UCLA

The posters analyzed in this project map out a Chicana/o-Central American solidarity nexus with important implications for imaging solidarity in our contemporary moment during which we are witnessing an increased dehumanization of Central Americans at the hands of multiple nation states. I conceptualize this as “a genealogy of solidarity” and offer it as both the object explored and an approach for complicating a linear Chicana/o art historiography. This historiography has discursively defined poster production in a progressive, linear trend moving from highly politicized content during the 1960s to a decrease in overtly political imagery in our contemporary moment. As I argue and elaborate, this has the inadvertent consequence of not recognizing historical moments of Chicana/o/x visual solidarity with Central America(ans). As such, this project offers the following contributions. By returning to the archive and analyzing poster creation across multiple generations of artists, this project contributes to existing scholarship on Chicana/o political posters by drawing out the mentorship relationships between artists and offers an alternative history of political poster production that does not cease in 1975. Secondly, a genealogy of solidarity helps tracks the lasting legacy of Chicana/o political poster production from the 1970s and into our contemporary moment. It documents a longer history of solidarity between Chicana/o communities and Central Americans made possible by the Third World politics prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area. I conclude by noting the potential importance of centros, print studios, and workshops as crucial sites for understanding the connections between artists’ generations and set out the conceptual parameters for what I term a “popular art consciousness” present in the San Francisco Bay Area. This project rests and makes its contributions at the interface between Chicana/o Studies and Central American Studies.