Andrea Gómez’s print Tributo a Cárdenas demonstrates the respect and admiration the Mexican people felt toward their former president. This poster advertises a meeting to honor Lázaro Cárdenas for his selection as a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize. Created in 1949 by the Soviet government, the peace prize was awarded annually to an individual who “strengthened peace among peoples.”

Each of the four images of Cárdenas’s presidency in this print features a scene and a text glorifying him for his achievements. The passage under the stoic profile portrait at the top left states that Cárdenas had “expressed its Mexico’s most clear and resounding desires for liberty and social justice, friendship, understanding and peace for all the people.” To the right of this portrait is a scene of Cárdenas overseeing the construction of a factory. In the third image, he is monumentalized, placed in the front corner overlooking a landscape so that he appears much larger than the rest of the figures. The writing accompanying this picture exalts Cárdenas for his loyalty to the Mexican people and for his commitment to “land and liberty, so that the peasant finds through his work his liberation and not his slavery.” Cárdenas’s arm sweeps over the landscape as he leads Mexico to a better future. The scene highlights many of the reforms Cárdenas enacted: the plow and oxen represent his agrarian reform, while the factories expelling steam symbolize his effort to improve labor conditions. The last image depicts a peasant family tacking a picture of Cárdenas on the wall of their hut; as the text below reads, “In the most humble shack of our country, there is always a place of worship for Lázaro Cárdenas.”

from Costa, Para la Gente: Art, Politics and Cultural Identity of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Notre Dame, 2009)