The USSR Is Defending the Freedom of the World. Let’s Help! La USSR Está Defendiendo la Libertad del Mundo. ¡Ayudémosla!

Date

1941

Creator

In this large poster from 1941 exhorting the Mexican public to help the USSR "defend the freedom of the world," Zalce’s chaotic, caricatured style gives way to a bold, clear approach. Unlike his smaller, more complex posters such as the Risa del Pueblo, this print was meant to be read in an instant by working-class Mexicans. There is no sarcasm or dark comedy to convey an unjust situation, simply a call to action. Zalce’s lithograph reflects the international, rather than domestic, concerns of the TGP [Taller de Gráfica Popular]. Indeed, the function of this poster is to promote an international proletariat against the common enemy of fascism—in this case, creating a particular bond with the USSR. Explaining this bond in an interview commenting on Leopoldo Méndez’s visit to Moscow, TGP member Marianna Yampolsky stated, "The references in all of the talks were about the twin or sisterly feeling between the two groups—the one in the Soviet Union and the one in Mexico." The emphatic ¡Ayudémosla!, or "Let’s Help," also connotes a sense of unity within Mexican society. The Soviet agitprop poster movement of the 1920s was a particularly apparent source of influence for this lithograph, as for all of the TGP’s propagandistic posters. Zalce would most certainly have looked to examples of these Soviet posters in creating his own iconography of the soldier heroically poised to defend against the implied threat of fascism. from Costa, Para la Gente: Art, Politics and Cultural Identity of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Notre Dame, 2009)