Four bowing Nazi officers and a grinning gunman: Arias Bernal for Washington's Latin American office

An untitled poster drawn by Arias Bernal and published by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in Washington. A grinning, armed man in a sombrero faces four small, bald Nazi officers before a map of Latin America. The archive dates it 1940 and holds it as NAID 44268147.

A poster with no slogan

The sheet carries no headline. Its argument is the drawing. The FRAME record describes a grinning man in a sombrero, armed, facing four little bald Nazi officers who bow before him with their hats knocked crooked. A map of Latin America fills the background. The archive's content note adds that the figure wears a bandolier and that the Axis officers and the Mexican figure are both caricatures.

The only printed words are the publisher's line and the artist's signature.

Publicado por El Coordinador de Asuntos

Interamericanos, Washington, E.U.A.

[signature:] ARIAS BERNAL

A catalog label that does not fit

The National Archives title quoted in the record calls this "Portuguese War Poster [1]." The printed words are Spanish, and the archive marks its transcription as Spanish. The bracketed description that leads the catalog title is not printed on the sheet; the transcription holds only the publisher's line and the signature.

Laughing at the enemy, and at a stereotype

The archive tags one technique, name-calling, carried by caricature: the Nazis are made small and ridiculous so the viewer laughs instead of weighing an argument. The record lists the audience as "Foreign public" and the purpose as "Persuade or win support," and it adds race and ethnicity to the themes.

That last tag matters. A Washington office, speaking to Spanish-language readers abroad, put its name to a hero drawn in a sombrero and bandolier. The figure wins the scene, but he is still built from a stock image. A government that signs its work abroad deserves credit for signing it; this one did, in Spanish, on the sheet. It also owns the picture it signed.

Other sheets from the same office on this site: El Enemigo de la Humanidad, an indictment of Japan, and Alexey Brodovitch's Libertad de Palabra. The anti-Nazi hub gathers American sheets aimed at the Nazi regime.