Pedro Xavier Molina Blandón (born 1976) is a Nicaraguan
political cartoonist who has worked for the news outlet ''
Confidencial''.
Molina was born in
Estelí, Nicaragua, in 1976. He was forced to flee Nicaragua when he was ten years old, escaping from the
civil war in the 1980s, when
Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguans, Nicaraguan revolutionary and politician serving as President of Nicaragua since 2007. Previously he was leader of Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, first as coordinator of the ...
was president.
He returned to the country afterwards, attending
Polytechnic University of Nicaragua but spending most of his time in the library that received the major United States periodicals, and studying the political cartoons they published.
He published his first two cartoons in
''Barricada'' in 1995,
and has since become a cartoonist for the digital outlet ''
Confidencial''. In 2018 he received the
Inter American Press Association Cartoonist Category Award. Molina went into exile again in December of the same year, when Ortega's police killed a journalist, detained two others and ransacked the office of ''Confidencial'', taking its press room. Molina was also subject to personal threats which escalated at this time.
Molina moved to
Ithaca, New York, U.S., in August 2019 and became a resident artist of the Ithaca City of Asylum and a visiting scholar at
Ithaca College. In 2019 he received the
Maria Moors Cabot Prize, awarded by the
Columbia University of
New York City, being the third Nicaraguan to receive it after
Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal and
Carlos Fernando Chamorro Barrios, father and son, in 1977 and 2010 respectively.
The same year he was recognized by ''
Americas Quarterly'' as one of its Top 5 Latin American political humorists.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Molina, Pedro
Nicaraguan artists
Caricaturists
Editorial cartoonists
Living people
1976 births
People from Estelí Department