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In this article, Justino Fernández describes the commission and the composition of Jesús Guerrero Galván’s mural in Albuquerque, located at the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. Fernández reports that he was the one who recommended Galván for the job. The art critic describes the work as La Unión de las Américas bajo la égida de la libertad [The Union of the Americas Beneath the Aegis of Liberty]. For him the mural had a specific purpose—to be appreciated by the resident “Mexican workers” in the United States.
The mural, painted by Jesús Guerrero Galván (1910-73), entitled La Unión de las Américas bajo la égida de la libertad (1942), was a gift from the Jalisco artist for the attentions paid to him during his residency as a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico. Nonetheless, the guiding idea of the work was the unification of the United States and Latin America, presented in an idealized form. The commission for the work, in which Fernández himself played a role, fell in line with the post-war “good neighbor” cultural policy. To this can be added the New Deal—the same [policy] that framed a socio-political commitment between the two nations,—that is, the creation of a common continental front, that at the same time implies a certain negation of European culture. In summary, it attempted to forge visualization of Pan-Americanism and of the subsequent cultural alliance, and was a symbolic representation that Fernández appears to have wholeheartedly supported.