IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 114

"I would have liked to be born
in a country with rights"
Veronica Vega
Writer
Havana, Cuba

J

uan Carlos Briñas is a vocational cartoonist and illustrator who worked as caricaturist in the
dissident media Talk Press.

Tell me about your childhood.
I was born in San Leopoldo, a very marginal
neighborhood at Central Havana. My childhood was more or less normal until my
parents divorced. I was seven and it was
very traumatic for me and my brother. At
first we lived with my mother, but she had
no patience with us. So we went to live with
our father, who proved to be much better
prepared to deal with us. Although he played
both roles, a mother is always needed and I
felt her absence for many years.
How did drawing appear in your life?
I drew like most kids, but I discovered that it
was much more than a game for me. It became my way of expression and communication. In 1981 I saw Voltus V, an animated
popular manga for my generation, and I felt I
wanted to do something like it. I started
visiting the ICAIC animation studios and I
was lucky enough to see how the movie
Vampires in Havana was done. Then another
event turned my life around: I borrowed a
Japanese comic book, very thick, with great
stories and great dynamism. That's when I
realized I did not want to be an animator, but
a cartoonist.

Did you find a way to insert yourself into
that world from a professional perspective?
No, we were a group of teenagers empirically drawing. We helped each other, but we
didn’t have anyone who directed us and no
place to go to seek for guidance.
I know your way of life completely changed
after being recruited for military service...
It was a horrible experience. I was not the
typical boy playing baseball in the street. I
secluded myself at home to draw; that was
my world and I was trying to tell many
stories through comics. Suddenly my life
completely changed. I couldn’t do what I
liked and it was a violent break from everything I dreamed about. I could never adapt
myself to such a system where everything is
forced under duress. From the very beginning of the Previous Military Preparation I
started to flee. I was caught and sent to an
Intensive Training Center, which is a small
prison. I was sent cut grass with a machete,
but I really didn’t know how to do it; so, by
accident, I got a cut on one foot. Of course, I
was not the only misfit. It is not a secret that
young people used to cause injuries to themselves in order to get away from the military.
In the hospital, I met one who had intentionally shot himself at the metatarsal.

114