Comic book author, Henry Barajas has a Tucson origin story
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Henry Barajas’ latest comic book tells the life of civil rights activist Dolores Huerta. He will be speaking at the Tucson Festival of Books on March 10th. Photo credit: Tommie Lorene (TENWEST 2022)
Henry Barajas has been calling his shot since he was a kid growing up on Tucson’s south side. Every day when he would take the bus to Tucson High School, he would look out the window as he passed by the Arizona Daily Star, where his dream job awaited.
“I tried to apply when I was sixteen. They said I couldn’t work there,” said Barajas.
Newspapers published comic strips and Barajas was determined to work at one. At 22 years old, he began delivering the paper, waking up at three in the morning to start doing paper deliveries by four a.m.
Barajas’ latest comic, Historias de Resistencia: Dolores Huerta and the Plight of the Farm Workers and Union Organizers was recently commissioned and published by the New York City Public Schools.
Barajas is a recognized name in the world of comic books. His rise in this space has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Forbes, NPR. You can find one of his comics featured at the Smithsonian, though his journey to national success didn’t come easy.
He has been a newsroom assistant, an online editor, radio producer, freelance journalist and blogger, and even did a stint as a mortgage underwriter. Barajas has the swagger of a seasoned stand up comic, scrappy and always making self-deprecating jokes.
Barajas is returning to Tucson to promote his latest work at the & Gallery (419 N. 4th Ave) on March 2nd, and at the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona, where he will co-headline the Voces Tucsonenses panel on March 10th alongside Dr. Lydia Otero (L.A. Interchanges) and Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez (My Side of the River).
El Sur caught up with Barajas who spoke to us from his home in Los Angeles to share his story, reminisce about growing up in Tucson in the 90s, and defend why Tucson has the best Mexican food in the world.
Henry Barajas
El Sur: When did you first get into comic books?
Henry Barajas: “I write comics and am still into comics because of the Tanque Verde Swap Meet. There was this guy with filing cabinets worth of comics. My parents would make me appraise comics; they would buy boxes of comics hoping there would be this expensive book in these boxes! The guy saw that I was so enthusiastic and asked, ‘Who’s your favorite super hero?’ and he pulls out a Spider Man issue and says, ‘I’m gonna give this to you. Promise me you’re gonna read this.’ I read it cover to cover only to find out that Peter Parker’s parents were Hydra spies, and that made me a lifelong fan!”
El Sur: Graphic novel or comic book? What’s the preferred term?
HB: “Graphic novel was a term created for libraries and bookstores to be more accepting of the comic book medium. It’s like saying movie or film: we’re saying the same thing. A comic book is usually smaller than 40 pages, graphic novel is 40 pages and up.”
El Sur: Despite coming out during the pandemic, your debut comic, La Voz de M.A.Y.O has done extremely well.
HB: “There was a twelve month tour that was cancelled, but thankfully Joe Schmidt at the New York Department of Education who is a social studies curriculum writer folded the graphic novel into American history. For the next eight years, millions of children in the largest school district in the U.S. are going to learn from that book.
Thankfully we’re on the five year anniversary. It still resonates with people to this day today, so much so that the Mexican American Studies program is flying me out to talk to a class. We’re doing a big event at & Gallery the week before the Tucson Festival of Books. I’m so lucky that my great grandfather did something so important; the community still benefits to it to this day. Not to call back to wrestling, but I called my shot in La Voz de M.A.Y.O, in the last page in the last panel when I say, ‘the next thing I want to do is tell Dolores Huerta’s story.’”
El Sur: Your great-grandfather, Ramon Jaurigue played a role in Tucson history. How do you feel about that?
HB: “To find that my great-grandfather was a writer and a political activist; someone who put the entire community before his own family was something that I really gravitated towards. This was a community driven, grassroots graphic novel that got to be told and will hopefully live beyond me.”
El Sur: What’s it like to be a celebrity on the Comic Con circuit? And what’s this thing about someone trying to start a fight with you?!
HB: “It was at L.A. Comic Con. I was walking to my booth and this guy (typical L.A), he’s dressed up as a character and he decided to take a selfie the moment we were walking. I was trying to get out of his way and I grazed him and he said, ‘Excuse you! Do want to take this outside?’ I wasn’t about to fight a man in his pajamas.
It’s very gracious for you to say celebrity (laughs). In no way have I ever felt like a celebrity. People wish like they were like Taylor Swift with their private jet and fly around the world. I just pray for business class! I just want to make comics for the rest of my life.”
El Sur: What’s the Comic Con scene for Latinx creators?
HB: “It’s one of the those things where in L.A. in particular, there’s a lot of comic book people, and we all see each other. There’s no animosity. There’s competition and there’s a lot of support. I feel very grateful that a lot of people here have helped. Comic Con is an interesting place, it’s the only place where they will stop me and say, ‘Hey, you’re that guy!’ I’ve been in this business since I was eighteen years old. I have been in this space for so long that I feel very lucky that I get to have some credence and be able to give people a hand up.
There are some publishers that have been wanting to work with me and I’m like, ‘let’s work with this person who is BIPOC or is non-gender conforming.’ There’s a lot of emphasis that we need to hear these stories but there’s no real infrastructure or financial assistance to do these kinds of things. And a lot of the opportunities are locked away for people that are not Brown or Black or Indigenous or Asian, so you really have to keep going and doing your own thing. Thankfully folks like yourself pay attention and open these kinds of spaces up for people like me.”
El Sur: What’s it like using comic books as a vehicle for social change?
HB: “Comic books are not normally a medium that gets enough respect. I was never more engaged than when a comic book was in the classroom. I’ve been lucky having talked to kids in Tucson at Pueblo High School, in the Sunnyside school district…I also visited the juvenile incarceration center and a lot of them don’t know who is Dolores Huerta is. And so here is an abridged version of one of the most important Americans of our time!
If you watch Dolores and read what she has to say, she does a very good job of telling her own story. I wanted to honor the way she tells her story. I read all the articles, watched all these documentaries, I read a number of these books. It felt like being in college and having to cite my sources. It’s rare that you get that kind of time, and it was nice to have a deadline. La Voz de M.A.Y.O took five years, Dolores Huerta was done in six, seven months.”
Historias de Resistencia #1 was commissioned by the New York City Public Schools
El Sur: What are you working on next?
HB: “I’m working on a Chicano Noir comic that is set in the 1940s. It’s a detective story that follows a Mexican-American orphan obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. He was dead set on becoming a detective like Holmes to find his parents, but ends up becoming a private investigator in the 1940s when it was deadly to be a Mexican American or Mexican in L.A.
I’ve been doing this for so long now. I’ve been writing a weekly capacity to finally come to a part in my life where I have never felt more confident in my abilities to be a writer. And to put it into THIS story in particular!… I don’t want to build it up too much, but I’m really excited for people to check it out.”
