The Current and Missing Cuban Cartoons

On the occasion of a text published on our webpage, where we pay tribute to the Cuban idiosyncrasy present through all the Cuban cartoons, the ones entitled ´Elpidio Valdés´, ´Chuncha´, ´Cecilín y Coti´ and many other characters from those Cuban cartoons came to my mind in spite of they sometimes seem to have been kidnapped or having passed away long time ago, metaphorically speaking.

I do remember when I was a child that the happiest time of the day was at 4:20 pm and it was not because the school was closing at that time, it was due to the Cuban cartons were about to start being broadcast. The Cuban ones luckily and not the Russian ones, let alone Tom and Jerry or those ones who seemed not get alone as dogs and cats or I must better say… like cats and mice.

The one entitled Elpidio was almost always starting the Cartoon series where he was always in the forest, along with funny remarks and teachings, after that it was the one entitled Chucha and the one about rats and all the gang of noise ones accompanying them.

One used to laugh and the childhood period passed while one was looking for Cartoon characters like a dog named Cacharro on the corner, a horse named Palmiche or even any rat at the school-countryside period even though we were not all as intrepid ones as the characters and children of the one entitled ´Huerto escolar.´

At present time, the local children grow up watching the ones entitled ´Dora´, ´La princesa Sofía´, and when they are barely four years old, they know how to eat like the royal family and even counting in Spanish and in English as well as calling the map or backpack cartoon characters and yelling at the TV set with a satisfying smile that I do not sometimes understand at all.

On the other hand, I wonder where are the funny exclamations by the Cartoon character named´Chuncha´, the funny mistakes committed by the character named´Pancho´, the funny things by the character named´Eleutelia´and the rebelliousness by the cartoon character Palmiche that was a war horse and I wonder where are the soldiers which ran away from the children who were defending this motherland’s soil.

In our nation, the Cuban idiosyncrasy is getting lost since early ages and I do not still find a reason by which the Cuban cartoons were not produced anymore or the reason by which they began being created in a really not proper way and that is another issue.

We do need the Cuban laugh and sense of humor with something to things about, something to have fun with. However, we need to know that if a rat tries to destroy your garden, then you have to try until it was trapped and if you want to understand a little bit of the history that is being told to us, you need to see by yourself the way the children from the past used to try not to be seen while painting on a wall in spite of that cannot be done, later.

By Alejandro Rojas Espinosa