Chicano artist fights COVID misinformation and vaccine fears

Those who played the beloved Mexican card game Lottery will recognize the characters in an illustration created by political cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz promoting COVID-19 vaccination.

Alcaraz uses the Lottery characters El Borracho, El Mundo and El M̼sico Рor a drunkard, a musician and a man holding up a globe Рto get messages across about the benefits of getting the vaccine. Traditionally depicted as a drunkard grabbing a bottle, El Borracho is now a man flexing his biceps, one of which proudly sports a bandage. His new name is captioned La Salud, or health.

Alcaraz’s goal is simple: fight misinformation about COVID-19 and promote vaccination within the Latino community.

“I thought it was powerful enough to have Mexican immigrant families and Mexican-Americans portrayed in these vaccine reluctance cartoons,” said Alcaraz, an award-winning artist whose work focuses on the Latin American community. “That’s what we need to do with this information on COVID, we just need to tire people out with the truth and I think the truth will win out eventually.”

Alcaraz’s COVID-19-focused artwork will be on display at the Merced Multicultural Arts Center, located at 645 West Main Street in Merced, from Saturday until the end of the year. He will discuss his advocacy around COVID-19 and vaccines at the arts center on Friday at 10 a.m., to celebrate the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

Alcaraz began drawing these cartoons targeting Latinos during the pandemic as part of his work on the COVIDLatino.org project, a Latino-centric education campaign focused on COVID-19 vaccines, safety measures, testing and the demystification of disinformation. Alcaraz cartoons portray Latino characters believed to resonate with and reflect the community, including farm laborers, Mexican wrestlers known as the luchadores, and Mexican-American families.

He started the project with Dr. Gilberto Lopez, assistant professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University. As part of that effort, Lopez surveyed more than 600 Latinos in Arizona and California about their attitudes toward COVID-19 and the vaccine.

Claudia Corchado, program director of the nonprofit health association Cultiva La Salud-Merced County, said the messages in the cartoons were designed in response to fears that community members shared during the focus groups and surveys conducted by Lopez.

“We are really proud to know that these messages were developed in response to what the Latin American community was saying in the Central Valley,” said Corchado. “So Cultiva la Salud is really excited to have Lalo in our community to promote the COVID Latino campaign. “

Corchado, who is hosting the event on Friday, hopes Alcaraz’s work will help raise awareness of the vaccine’s effectiveness.

“We want to draw more attention to his messages,” she said. “We hope that the people who are on the fence about the vaccination, when they see the art that they can relate to, they laugh a little bit and it pushes them to cross the line to go ahead and get the shot.” . “

Cartoonist uses art to fight COVID misinformation

Alcaraz, who identifies as Chicano, has championed the rights of Latinos and immigrants through his controversial and politically charged daily comic “La Cucaracha”, as well as the film “Coco”, the television series “Les Casagrandes” and the Netflix series “Bordertown”.

When the pandemic struck, he was devastated to see Latinos being disproportionately affected, he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Latinos are almost three times more likely than whites to be hospitalized because of COVID-19 and more than twice as likely to die after contracting the virus. In California, Latinos make up 39% of the population and 47% of all deaths.

Alcaraz initially struggled to understand why so many of his Latino friends, relatives and neighbors believed in conspiracy theories and had widely contested beliefs about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. But he soon realized how widespread the problem was and how quickly disinformation was spreading within the community. He decided he had to step up and use his platform to fight him.

“I had no idea until I really teamed up with Dr. Lopez, how much misinformation (spreads) in some small communities, like among campesinos or in the central valley, ”he said. “I had to speak out against it because it really affects our community. “

Lopez created the COVID Latino Project out of his anger and frustration at the misinformation about COVID-19 that was spreading in small rural worker farmer communities in parts of the Southwest. The campaign focused primarily on outreach to communities in Arizona and the Central Valley, which experienced lower vaccination rates and higher case and death rates than in more suburban and urban areas, did he declare.

He recruited Alcaraz to join his efforts.

The two first bonded over a bowl of ‘medicinal menudo’ years ago, after Lopez took Alcaraz to a Boston restaurant famous for Mexican beef tripe soup, Lopez said. . Alcaraz, still grateful that the meal helped revive him after suffering a hangover, was eager to team up with Lopez to use art and social media to help build confidence in the vaccine at Latinos.

The project promotes vaccination through art, storytelling

As part of the project, Lopez and his research team found that Latinos fearful of getting the vaccine were more likely to believe certain myths about the vaccine, including that the government is using it as a tool to track immigrants or that it causes infertility.

Alcaraz tackles these unfounded beliefs with a cartoon featuring a Latino man asking a Latina woman if the vaccine causes infertility. The woman, whose dress bears the word “vaccinated”, is pregnant and surrounded by four young children. With an unamused look on her face, she simply responds by saying “trust me they don’t”.

Their intention, Lopez said, was to take some of the jargon and complex information that medical professionals and public health officials were using, and share it in a simple and easy way that the community could understand.

“Art is storytelling and it’s the best way to represent this unnecessarily complex information,” Lopez said.

The duo have focused most of their efforts on sharing Alcaraz’s work on social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but they are also teaming up with local organizations like Cultiva la Salud to share their designs and designs. animations. The two hope they can continue with the project and are seeking a grant to fund additional work against disinformation, including new animations and short explainer videos.

“This collaboration was very natural because we both come from these communities and we are very passionate about how to address these inequalities,” said Lopez. “The status quo isn’t working, hasn’t worked, probably never worked for us – so we’re questioning it. Now that we have greater representation in research positions and institutions, you see us happening because we see the value of connecting with the community in a way that they understand.

This story was originally published October 29, 2021 at 8:00 a.m.