some of Cuba's great cartoonists, he drew cartoons for "El Hueco" (The Hole) page, until he was drafted into the military, where he did a series for Mella on military life, "Reclutas SM0" (Military Recruits). Padrón drew for an assortment of newspapers and magazines, such as E1 Sable, La Chicarra, Pionero, Dedeté, and all four periodicals of the newly-established Ediciones en Colores publishing house (1965-68). Among his works on the latter were the strips "Las Aventuras de Kashibashi" (a kid-faced samurai) and "Barzum," an extraterrestrial. He became known as a cartoonist of black humor with his series Verdugo (Hangman) and Vampiros (Vampires); his animal series Piojos (Lice) and Zoo-ilógico (Zoological) also gained him recognition. He quit doing print cartoons in 1989, concentrating all his efforts on animation.

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Examples of Juan Padrón's Dedete cartoons, created during the 1970s. © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC.

Besides the Elpidio series, Padrón's animation credits are extensive, encompassing more than 70 works, such as the six-part television series Más se Perdió la Guerra (More Was Lost in the War), Filminuto (more than 50 sets of six or seven vignettes since 1980), and Quinoscopio, a series named for his friend, Argentine cartoonist Quino.

lentcuba10.gif From Filminuto #1, the first short film of the Filminuto series, which is comprised of 53 films of several vignettes each. © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC. lentcuba11.gif Photocopy of ¡Vampiros en La Habana! (Vampires in Havana!), a short film made in 1985. © Estudios de Animacion ICAIC.

Padrón's Precision

In 2001, he was adding the finishing touches to a new version of Vampiros, 82 minutes in length set in World War II Cuba. As Padrón described it:

"Everything is in this film, U.S. bombers, Hemingway, Batista's car, a Russian spy who comes to Cuba in an Italian submarine, Nazis, Mussolini, a mad scientist, Hitler. In one sequence, Mussolini says he knows a Cuban song and begins to sing it. Hitler joins in as the Cubans watch nervously. They too start to sing. It's crazy."

Padrón proudly shows how models were made of everything -- Batista 's car, a quay where the Nazis landed and the submarine. "We talked to the Italian Navy through the Internet to see how the sub should look," he said. The same attention to minutiae characterizes all of Padrón's work; if he had not chosen to become a cartoonist/animator, he could have functioned equally well as a researcher.

In a February 14, 2000 interview, he talked about what goes into making a Vampiros or an Elpidio Valdés' story:

"I gather old photos of the city, lot of information from Life and other magazines of the 1940s. I have a personal file on the Independence War. Sometimes I have to get other people to track down research for me. Elpidio is humorous. But, I did a lot of work in having the military costumes, guns, etc. correct so it all would teach history accurately. That's the dialectic part. I hired a water colorist to get the backgrounds right. I read on topics like the proper way to lead a gun. I read books by people who fought on both the Spanish and Cuban sides -- their memoirs. These were old 1920s' books. They talked about being hungry, about the body lice they had; it was good to have an idea of the big picture of what it was like then. At the same time, I was making sure the audience could have fun."

On another occasion, while serving together on the jury of the international cartoon biennial in San Antonio de los Baños (April 1, 2001), he gave me a gesture-filled mini-lecture on the resistance activities of people in this town during the Independence War: "People cut up the metal grilles over their windows and used the pieces as bullets. They cut holes inside the row houses so they could go a whole block without going outside where the Spaniards were." He reiterated he reads a lot of history, especially diaries, as his character is history-based.

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Obviously Padrón is a hands-on director; in fact, his hands are on everything. By his own admission, he is heavily involved in the work:

"I do 90 percent of the layout; sometimes I do voices, but most voices are by Frank Gonzalez and Manuel Marin. Sometimes I even make accompanying sound effects for the films. I do a bit of everything. I have a crew now at ICAIC. A storyboard is created and the crew and I look at it to find the weak spots. The ideas for the stories are mine. With Elpidio, some people suggest we include explosives, flashing lights, special effects. I tell them 'No, that is not my style.' The same with color; my lines are black and white."

Padrón keeps contemporary Revolution ideology out of Elpidio Valdés because the setting is not appropriate. "I can't have Elpidio shouting 'Long live Fidel!' 'Long live Cuba!' is the ideology of Elpidio," he said. The Independence War period is important to be animated, Padrón explained, because it was the "first time we could be called Cubans." Children identify with the character; they want to be Elpidio Valdés when they play games reminiscent of cowboys and Indians. Padrón said his next big project is to fashion a story of Elpidio Valdés undercover, running from Spanish spies. It will involve other colonies and Elpidio will go to the Philippines and Puerto Rico before returning to Cuba.

A Growing Future

Padrón has seen ICAIC Animación weather the bad times of the 1990s, changing from a state-financed enterprise to one that has depended in large part on foreign contracts with Canada, Mexico and France, but mostly with Spain. Spain is ICAIC's most frequent client for the obvious reason that the two countries share a common language and similar cultures. Padrón said, "We can communicate quickly. The Spanish prefer to come here and pay more than they would in Asia or Turkey because of this. But, as we do this work for Spanish television, we can't do enough Cuban films." In 2001, 70 percent of ICAIC's animation production was for overseas clients, the other 30 percent for domestic cartoons. Actually the figures Padrón provided gives a much lower percentage to local work: 130-140 minutes yearly for Spanish animation, 30-40 minutes for Cuban. One year, only 12 minutes of Cuban animation was made. The overall production average is 160 minutes annually, which includes the one local feature-length animation ICAIC produces every four or five years.

Juan Padrón at work today. © John A. Lent.

Juan Padrón at work today. © John A. Lent.

In the next couple years, the proportion should be reversed, according to Padrón, as ICAIC Animación moves into a larger building, increases its staff from 75 to 100 and then 200 after 2002, and adds a second course to its training scheme. Very few trained animators is one of the problems Padrón pinpointed, stating the need for a school to teach the subject. Another is the shortage of good stories which, Padrón said, results from writers preferring to write for radio, television or comic strips.

For the time being, ICAIC scrounges for whatever money it can get, by producing other countries' animation or offering location shooting possibilities. As Padrón said, "If the Italian filmmakers want a tropical scene with black people and coconut trees, ICAIC provides it."

Dr. John A. Lent is founding editor of the International Journal of Comic Art. He has authored or edited 55 books, a number of which have dealt with comic art. His most recent book is Animation in Asia and the Pacific (2001, John Libbey). This article is based on interviews conducted in Cuba in 1991, 1998, 2000, 2001, with Juan Padrón, Luis Castillo, David Jaime Veitia, Manolo Perez and others.

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