The editorial categories are research topics that have guided researchers during the recovery phase and continue to be the impetus behind the Documents Project’s digital archive and the Critical Documents book series. Developed by the project’s Editorial Board, each of the teams analyzed this framework and adapted it to their local contexts in developing their research objectives and work plans during the Recovery Phase. Learn more on the Editorial Framework page.
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In its official publication Llamada [The Call], the Lucha Intelectual Proletaria (LIP) [Intellectual Proletarian Struggle] declares that Mexican intellectuals who are members of this group should make their work serve the proletariat in its war on class; it considers the proletariat the “only revolutionary class.” It also states that the bourgeois class used art, science, education, theater and the media to pursue capitalist interests, which is why the proletariat must oppose them with similar force. The LIP was created for this purpose, to orient its intellectual production to the workers and peasants in order to combat the bourgeois intellectuals who produce only for themselves.
The monthly newspaper Llamada was sold for five cents in 1931; it was the official publication of the Lucha Intelectual Proletaria (LIP), a proletarian group that engaged in class warfare with the purpose of neutralizing bourgeois intellectuals. Their plan, which included mounting exhibitions, was to redirect cultural activity toward the workers of the urban and rural areas and was based on the theory that was in tune with the everyday experience of the struggle. Although it could be read like a newspaper, Llamada was designed to be placed on a wall, in spaces where a great number of workers would gather, such as in factories and union halls. Two copies of the newspaper would be pasted to walls in the same manner as publicity or variety show posters, so that both the front and back would be visible to the reader. This newspaper principally targeted members of the Bloque de Obreros Intelectuales (BOI) [Intellectual Workers Block], which had founded the magazine Crisol two years earlier. The Lucha Intelectual Proletaria (LIP) was a proletarian organization founded by the painters David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974), Pablo O’Higgins and Leopoldo Méndez (1902–1969), along with the writer Juan de la Cabada. It should be noted that Llamada never went beyond its first installment since its promoters were incarcerated or disbanded as the result of governmental pressure.