Presidents' Day's Sneak Peek

Keeping it clean this week:

 A propos of nothing, one thing among many that stood out during our recent vacation trip to Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, was the city flag of Cuzco. We saw it flying there and at the town square of Machu Picchu Pueblo, and repeated on scarves, punchus, hats, and so forth sold in the various markets.

Somebody in our travel group asked our tour guide whether the city of Cuzco had somehow infringed on the LGBTQ community's copyright or trademark on the rainbow pride flag; but there are clear differences between the two, starting with the Inca symbol at the center of Cuzco's flag.

Cuzco's flag also has seven stripes instead of the pride flag's six. Remember the mnemonic "Roy G. Biv" for remembering the colors of the spectrum? Cuzco's flag sports red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet stripes.

It's also much older than the flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978. One of the cathedrals in Cuzco (where, unfortunately, photography is not allowed) contains a 17th-Century painting commemorating a devastating earthquake that hit Cuzco in 1650. Many Spanish colonial buildings had collapsed and burned, while ancient Inca buildings and walls withstood the 7.5-Richter scale quake.

To represent the community's determination to rebuild, the painting shows a female figure carrying a rainbow banner, evoking the rainbow Noah reportedly saw as God's promise never again to destroy the earth with a flood. 

Well, there was another strong earthquake there in 1950, but the 17th Century painter and the city fathers who chose the rainbow for their civic flag couldn't possibly have foreseen that.

Now, I did happen to see a guy, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 years old, apparently one of the groundskeepers at Ollantaytambo, an Inca temple site in the Urubamba / Sacred Valley of the Incas, wearing a weather-beaten cap with an up-to-date LGBTQ+ pride flag on it — the flag with the transgender and POC chevrons on the hoist side.

Was he "family"? Maybe. Maybe not. Don't know. Didn't ask.

This Week's Sneak Peek, and Update

First of all, here's a snippet from this week's upcoming cartoon:

Secondly, thank you to reader Bob Harris for uncovering the background information of caricaturist Alberto Barreto, whose rendition of Fighting Bob LaFollette headlined my post here on Saturday.

The Washington (DC) Times Herald devoted an entire page to wunderkind Barreto on Sunday, March 25, 1923:

"Peruvian Boy Artist Clever As Caricaturist" in Washington Times-Herald, March 25, 1923

According to the article by Victor Flambeau (caricatured to the right of Thomas Edison above), Barreto had already achieved "very remarkable success in his native city, where he was already recognized as a leading illustrator," before coming to New York in 1917 at the age of 18. He apparently came to the attention of the Times-Herald when he exhibited a collection of his political caricatures in D.C. in 1922.

"I had always been very much interested in art since I was a kid," Barreto told Flambeau, "and I was reading many books in artistic anatomy, color, perspective, and so forth." He took a single art class with Julio Malaga Grenet, the Peruvian cartoonist who was Director of Art at the weekly magazine Caras y Caretas in Buenos Aires. His cartoons were published in La Prensa of Lima even though he thought his work wasn't yet fit for publication.

Photo of Alberto Barreto at work, with his sister, in Washington Times-Herald, March 25, 1923

His mother and sister followed him to New York in 1919 after the death of his father. He had by then set up his own art school.

Barreto was enthusiastic about life in the U.S. according to the Times-Herald article. "All my success, I believe, has been due to the great artistic spirit and kindness of the Washington people. It makes me feel very happy, the great understanding that exists among people here.... 

"I also feel very much obliged to the Times-Herald and other newspapers that have contributed so much to my success by the wonderful way they have criticized my work. Art critics might say, 'They are so crude,' but that has not been the case. They have been wonderfully nice to me."

It will take some further digging to find out whatever became of him. Was he the Alfredo Barreto who managed the Washington Herald Bridge League in 1934? Was he the Alfredo Barreto who launched Neighbors, a "Magazine of the Americas," at a party attended by several Latin American diplomats in D.C., in 1937?