I decided to do this because of a personal interest, and because I was totally convinced of what I had to do. The position of a professional here doe… - Arístides Esteban Hernández Guerrero

What does bother me as a Cuban and an intellectual worker is that from the United States they’re trying to tell us Cubans what to do. President Bush recently called for democracy in Cuba; but I can’t explain to myself what moral standing he has, to give democracy lessons to my country, he being a president who got to the White House after fraudulent elections.

Participation in international humor events has brought me many other influences. My work style includes a large dose of “esthetic vampirism,” in that I’ve absorbed a lot from a lot of different people. But I have a central axis, my major cartoon characters, who have been changing in their own right along with the changes in the type of humor that I happen to be doing.

The initial influences on my work are in the work that was developed in Cuba in the humor magazine Dedeté [DDT], which avoids “pamphletizing” [crude propagandizing] and looks for new forms of communication … for non-traditional esthetic solutions. That’s where my style starts out.