# Acapulco 1959: two presidents side by side on a USIS Mexico poster

A Spanish-language poster headed "ACAPULCO 1959," signed by the U.S. Information Service in Mexico and filed under 1 January 1959. Matching crayon-style portraits of Adolfo Lopez Mateos, President of Mexico, and Dwight D. Eisenhower sit side by side on an orange ground, both signed Daniel Nuñez '59 (NAID 6948892).

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      Acapulco 1959 portrait poster: Lopez Mateos and Eisenhower (Spanish poster distributed in Mexico)

      Acapulco 1959: two presidents side by side on a USIS Mexico poster
      ACAPULCO 1959: matching portraits of Adolfo Lopez Mateos and Dwight D. Eisenhower, signed by the U.S. Information Service in Mexico. NAID 6948892.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Transfer
      DateJanuary 1, 1959Made byU.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East seriesMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationNARANAID 6948892; Record Group 306SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), RG 306, Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America, Middle East , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306) U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, January 1, 1959. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 6948892, 306-PPB-69).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A Spanish-language poster headed "ACAPULCO 1959," signed by the U.S. Information Service in Mexico and filed under 1 January 1959. Matching crayon-style portraits of Adolfo Lopez Mateos, President of Mexico, and Dwight D. Eisenhower sit side by side on an orange ground, both signed Daniel Nuñez '59 (NAID 6948892).

## Two portraits

Two heads in crayon-style drawing share an orange sheet. One is captioned as Mexico's president, the other as the president of the United States, and the artist signed both. A place and a year head the sheet, and the last line gives the sender's name. Nothing else is printed.

ACAPULCO 1959

ADOLFO LOPEZ MATEOS

Presidente de México

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Presidente de los EE. UU.

DANIEL NUÑEZ '59 (signature, both portraits)

SERVICIO DE INFORMACION DE LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS - MEXICO

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked; the archive's English rendering of the last line is "United States Information Service - Mexico." Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 6948892, local id 306-PPB-69.

## Openly signed

This sheet tells the reader who made it. The last line names the United States Information Service in Mexico, and FRAME classes the source as openly identified. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 306 among the agency's posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, with a catalog date of 1 January 1959. The record names the artist only through the signature on both portraits. The archive gives the purpose as "Commemorate."

The archive's description adds that no other text explains the occasion. The poster does not say what happened at Acapulco in 1959 or when, and the record gives no more. This page leaves the occasion where the sheet left it.

## Equal frames

FRAME tags transfer: the matching treatment of the two leaders lets the standing of each rub off on the other. The design is careful about parity: the same drawing style, the same artist, the same form of caption, and neither man placed above the other.

For a poster sent by one government into another country, that restraint is worth noting. It flatters the host as much as the guest, and it does it in the open, with the sender's name printed where any Mexican reader could see it. The sheet's whole argument is that the two presidents stand as equals. Whether the relationship between the two countries matched the drawing is a question the poster does not raise.

The same file used equal portraits in 1956: Elections U.S.A. No. 2 printed both party tickets at one size. Spanish-language sheets for the region include Actualidades Mundiales No. 64 and the Guatemalan People's Capitalism poster. The U.S. Information Agency hub places the posts from Mexico City to Manila side by side.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Acapulco 1959 portrait poster: Lopez Mateos and Eisenhower (Spanish poster distributed in Mexico), catalog date 1 January 1959. U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East series.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 306, NAID 6948892 (306-PPB-69), retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/acapulco-1959-lopez-mateos-eisenhower-portrait-spanish-1959/