Guyito!

The Common Man’s Carabao Becomes A Work of Art--and How!

First posted 06:35am (Mla time) Sept 25, 2005
Inquirer News Service


Editor's Note: Published on page Q1 of the September 25, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

HE WAS first known simply as Kalabaw, the loyal if somewhat sassy companion to farmer Alipio A. Lipin in cartoonist Jess Abrera’s award-winning comic strip “A. Lipin,” a humorous look at the Filipinos’ plight under the Marcos regime published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “They would just talk a lot about the situation in the country,” Abrera says with a laugh of the animal that always had an opinion. “Wala lang sila magawa” (They didn’t have anything better to do). “A.Lipin” was born in 1985, in the heat of anti-Marcos sentiment, a year before Edsa.

Inevitably the boisterous bovine would endear itself to the Filipino public. “The Filipinos began to identify with him,” Abrera says. “Whatever he was thinking was what the Filipino masses were thinking.”

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