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The Line of Fire

Last week I got back from “The Line of Fire” conference in Mexico City, an editorial cartooning event put on by CartónClub. We’re hoping this will be the first of many annual conferences that CartónClub will be hosting. I’d like to see them succeed – we need more events like this around the world.

I was the only USA cartoonist in the La Linea de Fuego show. A bullet passed through each cartoon about press freedom. Violence against journalists is a big problem in Mexico.

Cagle Cartoons was a co-sponsor of the event and there was a great delegation of Cagle Cartoonists there, including me, Mike Keefe, Monte Wolverton, Gary McCoy, Rick McKee, David Fitzsimmons, Emad Hajjaj, Osama Hajjaj, Arcadio Esquivel, Rayma Suprani and Nerilicon. My buddy, Bizarro cartoonist Dan Piraro also came. CartónClub’s founder, Angel Boligan and their president, Dario Castillejos are Cagle Cartoonists too.

The event was also co-sponsored by Cartooning for Peace (CFP), which works in Mexico and Canada under the terms of their grant from the EU that funds the organization (notably, the grant excludes the USA). CFP does programs about editorial cartoons in schools and prisons around the world and trains participating cartoonists in how to give these presentations in workshops; they pay an honorarium to the participating cartoonists to keep them going, and giving more lectures. It is a nice program, and the days in Mexico City were filled with these training workshops that didn’t involve much of our Cagle Cartoons delegation, so we spent a lot of time as tourists.

I got the chance to talk to representatives of the EU who support Cartooning for Peace at the conference; it was great to hear how they appreciate our art form – I can’t imagine any editorial cartooning programs like these happening through the United States government.

There was a nice exhibition at the El Universal newspaper lobby called “La Linea de Fuego” (The Line of Fire) where a bullet passed through every cartoon, creating some havoc that had something to do with press freedom. That’s my Statue of Liberty entry in the exhibition above. We had panels and discussions. It was all good.

Here are a couple of photos from our trip. Thanks again to CartónClub and to everyone involved!

Here is a gaggle of cartoonists at the CartónClub conference!

Here’s another group pix with even more cartoonists, at the La Linea de Fuego exhibition …

Want to see more pix? Take a look at my new Instagram feed @daryl.cagle  I’m just starting Instagram and I don’t know what I’m doing there yet! You can also see more on my Facebook page.

Our Cagle Cartoonist David Fitzsimmons wrote a nice piece about the trip here.