Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

This article was published in El País, a newspaper run by sectors of the Partido Nacional, one of Uruguay’s two traditional political parties. It reports on the occupation of the Subte exhibition space in Montevideo by a group of visual artists [...]

The exhibition at Perls Gallery in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, presented Rufino Tamayo as one of the four great Mexican artists. His works were part of the great modernism and, unlike those of his colleagues, no Communist symbols could be found in [...]

In this essay, Michael Crockford discusses how the artistic practices of Yolanda Lopez combine feminism, activism, and community building. He observes that Lopez challenges indeed lowly depictions of Mexican-Americans in the United States by [...]

This document is a handwritten letter in Spanish by Leo Tanguma and addressed to Malaquias Montoya. Tanguma informs Montoya of an art project he is planning to do in conjunction with the public school system in Denver, Colorado, to address the high [...]

“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 [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros writes a letter to Teresa León from a military command post in Spain during the Civil War, telling her of his combat experiences at the front and comparing procedures there with artistic work. He sees that in both there are [...]

In 1964, journalist Julio Scherer García received the manuscript of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s autobiography. Three years earlier, in 1961, Scherer García had gone to Lecumberri Prison and managed to obtain some 387 pages. Siqueiros asked him to [...]

The magazine Los Huevos del Plata founded in Montevideo by Clemente Padín, published the manifesto of the Brazilian group Maldoror that politically identified itself with revolutionary and antimilitaristic principles that were plainly active during [...]

In 1965, the original manifesto of the magazine Los Huevos del Plata was an avant-garde platform advocating against Uruguayan cultural dominance by the so-called Generación del ’45, a group of writers who exerted and promoted their strong [...]

This document is the postcard produced to publicize the call for submissions organized by the Helena Producciones collective for the seventh edition of the Festival de Performance of Cali. It was released to the public on May 23, 2008 at an event [...]

In this text, art historian and activist Victor Alejandro Sorell ponders on arguments for designating Chicano people a nation: the history of the twelfth-century Aztec homeland Aztlán, —located in the U.S. Southwest,— included; the seizure of [...]

In this essay, Puerto Rican-born artist, Diogenes Ballester, gives a brief overview of Puerto Rican art and artists working in El Barrio (East Harlem, New York City) from the 1940s to 2000 and categorizes the art produced into three themes: 1) [...]

This document analyzes the national repercussions that the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores [SOTPE, Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors] had on an art scene that was then dominated by individualism. Siqueiros [...]

María Izquierdo describes the customs of the inhabitants of the small mining village of Chillán, Chile, which was damaged by a strong earthquake in January 1939. Mexico declared its support for Chile, presenting Chillán with the construction of [...]

Marta Traba, the Argentine critic who lived in Puerto Rico for some time, accepts that there is a political and cultural “art of resistance” in Latin America and in Puerto Rico. This “resistance” refuses to follow aesthetic models developed [...]

In this essay, the artist and performer Clemente Padín explains the concept of “street art and urban art” following the alternative art exhibition, Tomarte, held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, in April 1990, with the pretense of injecting [...]

In this text, Colombian art critic Eduardo Serrano—curator of the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá—presents the exhibition Arte y Política held at that institution in 1974. Serrano asserts that politics is more than a recurring theme in the work [...]

In this document, Elizabeth Martínez interviews Chicana visual artist and activist Yolanda López. The interview addresses López’s involvement in Chicano activism and community organizing, and underscores the relationship between art and [...]

Written by well-known muralist John Pitman Weber, this essay provides biographical information on Carlos Cortez, a Milwaukee-born and Chicago-based artist and poet of Mexican-Indian and German ancestry. Weber talks about the places and people Cortez [...]

The person who wrote the text for this catalogue was the curator José María Salvador. He begins his approach to the Venezuelan public figure César Rengifo by praising the many facets that made up his life and work. In addition to being a visual [...]

In this article written for the newspaper Jueves/El Nacional around 1961, Esteban Muro describes a party and performance in Caracas held by the Venezuelan avant-garde group El Techo de la Ballena. He farcically begins the letter as an oficial RSVP to [...]

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 [...]

Inspired by the native talent of Mexican workers and peasants and their love of the visual arts, El Machete invited these two segments of their audience to be the sole participants in an ongoing drawing contest. The Sindicato de Pintores y Escultores [...]

In this biographical sketch, Loló de la Torriente defines the aspiration of David Alfaro Siqueiros as wanting to be recognized as a leader of socialist fighters rather than as a painter. The text is divided into four parts: Siqueiros, the man; the [...]

The text Cry for Justice is composed of three parts: a statement entitled “To Listen and to Act,” photographs with extended captions of murals in Chicago since 1967, and an essay entitled “Museum of the Streets.” In the first part, the civil [...]

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 [...]

Oscar Leblanc interviews Diego Rivera about the destruction of the mural that Rivera painted at the Rockefeller Center in New York. Leblanc asks Rivera about his reaction to the news, and questions him about the terms of the contract, since it had [...]

