Resources of Brazil, a commodity map that admits its own limits

Resources of Brazil: Products She Contributes to the Defeat of the Axis is a map poster with no issuer printed, held by the National Archives in its World War II foreign-poster series (44-PF-852). A commodity map and three small maps of Latin America sit beside a Brazilian flag. The archive dates it 1939.

Mostly a map

Most of this sheet is geography. A commodity map of Brazil carries a legend of products. Three smaller maps show the population, topography and rainfall of Latin America, and a Brazilian flag completes the layout. A short block of text explains what the reader is looking at.

Resources of BRAZIL

PRODUCTS SHE CONTRIBUTES TO THE DEFEAT OF THE AXIS

[...] We rely upon these products to keep the Arsenal of Democracy at peak production.

The symbols of commodity outposts are only relatively accurate. They do not show exact proportions of any one product but the areas of major, intermediate and minor production.

The legend, as the archive transcribes it, begins with sugar and wheat and ends with iron and chrome; coffee, rubber, gold, industrial diamonds and quartz crystal are among the entries. A second key sorts land into intensive agriculture, grazing, forest, and agriculturally unproductive ground.

One phrase does the work

The FRAME catalog calls the poster mostly informational and tags one technique, glittering generalities, as the closest fit. The phrase it points to is "Arsenal of Democracy," a label of virtue set where a measured claim about output could have gone. The headline does something similar in a quieter way: it calls Brazil's products a contribution to defeating the Axis, but the sheet gives no figure for any of them.

The note on the sheet deserves credit. It tells the reader that the map's symbols are approximate and do not show proportions.

Who made it, and for whom

No issuer is printed. The maker line reads "United States government," with a note that the issuer is not printed and a pointer to the National Archives foreign-poster series. The catalog lists the audience as "Foreign public," and gives the purpose as "Persuade or win support." The text is in English. The record does not say where the sheet was shown.

The Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, which put its name on its sheets, published El Enemigo de la Humanidad and Arias Bernal's Nazi officers. Those carry a publisher's line. This one does not. Washington's wartime offices are set out in the Roosevelt administration essay.