Capitalismo del Pueblo: a 1957 Guatemala poster for People's Capitalism

A Spanish-language poster, No. 62, signed R. G. Goyri and filed with U.S. Information Agency posters, catalog date 3 June 1957. It advertises a free "Capitalismo del Pueblo" (People's Capitalism) exhibition at the Gimnasio Olimpico, 4 to 19 May, with a worker holding up a house and a family (NAID 6948885).

What the sheet prints

One giant figure fills the page: a man in blue work overalls. In one raised hand he holds a small model house. In the other he holds a tiny family. Behind him rise a tall office building, factory chimneys and a car. The words are few and practical.

CAPITALISMO DEL PUEBLO

Visite la EXPOSICION en el GIMNASIO OLIMPICO ENTRADA del 4 al 19 de Mayo GRATIS

[Translation] People's Capitalism. Visit the exhibition at the Olympic Gymnasium, 4 to 19 May. Admission free.

Who issued it

The artist signed it: R. G. Goyri. FRAME credits a U.S. Information Service post in Guatemala and files the sheet in Record Group 306, the U.S. Information Agency's posters for Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The catalog date is 3 June 1957, after the run of dates the poster advertises; the poster itself gives no year. The record does not say who built the exhibition or what was in it.

How to read it

The picture makes a simple promise: under this system the working man holds his own house and keeps his family safe, and the skyline behind him is his. FRAME tags it glittering generalities and plain folks. The phrase itself borrows a word, "people's," that rival governments of the day used for their own systems, and turns it the other way.

There is a real argument here. Private property, open markets and wages a worker can save are a defensible answer to poverty, and many readers of this site would make that case without embarrassment. The irony is in the delivery. A government agency's poster file holds this advertisement for a show about the merits of private enterprise, and the poster gives no hint of which government. A system that trusts free choice could afford to sign its own advertisement. The archive's CARE milk poster from the same year at least names the giver.