Atentado en Santo Domingo

Date: 1935

Medium: Block print

Dimensions (cm.): 20.0 x 25.6

Variants: The text on the flag, ABAJO LA EXPLOTACION CAPITALISTA, as seen on the volante, is not yet carved in the impression of the print held by the Museo Nacional de la Estampa.

Alternate titles: Los dorados en acción

Published edition: Unknown

Contemporary publication: LEAR volante, Cómo pretenden

References: Exposición de Homenaje 405

Commentary: This image was used in the volante Cómo pretenden (How They Try) and addressed the threat of the Camisas Doradas, who drew much of their power from psychological tactics. Like the Hoja popular No. 1, this image shows Camisas Doradas with clubs, daggers and pistols, attacking a group of unarmed demonstrators. The workers hold a banner that reads, in Spanish, “Down with Capitalist Exploitation,” and one of them slumps wounded on the ground holding a pole in his hand. 

At the time Méndez made these prints a strong anti-fascist movement was arising in Mexico, in opposition to an alliance of wealthy reactionaries, the conservative faction of the Catholic Church, and pro-fascist politicians who supported Franco, Mussolini and Hitler. Méndez’s images portray the brutality directed against the Left by Mexican fascists at this time. Hoja popular No. 1 and Cómo pretenden portray fascist violence against weak and helpless proletarian victims, a theme that became more prevalent in Méndez’s anti-fascist prints of the late 1930s and early '40s, and Méndez often looked to Posada for inspiration in portraying the events of the day. In his crime scenes Posada often depicted foregrounds filled with struggling figures, and the upraised knife wielded by one of the Camisas Doradas in Cómo pretenden looks like a murder weapon in one of Posada’s many scenes of stabbings. In this print, Méndez also used Posada’s convention for gunfire, as he had in A la Guerra, A la Guerra, drawing a puffy in cloud of smoke to represent the bullet that hits the standing worker in the chest. (Deborah Caplow)

Catalogue record number: 597