The humor and political satire of cartoons Manuel Guillen come to life in “Los Esponjosos”, the new three-dimensional humor project with latex sponge puppets.
Guillén, with a long career as a cartoonist for the newspaper La Prensa, director for 25 years of the El Azote supplement, and creator of the sketches television programs “Los Hulosos”, fuels the susceptibility of power in Nicaragua that has become increasingly intolerant.
According to Guillén, “Los Esponjosos” is the continuity of “Los Hulosos”, the television segment that in 2008 satirized political life and its characters in Nicaragua. The difference is that technology now allows additional resources that before there was no and it limited creativity.
In the segment that he will periodically publish on his YouTube channel “M.Guille Art“Guillén affirms that different characters from Creole politics will parade, but also figures from the Latin American environment who are related to Nicaragua.
We all remember the Hulosos, the sketches television stations that in 2008 satirized political life and its characters in Nicaragua. Now you introduce us to “The spongy ones”, what does it consist of?
It is a continuity, not only in time, but in technology, which so many years ago did not allow us certain resources that today allow us to facilitate the work of a latex puppet parody. It is a medium that takes too much work and involves a multiplicity of efforts. Why the name Los Esponjosos? Because at some point when I was in the United States, many years ago, I had the opportunity to express myself with dolls through a Univisión program by El Gordo y la Flaca. To distance it a little in time from what I was doing, because that was after Los Hulosos, I called it Los Esponjosos, and also the manufacture of the dolls was different, perhaps at the beginning I made silicone masks, and today I began to experiment with latex foam. Not only will I address issues related to our country, but also to the Latin American situation in which we are also included as a country.
We have seen previews of these new sketches in which parodies of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo appear. Are they the stellar characters?
This season some characters from Creole politics are going to parade, we will probably also have an international character, but the idea is to make a broader program that addresses the Latin American situation of which our country is a part, therefore we will always have the subject: Nicaragua, in Los Esponjosos.
What other characters from national or international life will be present?
I am going to tell you that we are going to see the Chief of Police, the dictator (Nicolás) Maduro. The idea is to do something quite broad, which is increasingly enriched with characters and resources. It is an extraordinary effort that I am trying to carry out with my own resources.
In your cartoons, you baptized the character of Rosario Murillo as “La chamuca”, so you also presented him in Los Hulosos. What now characterizes this character in Los Esponjosos?
It occurred to me many years ago because of the uniqueness of the lady, who we all know is a fervent follower of these hidden arts, a perfect chamuca. I kept using that name for many years in my cartoons in the humor supplement, El Azote, in Los Hulosos, and now, unfortunately, many years later the name and character are still in force.
When you produced the Hulosos, the context and the political dynamics of the country was different. Now in dictatorship, what are your creative inputs for humor?
Sadly it is almost everything. In Nicaragua something happens daily, every moment, and unfortunately today, that we are in exile, and making a greater effort to survive, I believe that creativity will become more and more, because we are not only in the desire, to see that social and political change in our country, but this also allows us, as we say, to see the bulls long, then it does not limit us on the issue of security. It is a double challenge because we have to survive abroad, but at the same time it is an incentive that we are building a little in that long-awaited change that will undoubtedly come to Nicaragua.
You are a long-time cartoonist. How is the humor and satire of your brush similar to “Los Esponjosos”?
I have tried to characterize Los Hulosos characters, my cartoon characters, with The advantage that I create them from A to Z, I also make the sculptures, I make the molds, I make the character as such. It is a creation that in some way is the continuity in 3D, or in non-virtual reality, of what I am doing every day in my daily work in the newspaper and other media.
Where can we see the episodes of “the fluffy ones”, and how often?
Los Esponjosos will be on your YouTube channel M. Guillén Art, I invite you to subscribe, and we will be with a periodicity of at least once a week, with a small segment that we hope to expand every day with more characters. We will also be on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The idea is to have several options so that they cannot continue and be able to enjoy Los Esponjosos.
