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Mederos, René.

[Richard Nixon as a vampire-eagle tearing the heart out of Indochina.]

[Havana]: OSPAAAL, 1971. Halftone printed in black and red, 21” x 13.5”. CONDITION: Very good, horizontal and vertical folds, pinholes at corners, a few small chips and tears at lower-right margin.

A phantasmagoric anti-Vietnam War map by a noted Cuban artist and designer, depicting an eagle with the head of Richard Nixon bearing his vampire fangs as he grasps the heart of Indochina with his claws. 

The bright red wound torn by the eagle is centered along the Ho Chi Minh trail on the Laos–Vietnam border, a region that was indiscriminately bombed by the U.S. to attempt to disrupt communist supply lines into South Vietnam. The bombing occurred in several covert operations between 1964 and 1973, killing tens of thousands of civilians directly, as well as thousands more indirectly in following years from unexploded ordnance. When this map was published, the details about these bombings were only just becoming available to the American public. Although the cartoon features Nixon in particular, it can be understood more broadly as commentary on American imperialism and militarism in the region. The political map upon which the scene is overlaid appears to be taken from an older atlas which makes no distinction between North and South Vietnam (perhaps intentional on Mederos’s part). 

René Mederos (1933–1996) was a Cuban artist and designer whose work extolled revolutionary movements in his native country and abroad. Fiercely political, Mederos’s vibrant posters commented on Cold War-era injustices and depicted revolutionary figures—both well-known and anonymous alike—often in mundane circumstances and surrounded by lush vegetation. Born in Sagua la Grande, Cuba, Mederos worked in a Havana print shop before being appointed as Chief Designer to a leading Cuban television station. He produced his first posters in the mid-1960s. In 1969, Mederos embedded with communist Vietnamese forces along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to document the war. He returned on a similar assignment in 1972, meaning he witnessed the U.S. bombings firsthand. His resulting work was turned into a series of widely-distributed silkscreen prints. Mederos continued to work into the 1990s, producing works that honored figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. Near the end of his life, in 1991, he visited the U.S. to paint a Vietnam mural at UCLA.

The map bears the emblem of OSPAAAL (Organization in Solidarity with the People of Africa, Asia, and Latin America), a political movement and organization founded as a result of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana. The organization, which promoted anti-colonial and anti-imperial movements around the world, published several Mederos works in its revolutionary magazine Tricontinental (1966–2019), a widely-circulated international publication known for its propaganda posters. The group’s legacy continues today through the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, based in Havana. 

REFERENCES: “René Mederos 1933–1996” at Docs Populi online; Chak, Tings. “René Mederos and Ho Chi Minh’s Sandals” at Hyperallergic online; “Solidarity and design: An introduction to OSPAAAL” at the Victoria & Albert Museum online.

Item #9803

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