Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

The dispute begun by Luis Cardoza y Aragón against the frente único [single front] policy of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] culminated with this declaration in El Machete. The [...]

This print by Leopoldo Méndez was used for the cover of the first issue of Frente a Frente [Face to Face], in which the inauguration of the Palacio de Bellas Artes was satirized as an act of cultural exclusion. At the bottom of the page, a policeman [...]

This communiqué outlines the growth of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] in the last ten months, explaining the organizational structure and activities. It highlights the [...]

The Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) [People’s Graphic Workshop] explained its working plan for graphic propaganda in a flyer that specified the following: it could be incorporated into wall newspapers, mailed as if it were postal correspondence, [...]

Juan de la Cabada reports on progress in organizing a Congreso Continental de Científicos [Scientists’ Continental Congress] in Mexico City under the direction of Víctor Manuel Villaseñor in accordance with the resolutions of the American [...]

This is a letter addressed to Barnabé Barrios, in New York, signed by Juan de la Cabada and Luis Arenal, as the editor and a member of the Executive Committee, respectively, of Frente a Frente [Face to Face] magazine. The authors inform Bernabé [...]

This document proposes an exchange of publications between Frente a Frente and New Masses, but its main goal is to convince the North American publication to use its influence to help connect LEAR to the Association d’Écrivains et Artistes [...]

This essay discusses LEAR’s decision to establish a “Bureau Editor for Mexico” to publish the continent-oriented magazine, Sin Fronteras / All America—the roots of the future “Congreso Continental de Escritores y Artistas de Toda América [ [...]

This letter written by the Comité Ejecutivo of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [Executive Committee of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] was addressed to the American Writers’ Congress (AWC) in New York; it [...]

After discussing how busy Germán List Arzubide—the Estridentista from old times—kept in New York’s workers’ media, Ben Ossa mentions the ideas suggested to LEAR by the “Congreso de Artistas Americanos (de Estados Unidos)” [American [...]

“The Red International”—as Ramón Pi, Jr. referred to himself—describes his vehicle for distributing revolutionary words and images from his base in New York. His goal is to place his publication in the hands of professionals whose names he [...]

In this letter, Rufino Tamayo hints at the friction experienced by an artist who put his personal goals above the demands of political activism. Tamayo promises to report on the failings of the delegation to the LEAR and apologizes for asking the [...]

According to the communiqué, several members of the LEAR [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] were scolded by the League’s Executive Committee for overextending their stay in New York and abandoning their League duties, The members were [...]

Choque [Shock], the publication of the Alianza de Trabajadores del Arte Plásticas (ATAP) [Alliance of Visual Arts Workers] sets forth the opinions of Diego Rivera regarding art for art’s sake, which he considers “sandez sentimental” [ [...]

In the 1990s, the magazine Memoria reported on a controversy that led to the great 1936 exhibition organized by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. The article explains that the [...]

This article by Pablo Fernández Márquez analyzes the last two publications of the magazine Artes de México (numbers 17 and 18), which was then under the editorial direction of Rafael Salas Anzures. The first of these (17) deals with the pre- [...]

This article is a self-critique of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], which also touches on the group’s diversity. It mentions the disorder created by incorporating other [...]

Diego Rivera denounces the “sordid sabotage” that the French poet André Breton has been subjected to at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México: as an action driven by a network of intellectuals controlled by the Soviet GPU. He offers as [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros attacks the implacable enemy of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], the Trotskyite Diego Rivera, “leader and supporter of the Fourth International in Mexico [...]

Golpe, the journal of the Federación de Escritores y Artistas Proletarios (FEAP) [Federation of Proletarian Writers and Artists] published an editorial in which members of the Federation expressed their opinions on the issue of socialist education. [...]

The National Theater was a major architectural project during the Porfirio Díaz administration, but it was never completed due to the outbreak of the revolution in 1910. Later worked on by several post-revolutionary governments, it was transformed [...]

The Estatutos [Statutes] of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) [Peoples’ Graphics Workshop] were written a year after it was founded. They describe it as a workshop devoted to the art of agitation and propaganda, united by a commitment to two [...]

This article describes the exhibition of prints by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], which was held in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, in Valencia as well as in Madrid.  The [...]

“I believe that the LEAR is on the completely wrong path . . . , it is the only organization in Mexico that is against art.” With these terms, the writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón stated his disagreement with the selection of works presented by the [...]

This article reports on an initiative to create a politically committed group of intellectuals and artists. The example taken by Muñoz Cota is the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists [...]

Ermilo Abreu Gómez interviews Cuban Juan Marinello for Frente a Frente [Face to Face], the journal of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. In the interview, the key issue of artistic [...]

It had been a month since El Machete reported the end of a dispute between Luis Cardoza y Aragón and the defenders of the single cultural front promoted in the magazine Frente a Frente [Face to Face]. In this article, the Estridentista and active [...]

The Taller de Gráfica Popular [TGP, People’s Print Workshop], with Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O’Higgins, and Luis Arenal as founding fathers, had always intended to work together as a group on various types of printmaking and painting in the studio [...]

The film director and screenwriter Chano Urueta reviews the group exhibition of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [LEAR, League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] held at the former church of Santa Clara, which was later converted [...]

In this document Juan de la Cabada responds to Luis Cardoza y Aragón’s criticism of the first art exhibition organized by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]. At the same time de [...]

Meant as a wakeup call for the Lázaro Cárdenas’ administration (1934-40) in Mexico, Diego Rivera launches an attack against the police intelligentsia, including some agents of the Soviet GPU that, in his judgment, had infiltrated the “ [...]

The fourteen tenets upheld by Luis Cardoza y Aragón—those that were to be debated among the members of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists]—proposed an art movement free of [...]

This extensive document covers the various phases of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios [LEAR, League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] and the international causes the organization supported. Despite being billed as a “Congreso [...]

Supported by a quote from André Breton —who himself quoted Karl Marx—, Luis Cardoza y Aragón again refutes the exploitation of art by revolutionaries. The tenets that composed the introductory document of the Congreso de Escritores [Writers’ [...]

The Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists] disseminated its ideology in the first edition of the magazine Frente a Frente [Front to Front], nearly one year after the founding of this [...]

In this compilation of a series of discussions, eighteen members of Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) address the history of the organization, including its founding, development throughout twenty years of activities, and present state in 1957. Member [...]