1941.10.20 “Those Banana Republics!”
by Charles (Chuck) George Werner (1909-1997)
11 x 14 in., ink in board
Coppola Collection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Werner
Charles (Chuck) Werner won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1939 for a cartoon he did for the Daily Oklahoman titled “Nomination for 1938” which allowed for the transfer of the Sudetenland to Hitler's Germany (October 6, 1938). At age 29, Werner was the youngest person to win the Pulitzer. Werner left the Daily Oklahoman to be the Chief Editorial Cartoonist at the Chicago Sun in 1941 before leaving for the Indianapolis Star in 1947. Throughout his nearly sixty-year career, many U.S. Presidents expressed interest in Werner's cartoons, including Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry Truman requesting cartoons for their presidential libraries.
Arnulfo Arias Madrid, who ended up leading the democratic opposition in Panama all the way through the 1980s, was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. He originally took power in 1940, death squads and occult following in tow. He had met with Hitler in 1937, where he reportedly shared his own plans for murdering Jewish German families in Panama. He was promised by Hitler that he could be governor of all Central America when Germany conquered the world. In his inaugural address, he said “As Panama has ceded its territory to the US to construct the Canal, Panama can also ceded territory to the Germany of Adolf Hitler.”
Arias imposed a new constitution forbidding the immigration of Blacks, Chinese, and Japanese, and took away the citizenship of 40,000 Blacks of West Indian origin. Arias was overthrown in October 1941, with the blessing of the US, before he was able to institute his genocidal plans.
Germany attempted to use Arias’s ouster as anti-America propaganda, but with little success.
