Pedacitos de Resistencia: Socially Engaged Work in Latin American Special Collections

El puente, Ángel Bracho (1956)

During this century of industrialism, globalization, and reform, the fluidity of the collective’s perspectives continued to speak to the domestic lived experiences, as well as to capture the attention of international communities. At the moment of the engraving, Mexico was enduring their Dirty War, where human rights were born as an international strategy to confront the government’s institutional violence targeting those protesting for better social conditions. Seemingly incongruous, the nation was also experiencing the “Mexican Miracle,” a rare era of successful economic stability thanks to technological advancements, artistic mobilization, and increased industrialism throughout the Republic.

Engraved by Diego Rivera’s pupil Ángel Bracho, El puente (EN: The Bridge) beneath the toiling adults and children represents the journey towards industrialism. We see the life that goes into feeding the fire of industrialism through the emaciated cats on a scarce riverbed, the capitalist exploitation consuming even the personalities of the people we see in the environment, represented by their lack of faces. The apocalyptic engraving demonstrates the entangled relationships between humans and animals and plants, between the living and the non-living, on an insidious path towards modernity.

Bracho’s hypergraphic, miniscule details illustrate the development of a global machine that tainted the sky itself for material gain, expressing the crude reality of existing to witness the systemic corruption of your water, your work, and your developing world. So much is devoured to produce material gains- the very same material we see dispossessed, disposed of on the dying dirt in the foreground. Not only does the grabado force the viewer to bear witness to the unsustainability of industrialism, but it also forces us to ask ourselves the still relevant and ever more urgent question: is the sacrifice of the Earth and its abundance of life worth the production of material we possess for only a fleeting moment?

El camion, Alberto Beltrán (1949)

Alberto Beltrán’s work, El camión (EN: The Bus), illustrates the effect of industrialism in an urban context. In this piece, Beltrán designs a hollow, ghoulish appearance on the people who are struggling for a space in the bus. An experience perhaps familiar to the viewer, where each person with their own motivations, their own yokes, and their own desperations- from the bus driver to the lady furthest from the bus- participate in the rat race of modern labor. The artist utilizes delicate shading and bold intersections to illuminate the viewer on the humanity we lose while striving for material so-called progress.

Both pieces, El camión and El puente, are glimpses into the impact of industrialism consuming the diversity of Mexico- the people toiling, the urban and rural spaces catering the mechanics, the nature providing material.

Tren revolucionario, Ignacio Aguirre (1973)

While President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz organized the 1968 Summer Olympics to curate and flaunt the Mexican Republic’s international façade of development, against this backdrop he also permitted the violent repression known as the Tlatelolco Massacre. An extension of the Dirty War, this social agitation was largely hidden from international attention by Mexican and U.S. influence, yet it remains a fresh wound in popular memory to this day. Annual representations of the massacre in Mexico City keep alive the murdered and disappeared spirits stifled by hands of the government, and typically followed by expected police repression.

Observing the Mexican Republic expanding its presence in the global stage through artistic and technological booms while living under violent repression at home, the TGP served & encouraged the public’s desires for change in their nation through accessible and breathtaking prints. Living through these social constructions, Aguirre centers in Tren revolucionario (EN: Revolutionary Train) the collective strength of solidarity between individuals in resistance to a capitalist institutional imposition of social value. This valuation deigned some lives as expendable for the progress of others- the various socioeconomic markers dressing the figures serve as evidence. Indigenous youth militarized, afro-descendant families mobilizing, newborns wailing against a war waged they know nothing of, yet the violence envelopes the potential of life.

The manufacturing of war includes rhetorical violence normalizing the sacrifice of certain lives for others, as well as structural attempts to spread strife between communities. Aguirre demonstrates to his Republic and to the international viewers the consequence of struggle- hardened souls uniting to defend their rights, embracing the power of developing and defending their personhood in a revolution. The woman in the center- her weathered hands holding a gun sits between a mother and her infant. She acknowledges you, the viewer, with direct eye contact, as a reminder that the struggle must be made to defend the right to individuality and collectivity in face of the extractivist empire enforced through global industrialism.