This article places Diego Rivera’s Trotskyist period within his phase of painting murals in the United States and in Mexico. It reveals affinities and differences he had with various intellectuals and artists’ organizations, as well as his [...]

Given the circumstances of the time, David Alfaro Siqueiros advocated that art should be transparent and dedicated to the struggle; it should be a tool for propaganda that was also open to technical innovation. In his opinion, pure art should wait [...]

Diego Rivera, the chairman of the Comité Ejecutivo del Bloque Obrero y Campesino Nacional (BOyC) [Executive Committee of the National Workers’ and Peasants’ Block], submits a request to El Machete to publish a statement on March 4, 1929. In the [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros attempts to answer the question: “If you were nominated by the El Colegio Nacional to replace José Clemente Orozco, what would you say?” He replies in a long, complex, four-page essay. He eschews a yes or a no answer and [...]

Gerardo Murillo (Dr. Atl) is accused of pretending that General Esteban Cantú, an ardent supporter of President Venustiano Carranza, should rebel against the established government. By denouncing this “attempt” of coup d’état, the General [...]

This article shows how the personalities in arts and politics are intimately linked. The long essay describes the defense that Dr. Atl made of a "seat" in the National Congress. It is about a lawmakers’ bench. In these elections, in spite of having [...]

In 1995, Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri wrote “El Manifesto: Notes on El Puerto Rican Embassy,” which describes the sociopolitical condition of Puerto Ricans as a colonial people whose sense of nationhood is expressed and maintained through the [...]

In this essay, artist Fernando Salicrup recalls his first years at Taller Boricua [Puerto Rican Workshop]. Salicrup notes that he was introduced to the collective by the artist Jorge Soto, and during the 1970s, he was also influenced by poets such as [...]

This essay is on “Hachepiencia,” the manifesto produced by the Uruguayan group Los hachepientos, which was formed by Clemente Padín, Héctor Paz, and Juan José Linares. The principal objectives of the group were outlined in the manifesto [...]

This article by Francisco R. Pintos is a response to the one by Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui published in the previous issue of Movimiento journal. Whereas Ortiz Saralegui was conciliatory in his approach to the problem of the relationship between “pure [...]

This article by Juvenal Ortiz Saralegui formed part of the early debates in the leftist press in Uruguay on the relationship between art and politics, debates that largely ensued in the publication of the Confederación de Trabajadores Intelectuales [...]

This article advocates “social art” in Uruguay in the framework of the ideological battle between capitalist society and the Soviet Communist regime. The author clearly supports the latter position when he asserts that not even the members of the [...]

In this interview, Diego Rivera begins by defining art and explaining its importance to society. In his opinion, “art is better in a society where there are no class divisions.” According to him, “art is able to stimulate very specific [...]

In this article, Diego Rivera affirms that he does not know Alvarado Rubio, an employee of the Embassy of Guatemala during the regime of dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, and that it is from there that the lies published in Impacto begin. Rivera also [...]

In this text, Coral Gilbert and Ricardo Frazer interview Carlos Cortez, a Chicago artist, poet, and social activist. Cortez speaks about his parents’ radicalism and artistic involvements and the part they played in his personal development. He [...]

In this interview, Carlos Cortez talks about his artistic influences, including the Mexican muralists, Käthe Kollwitz, and Rembrandt, among others. He considers the social, political, and economic motivations that underpin his art. He also describes [...]

In this brief statement, Gilbert Sanchez Lujan, artist and founding member of the Los Angeles Chicano art collective, Los Four, defines the term “pocho” as it relates to Chicano art and cultural identity. Pocho, previously employed by Mexicans as [...]

This essay is a statement by artist José Montoya, from Sacramento, California, on the compromised state of Chicano art at that moment (1986). He argues that there is a divide between Chicano artists who wish to remain true to the intentions and [...]

Entitled “La función social del arte,” this article discusses one of the final lectures given by philosopher Carlos Vaz Ferreira. In the lecture, Vaz Ferreira describes the figure of an intellectual not committed to the social and political [...]

Diego Rivera, author of this essay, conducts a political analysis of the role that workers and peasants played as allies of the government in the struggle against the “reaction;” that is, a coup d’état carried out against the government that [...]

Martí Casanovas discusses the two qualities to be found in Tina Modotti’s photographs, referring on the one hand to the formalist, aesthetic value of her work and, on the other, highlighting its social importance as a propaganda tool used on [...]

Jesús Guerrero Galván makes some observations about the production by Leopoldo Méndez, within the context of several group exhibitions that were held in 1926. He qualifies the social function of the œuvre by his colleague and considers his [...]

David Alfaro Siqueiros, writing in El Machete, invites the proletariat to discuss their problems. His goal is to counter the middle-class press, where the disenfranchised are unrepresented. The article explains that the walls of public buildings have [...]