News Release

Creator Hector Cantu Guest Speaker at Smithsonian

Kansas City, MO  (06/22/2007)  Hector Cantu, co-creator of the comic strip “Baldo,” will talk about his life as a Latino cartoonist during the Young Ambassadors Program June 25 at the Smithsonian Latino Center in Washington, D.C. The Young Ambassadors Program is sponsored by the federally funded Latino Initiative Pool and the PepsiCo Foundation.

Cantu will discuss aspects of his life as the writer of a Latino comic strip in America, as well as what makes art Latino, and how Latino artists can bring a unique voice to American art.

The Young Ambassadors Program brings 20 students with an interest and commitment to the arts (e.g. film, design, music, visual, performing, and/or literary arts) to a week-long arts enrichment and leadership seminar. The program “seeks to identify and cultivate the next generation of leaders in the arts and culture field, as well as teach young Latinos to embrace and promote their cultural roots,” says Joanne Flores the Core Programs Director at the Smithsonian Latino Center.

Cantu studied journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and today is editorial director at Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas. He previously was managing editor at award-winning Hispanic Business magazine in Santa Barbara, CA, and his writing has appeared in Los Angeles Times Magazine and Hollywood Reporter.

In the Spring of 1998 Cantu made a fateful phone call to now co-creator Carlos Castellanos with the idea of starting a comic strip. "There were hardly any second thoughts on what the strip would be about," Hector says. Since the beginning, it's been called "Baldo" and it's always included the characters known as Gracie, Dad and Tia Carmen. By Summer 1999, a contract was signed and in April 2000, "two years after that initial phone call," “Baldo” was launched nationwide by Universal Press Syndicate.

“Baldo” focuses on the exploits of teenager Baldo Bermudez and his family, providing a humorous look at the Latino experience, but it also lets readers remember what it was like to be young in America.

Creator(s): Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos

Contact(s): Kathie Kerr

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