‘I - Politics: the Big Pig’, published in A Paródia

Page from A Paródia, founded in 1900 by Rafael Bordalo and his son Manuel Gustavo. This new publication, which replaced O António Maria, was published weekly and gave an account, using caricature and cartoons, of the key political and social events of the day.
Under the title ‘Politics: the Big Pig’, Bordalo introduces a ‘zoopolitics’ series where the great vices of politics and national institutions are transformed into animals. Here, politics is represented as a large pig suckling a litter of piglets, each of them representing political parties and their members, identified by initials on their respective rumps.
Among other animals we see ‘the big dog’ (finance), ‘the big parrot’ (parliamentary rhetoric), ‘the big crab’ (National Progress), ‘the big rat’ (bureaucracy) and ‘public education - the big ass’. Always full of humour, these drawings made a biting criticism of the state of the nation. Lithograph published in A Paródia, on 17 January 1900.