Gráfica del 68 (Mexican Student Movement Graphics)

• Cut the image in linoleum, pull it through a silkscreen or scratch it into a mimeograph stencil, in one dark ink with at most a red, on newsprint, tissue paper or cardboard, so a design reaches the street the same day.
• Reduce each message to one emblem the public already knows. Turn the state's own against it: the Olympic peace dove run through by a bloodied bayonet, Lance Wyman's México 68 logotype and the sports pictograms framing protest slogans, the riot police and the president as a gorilla with a club. Or use the movement's own signs: the mouth padlocked or chained, political prisoners such as Demetrio Vallejo almost always behind bars, the V for victory and the raised fist.
• Lock the emblem to a few words, usually in cut, brushed or stencilled capitals ('¡Libertad de expresión!', 'Gorilismo no', 'Prensa corrupta', 'Libertad presos políticos'), rather than a narrative scene or a long text.
• Size each piece for how it travels: placards, mantas and posters for marches, mimeographed, rotary-printed or silkscreened flyers of a letter sheet or less, long silkscreened volante strips (about 13 × 52 cm), and pegas mostly smaller than a hand (some only 6 × 9 cm), printed on rolls of gummed paper, that can be stuck on a bus or a wall in seconds.
• Draw fast and leave it looking unfinished; when time is short, reissue or rework an existing print, as Mexiac did with his 1954 '¡Libertad de expresión!' and Moreno Capdevila with his 1958 print 'Las botas', turned into the silkscreen 'No más agresión!'.
• Leave the work unsigned, marked at most with the initials of the Consejo Nacional de Huelga or of the school or organisation that answered for its content, both because it belongs to the movement and for the makers' safety.

Mexico City, second half of 1968: brigades of students and teachers who opened the printmaking workshops of the Antigua Academia de San Carlos (UNAM's Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas) and the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado 'La Esmeralda' (INBA) to the student movement and its Consejo Nacional de Huelga, joined by improvised workshops in other faculties, until the Tlatelolco massacre of 2 October and the repression that followed (the army entered San Carlos in November) broke the movement, whose strike council lifted the strike on 4 December and dissolved itself on 6 December

