Portraits of Transnational Collaboration: Retracing and Remaking the Image of Augusto C. Sandino in San Francisco

Abstract:Crafted as posters to promote solidarity gatherings, a series of illustrations of Augusto C. Sandino circulated in San Francisco between 1978 and 1979. Later modified as postcards, these images became part of the iconography of the Mission Cultural Center. A reading of these graphics reveals a visual imagery of resistance that weaves local and transnational aesthetics and praxis. A consideration of their changing form and circulation unveil some of the histories of Central American-Mexican-Chicanx collaborations in California, while introducing us to a network of artists and activists that forged a new cultural platform and practices of alliances. A formal analysis of these images and their transformations suggests that they anticipate the ideological trajectory of Sandino's legacy and depict the historical processes therein. In their changes and re-creations, these renderings of Sandino document the dynamics of a Latinx collaboration, specifically between Mexican/Americans and Central Americans in Northern California, while reflecting the gentrification of the Mission District and the San Francisco Bay Area.