Latin American propaganda posters: Mexico, Chile, Brazil and US Alliance for Progress

What did Latin American propaganda posters look like?

Latin American propaganda posters include Mexican commercial broadsides and government lithographs, Chilean plebiscite leaflets, and United States posters printed in Spanish and Portuguese for Latin American audiences. Governments, parties, newspapers and, from the 1940s, a Washington agency made them. Cuba has its own page.

The United States in Latin America

Between 1940 and 1945 the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, a US government office, issued posters in Spanish and Portuguese. One by the artist Arias Bernal shows a Nazi parachutist drifting toward a cactus while Uncle Sam and a charro laugh: ridicule of the enemy, nothing more (Name-calling). Another draws an armband-cuffed claw reaching over the globe toward a bayonet (Fear appeal). A calendar shows a US and a Latin American soldier shaking hands (Identity fusion).

The Alliance for Progress and the 1965 sheets

In 1964 the US Information Agency distributed Spanish posters for the Alliance for Progress. "Adelante" lines up national flags beside the Alliance flag (Transfer). "En marcha" lists 222,600 houses and 23,400 classrooms with no countries, baselines or sources, and the Bolivia map credits only programme projects (Card stacking).

Chile, 1988: both campaigns on paper

Leaflets from the 1988 plebiscite show both sides' method. A pro-Pinochet pamphlet claims "Nunca nadie hizo más por la familia chilena" over a grid of credits only (Card stacking). A "No" leaflet ties a No vote to the queues and ration cards of 1972 by photographs alone (Fear appeal), and the Partido por la Democracia lists five grievances, each with no reply on the sheet.

Cartoons: Venezuela and Brazil

Venezuela's El Diablo (1894) draws a border dispute as a lion labelled "Inglaterra" on a woman marked "Venezuela" (Fear appeal). Brazil's O Malho (1922) cartoon "As duas imprensas" labels one press "Imprensa Amarella" and defends the other beside the scales of Justice (Name-calling).

What the collection does not hold

• Not here: Cuban material (see the Cuban page), and most Mexican Revolution muralism and the Taller de Gráfica Popular prints.
• Not here: Argentine Peronist posters beyond one 1953 photograph, Brazilian Estado Novo posters, Chilean 1970 to 1973 posters, and Venezuelan material after 2014 beyond a few banners.
• Gaps in the US group: Good Neighbor material is mostly 1940 to 1942 OCIAA sheets; no Latin American reply to the Alliance or 1965 sheets is held.