1. MUAC, UNAM, 'Gráfica del 68. Imágenes rotundas' (1 September–30 December 2018), https://muac.unam.mx/exposicion/grafica-del-68?lang=en (curators Amanda de la Garza and Sol Henaro; collection assembled by Grupo Mira members and donated by Arnulfo Aquino; brigades of teachers and students at San Carlos and La Esmeralda opened their print workshops to the movement; mimeographs, stencils and presses watched by the state; crediting the artist was secondary and anonymity became a security measure; many posters attributed only later)
2. MUAC, UNAM, 'Imágenes y revuelta: la gráfica del 68. Lista de obra', https://muac.unam.mx/assets/docs/listadeobra_grafica68_final.pdf (donation of Arnulfo Aquino, 2002; techniques reviewed in 2018; attributions from Aquino and Pérez Vega, Imágenes y símbolos del 68, UNAM, 2011; titles, formats (cartel, volante, pega, pancarta), techniques and dimensions of every exemplar cited here, the dove placard credited to Jesús Martínez and the Vallejo poster attributed to Rogelio Naranjo; formats behind principle 4: the Becerril volantes 12.6–14.4 × 51.3–52.7 cm, other volantes 17.1 × 24.9 cm (silkscreen) and 24.9 × 19.1 cm (rotary press), a mimeographed sheet 21.5 × 28 cm, pegas from 5.8 × 8.6 cm to 8.8 × 12.6 cm and one of 21.4 × 28 cm)
3. Julio César Schara, 'La Gráfica del 68', i+Diseño 11 (2015), https://www.diseno.uma.es/i_diseno/i_diseno_11/pdf/schara_pdf.pdf (made under the influence of the Taller de Gráfica Popular; the French May posters almost unknown in Mexico; bayonet, gorilla, bloodied dove and padlocked mouth as the first symbols, against the official symbols of peace and the Olympics; images of Demetrio Vallejo, Che Guevara, the V for victory and the clenched fist on streets and buses; a sequence on the freedom of political prisoners with portraits of Vallejo, Campa and anonymous students, almost always behind bars; linocut adopted for speed and low cost; prints combined with hand-set type or drawn on mimeograph stencils; silkscreen, less often photoengraving and offset; pegas on rolls of gummed paper; form mostly figurative with expressionist traits; black, red and the tone of tissue paper or newsprint predominant; quick, nervous, unfinished drawing; Olympic slogans turned against tanks and soldiers; a paramilitary raid at San Carlos destroyed the workshop's collection)
4. Arnulfo Aquino Casas, 'Gráfica política en México: tradición contemporánea', a review of Revista ranAzul, año 7, special issue (July–December 2018, UAM Xochimilco), Con-temporánea (INAH) 6:11 (January–June 2019), https://con-temporanea.inah.gob.mx/mirar_libros_arnulfo_aquino_num11, read in the Internet Archive snapshot of 5 March 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20240305120052/https://con-temporanea.inah.gob.mx/mirar_libros_arnulfo_aquino_num11, since the live host no longer resolves (teachers Adolfo Mexiac and Francisco Moreno Capdevila; Rius's cartoon gorillas behind the gorilla with a club; the Paris May graphics not known until later; Olympic symbols; freedom for political prisoners in the movement's list of demands; after Rebeca Monroy: Moreno Capdevila's silkscreen 'No más agresión' alludes to his 1958 print 'Las botas', based on a photograph by Enrique Bordes Mangel, and the rabid dog in Pérez Vega's 'Año de la prensa vendida'; in Aquino's own text: Mexiac's 'Libertad de expresión' published in 1954 and reissued in 1968; the dove-and-bayonet stencil a collective creation of Carlos Olachea, Mario Olmos and Jesús Martínez, with Olmos publicly disputing the attribution to Martínez; Eduardo Garduño on the agreement at the ENAP not to sign anything except with the CNH initials or those of organisations answering for the content, for the movement's sake and for safety; the number of dead and disappeared still unknown; quoting Cristina Híjar on stencil, mimeograph, linoleum, silkscreen, pegas and mantas)
5. UNAM Global, 'Imágenes y revuelta: la gráfica del 68', https://unamglobal.unam.mx/global_revista/imagenes-y-revuelta-la-grafica-del-68-una-exhibicion-virtual-a-partir-del-2-de-octubre-en-la-pagina-web-del-muac/ (posters, pegas, prints and flyers; linocut prints and mimeographed flyers; Lance Wyman's México 68 design reused and subverted; the Olympic dove attacked by a bloodied bayonet; the government and army as an ape-like power)
6. El Financiero, 'Gráfica del 68, una huella de libertad', https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/culturas/grafica-del-68-una-huella-de-libertad/ (silkscreen and mimeograph; the México 68 logotype and the Olympic sports signage used to frame protest messages; Díaz Ordaz caricatured with an ape's face; a young man's face with a chain and padlock over the mouth; the army entered San Carlos in November 1968 and destroyed much of the work)
7. Dartmouth Library, 'Modern Mexico' course exhibit, 'Libertad de Expresión (1968)', https://course-exhibits.library.dartmouth.edu/s/modernmexico/item/2273 (flyer designed and printed by students of the Academia de San Carlos in 1968 from a plate supplied by Adolfo Mexiac, then teaching there; his image of a silenced Tzotzil man in chains, made in 1954 to protest the coup in Guatemala and reused by the railway and teachers' movements)
8. Gaceta UNAM, 'El Movimiento se disuelve; perdura en la memoria' (suplemento 30, 5 November 2018), https://www.gaceta.unam.mx/el-movimiento-se-disuelve-perdura-en-la-memoria/ (the CNH announced on 4 December 1968 that it was lifting the strike after 130 days, and voted to dissolve itself on 6 December)

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