Máquinas para fabricar yankées (Machines for Manufacturing Yankees)

A boiler-like machine plated 'Estados Unidos 1896' is fed from a hopper marked 'Cloaca' by pipes labelled sawdust, bacon, cork waste, filth, potato peelings, mud and slops, and it delivers a line of top-hatted, Uncle Sam-style figures sliding out of a chute. The tell is the label: the printed caption says the cheapness of the raw materials makes the population of the United States grow 'fabulously', so Americans are named as products of a sewer.

Date: April 11, 1896
Period: Pre-1914
Made by: Blanco y Negro (Madrid illustrated weekly); cartoonist Mecachis (Eduardo Sáenz Hermúa)
Region: Western and Central Europe
Country: Spain
Medium: Cartoon
Issuer type: Media
Regime: Canovas Government
Leader: Antonio Canovas Del Castillo
Audience: Domestic public
Purpose: Demonize
Themes: Empire and colonialism, Migration
Event: Cuban War of Independence
Techniques: Name-calling
Source: Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source: Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 29, 2026
Rights: Public domain (published 1896, before 1931; author d. 1898; PD-old per Wikimedia Commons)
Mecachis (Eduardo Sáenz Hermúa), Blanco y Negro (Madrid) no. 258, 11 April 1896, via Wikimedia Commons

Text on the object

Original (Spanish) · read from the image, not independently checked

MÁQUINAS PARA FABRICAR YANKÉES por MECACHIS

[on the hopper:] CLOACA
[on the pipes:] SERRÍN / TOCINO / RESIDUOS DE CORCHO / INMUNDICIAS / MONDADURAS DE PATATA / BARRO Y CIENO / CORDILLA [illegible]
[on the boiler plate:] ESTADOS 1896 UNIDOS

GRACIAS Á ESTA MÁQUINA Y Á LO BARATO DE LOS MATERIALES QUE ENTRAN PARA LA FABRICACIÓN DE ESTOS CABALLEROS DE..... LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS, SU POBLACIÓN AUMENTA DE DÍA EN DÍA DE UN MODO FABULOSO

English translation (machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader)

MACHINES FOR MANUFACTURING YANKEES by MECACHIS

[on the hopper:] SEWER
[on the pipes:] SAWDUST / BACON / CORK WASTE / FILTH / POTATO PEELINGS / MUD AND SILT / [cordilla] [illegible]
[on the boiler plate:] UNITED STATES 1896

Thanks to this machine and to the cheapness of the materials that go into the manufacture of these gentlemen of..... the United States, its population increases day by day in a fabulous manner

'Cordilla' (offal, trimmings) is followed by partly hidden letters. The plate reads 'ESTADOS' above '1896' with 'UNIDOS' below.