Alfabetización, Elizabeth Catlett (1956)

In 2014, 43 students were disappeared while returning home from participating in the annual civilian performance of the Tlatelolco Massacre- the event is popularly referred to as Ayotzinapa 43, or as the Mexican government calls it, the Caso Iguala. Popular amongst Latin American regimes, state actors of violence disappear people threatening the status quo, such as communist students, outed queers, pregnant leftists- the lack of closure as to what happened, leaves a social devastation felt for generations.

Similar to the Massacre, this polemic case entails violent government intervention, the stifling of information, and young professionals utilizing their positionality in the struggle for social justice. In the case, however, it is important to note that the professionals were teachers in rural schools, where predominantly indigenous and afro-descendent students were having their curriculums neglected and programs cut from federal funding. In this context, education is where battles are fought over social rhetoric, history, and identity.

Elizabeth Catlett’s lithograph, Alfabetización, demonstrates a different face to the lucha that the Mexican public carried at the time, and to this day. The Mexican national identity has rooted itself primarily on its indigenous and European ancestors- within this social make-up, the topic of written and spoken language built more barriers than bridges. Understanding this tension, education was seen as both a tool of empowerment and a governmental indoctrination. Alfabetización reminds us of the power in what we consume- from speaking Nahuatl, to reading in Spanish and writing English translations- and how we embody it. Knowledge holds power, and Catlett’s illustration of the socialization & bonds occurring behind educational campaigns stands as proof that there is strength in collectivity.

El árbol muerto, Fanny Rabel (1956)

Creating the lithograph El árbol muerto (EN: The Dead Tree) in 1956, Fanny Rabel’s work is drawn upon the context of the end of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema, where the Republic was creating a Eurocentric international image of Mestizaje, as well as in the year after Women’s Suffrage was achieved in Mexico. This piece stands out from Rabel’s TGP colleagues’ dark landscapes by utilizing the white space to intensify the contrast between her subjects.

Unlike its usual symbolism of life, the coarse tree extending its withering branches no longer offers shade nor fruit. While the darkened figure occupies most of the frame, the eye is drawn to the two shrouded figures huddled near the dying tree. Perhaps as consequence from the changing environment, or its own unruly body, hope is no longer stored in its trunk.

After surviving agrarian reform against latifundism, where an individual would own large swaths of land and indebt those who toiled the land, and landing on neolatifundism, where land owners cheaply rent public land for exponential private profit, the trust of the Mexican public in their established socio-political institutions had also been lost. Similar to the rebozo-covered women, the public was at a crossroads between depending on desolation, or aspiring for life.

Rabel reminds us that there are alternate worlds we can design and develop through the faint background patches of grass and branches of florae reaching for the sky, evidence that there is still life beyond the rotting central tree. While symbolizing the corroding socio-political circumstances, the pair’s conversation lingers in the viewer’s mind. One can imagine they are in despair for their decaying nature- or perhaps they are instead organizing, aspiring, to change the world around them.

A la plaza, Leopoldo Méndez (1949)

A similar strength is attributed to aspiration in Leopoldo Méndez’s engraving titled, A la plaza (EN: To the Plaza), where the viewer sees a couple struggling along desolate lands. A sense of heaviness is felt witnessing the pair carry lives including their own, trudging against wind through barren lands with only reminders of its previous abundance. A child on the back and an animal at hand, the subjects feel the interconnectivity of these lives with their own. Yet, their heads are held high, with their gazed fixed on a horizon unseen by the viewer.

Aspiration is an activator- its power urges you to take one step after another. This can result in the creation of art to support your fellow citizen, such as the TGP’s actions, as well as in the decision to migrate elsewhere- the physical act of uprooting what you have to find more fertile lands for growth. Although politicians may now frame it as a devastating crime, migration has created routes and connections on this Earth between people, animals, and places since before flags were struck to mark settlements. In the context of the grabado, these figures may be migrating from rural areas to urban developments in search of varied opportunities to cultivate family and growth. The engraving may have been surveying the tensions between urban migration and rural extraction, yet the symbolism touches upon aspirations crossing time and means.