An Indonesian-language photo poster on what it calls the Northwest Region of the United States, filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 3 September 1957. A map of nine states, captioned photographs of Sun Valley, Denver, Bingham Canyon and wheat fields, and a table of regional statistics fill the sheet (NAID 6949119).
A region by the numbers
A table of figures does much of this sheet's work. Under the heading for nine states, from Colorado to Wyoming, it lists area, population, newspapers and their circulation, telephones, radios, television sets, motor vehicles, colleges, students, museums and libraries. Around it, the archive describes a map highlighting the nine states and photographs of golf at Sun Valley, a concrete-testing machine in Denver, a Utah copper mine, a mining school, cattle, the Denver capitol and a wheat harvest.
DAERAH BARATLAUT
AMERIKA SERIKAT
[...]
Ke-9 negarabagian daerah Baratlaut ini mempunjai:
Daerah - - 824.089 mil persegi
Penduduk - - - - 7.987.326
Suratkabar - - - - - - 175
Djumlah terbitan - 2.555.000
Telepon - - - - - 2.012.000
Radio - - - - - 6.567.587
Alat televisi - - 1.350.570
Kendaraan motor - - 4.039.525
Perguruantinggi & Universitas 149
[...]
Gandum dan djagung tumbuh disetiap Padang Luas disini, salah satu „bakul roti" jang besar didunia.
The archive's machine translation, which it labels unverified, closes with "Wheat and corn grow on every wide plain here, one of the world's great 'bread baskets'." Its note says the old Indonesian spelling is kept as printed, and that its rendering of one agency name as the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is an interpretation.
The record
The maker line names the U.S. Information Agency and its State Department predecessor, in the National Archives series Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The catalog date is 3 September 1957. FRAME classes the source as blurred and lists the themes as economy and finance, and science and technology. Purpose: "Persuade or win support."
What the text admits and the pictures leave out
FRAME tags glittering generalities and card stacking. Its note says only prosperity, leisure, industry and abundance are shown, with no hardship or conflict.
That is true of the photographs. The text is a little more candid. In the archive's translation it calls the region one of "harsh climates, very hot and very cold, repeated storms," and says farming and ranching outweigh other work "in this thinly populated region." The photographs do not show the storms or the extremes of heat and cold. They show a golf lesson, a testing machine and a capitol.
Counting radios and telephones is a fair way to describe a place, and a reader in Djakarta could do the arithmetic for himself. The selection is the argument. A table that lists 6,567,587 radios for 7,987,326 people invites a comparison the poster never states.
A Dutch sheet from the agency's files, U.S.A. poster 58a, presents another American place, Independence Hall. The program is on the USIA posters abroad hub.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Northwest Region of the U.S. poster (Indonesian, distributed in Djakarta). U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program). Catalog date September 3, 1957.
- U.S. National Archives, Record Group 306, Posters in Asia, Latin America, Middle East, NAID 6949119, 306-PPB-211, catalog record, retrieved by the archive October 4, 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
