Volume 8 - Ethnicities Magazine - February 2017

How did you come up with the idea of Latin American
Airlines? What is this book about? What did you base this
graphic novel on? What are your goals for this work?
Originally, Airlines was destined for the theater. Back in
2010 I wrote a cluster of dramas designed to be performed
by blind actors, Wraiths, Wandering Souls, and the 7-play
saga Homicide and Sisal. I thought of Airlines as a future
part of this collection until I realized that having 40-plus
speaking parts on stage at all times for the duration of
the play would inevitably turn out muddled. However, the
play’s premise was far too strong for me to overlook: “What
would happen if all of Latin America boarded a plane?” I
have failed to find any other text, be it literary or commercial,
which presents characters from every country in Latin
America with such plurality of ages, social and ethnic origins
and religions as Airlines effectively does. To go beyond
diversity and achieve a true representativity of the people
from our subcontinent while showing their particular set of
hurdles has been a strong motivation for me during these
past 7 years.
I have several aims for this particular project. Among them
is to raise the bar for narrating ever-more-complex and
ambitious stories, with the cumulative effect of accelerating
the evolution of the Latin American graphic-narrative
medium and market.
It is of paramount importance for me to set on the discussion
table the main theme of Airlines: discrimination. It is
a subject in which we are far more accountable than we’d
like to think. It is precisely to evidence the alarming frequency
of our own discriminatory attitudes why we’ll soon
release a mobile game that will clearly show these unconscious
dynamics. It will feature art from Airlines, besides
original art created specifically for the app and both the
printed book and this app will be released simultaneously.
• It took more than 25,000 man-hours to complete.
I’m also keen on adapting Airlines as a TV series, ideally
produced by Amazon Studios or Netflix. Just picture it, Keila!
Each episode would be shot in the country of origin of
each character, creating 15 or more roles for local actors to
play… Multiplied by 70 Latino characters! This amounts to
more than a thousand opportunities for our talented thespians
to appear on international TV… And of course several
thousands of temporary jobs would be created to assist
the shoot. It’s high time for the world to see that true Latin
American culture is not remotely like the tired stereotypes
that Hollywood presents!
What led you to determine the nationality or ethnicity of
each character and its role in history?
This is an excellent question and it’s answer is intricate.
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