I’m not sure about you, but most everyone I know, no matter what side of the political aisle they align with, is feeling fairly overwhelmed these days. Who isn’t anxious about which social safety net programs will be diminished or completely dismantled? Will I lose my Social Security? Will our beloved nanny be deported? Will there be any money left for the arts, farmers or education after DOGE completes is slash-and-burn operation?

Amidst this unsettling environment, Colby College Museum of Art’s “Radical Histories: Chicanx Prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum” (through June 8) reminds us of the ability of protest art to effect monumental change and, in so doing, renews our sense of agency.

Amado M. Peña Jr., “La Lechuga,” 1974, screenprint on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/ Gift of Amado M. Peña, Sr. and Maria Peña

The 60 prints on display were vehicles for challenging attitudes and loosening the grip of authority, as well as educating and agitating for change. These works, says the exhibition statement, “defy notions of American exceptionalism, heternormativity, whiteness, and borders.” All of which, of course, the current administration is attempting to reinstate as the law of the land despite the more humanitarian, liberal awareness that confuted the supremacy of these ideas from the middle of the 20th century onward.

The posters and prints on display target a number of issues, so the museum divides them into roughly five sections. It’s worth mentioning, too, that all texts are in both English and Spanish. Together We Fight (Juntos Luchamos) has to do with labor equality (particularly regarding farm workers’ movements in California and Texas). Anti-war and pro-peace expressions take form in ¡Guerra No! (used as the title for both English and Spanish texts). A section called Violent Divisions (Divisiones Violentas) looks at immigration and border violence. Rethinking América (Reflexionar Sobre Los Estados Unidos) takes on traditional mythologies of America and presents new, more inclusive interpretations of its history. Finally, Changemakers (Protagonistas del Cambio) presents portraits of pivotal figures in the struggle for a more inclusive America.

Malaquias Montoya, “Abajo con la migra,” 1977, screenprint on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/Gift of the Margaret Terrazas Santos Collection

The range of styles is as wide as the iconographies. Throughout the Together We Fight section we encounter, again and again, the eagle symbol of the United Farm Workers (UFW). It derives from stylized Aztec depictions of the bird, but the irony that it also happens to be one of the symbols of America is inescapable. For me, this section contains some of the most powerful imagery, in particular, a screenprint on paper by Amado M. Peña, Jr. called “La Lechuga” showing a head of lettuce leaking blood.

This and other posters sprang from the so-called “salad bowl strike,” a boycott called by the UFW of lettuce harvested by nonunion workers that also came with demands for better wages and working conditions. At the top, in the form of a dictionary entry, it reads “1. LETTUCE. 2. No la compre si no es union [Don’t buy it if it’s not union]. 3. Verde y muy carbona [loosely translated as ‘Green and very f—ked up’].” The combination of bright color, imagery and transgressive text packs a potent graphic punch.

Carlos Francisco Jackson, “Huelga,” 2009, screen print on paper Smithsonian American Art Museum/Gift of Drs. Harriett and Ricardo Romo

A simultaneously hopeful and sad image is “Huelga,” made in 2009 by Carlos Francisco Jackson, which looks like it was based on a photograph taken during Robert F. Kennedy’s meeting with UFW founder Cesar Chavez during the Delano Grape Strike (1965-1966). RFK championed farmworkers’ rights and asked Chavez to become a delegate to the California Democratic primary in support of Kennedy’s presidential candidacy. RFK, of course, was assassinated, but the struggle persists.

Jackson wasn’t even born until 1978. Yet this and others of his paintings is influenced by Chicanx causes (some of his works address injustices visited upon braceros, or Mexican migrant workers, who were stripped naked and fumigated against lice by being sprayed with toxic pesticides such as DDT). Chavez, of course, is a legendary folk hero. But despite contradictory legacies that paint him as either devil or saint, “Huelga” is evidence that his actions, as well as the images created by Chicanx artists to promote them, changed the course of American history.

Carlos A. Cortéz, “Ricardo Flores-Magón,” 1978, linocut on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/Museum purchase

There are portraits of inspirational insurgent figures with whom many of us might not be familiar. Ricardo Flores Magón, for example, was an activist and anarchist whose writings fueled the Mexican Revolution. A linocut on paper by Carlos A. Cortéz, done in the style of the Zapata-era broadsheets, shows Magón behind bars in prison stripes holding a diatribe he has just penned against art for art’s sake (the logical conclusion being that art without political content has nothing to say).

Or there is Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan priest and poet who espoused liberation theology, a revolutionary strain of Christianity that many Latin people subscribed to, which combined Catholic and Communist doctrines. “The four Gospels are all equally Communist,” he maintained. “I’m a Marxist who believes in God, follows Christ and is a revolutionary for his Kingdom.”

Oscar Melara, “Untitled (Richard Nixon and bomb),” 1969-73, screenprint on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/Gift of Lincoln Cushing/Docs Populi

On the anti-war front, we have Oscar Melara’s splenetic “Untitled (Richard Nixon and bomb),” which is divided into four panels, each showing the green-faced president who ordered the shelling of Vietnamese camps in Cambodia. From frame to frame, Nixon watches the downward trajectory of an explosive projectile, his mouth widening with each section to arrive, in the final quadrant, at a malignant grin just as the bomb detonates.

Ester Hernandez, “Wanted,” 2010, screenprint on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/ Gift of the artist

There are other flashes of mordant humor, such as “Wanted” by Ester Hernández, which was allegedly issued by the “Office of the President.” It shows mugshots of the “terrorist” Virgin of Guadalupe. The screenprint lists her aliases, her physical characteristics and the admonition “Should be Considered Powerful and Dangerous.”

Yolanda López, “Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?,” 1978, offset lithograph on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/ Museum purchase through the Samuel and Blanche Koffler Acquisition Fund

Immigration was an issue then as it is now. “Abajo Con La Migra” by Malaquias Montoya is an announcement for a 1977 meeting in Oakland sponsored by the Bay Area Committee on Immigration to discuss putting an end to deportations of undocumented people (though today, of course, we’re deporting even those who are documented). It confronts us with an image of the Statue of Liberty, against a background of barbed wire, holding a meat cleaver where her torch should be. An immigrant is impaled on one of the spikes on her crown, a symbol of welcome turned lethally exclusionary.

Yolanda López’s offset lithograph on paper “Who’s the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim?” riffs on Uncle Sam’s “We Want You” recruitment posters, replacing the star-spangled white figure with a pre-Colombian indigenous man accusingly pointing at the viewer while crumpling a copy of Jimmy Carter’s immigration plan with his other hand.

Julio Salgado, “Queer Butterfly: I Exist,” 2019, inkjet print on paper. Smithsonian American Art Museum/ Museum purchase through the Lichtenberg Family Foundation

Calls for a more accepting American idyll also abound, and run the gamut of attitudes. There are simple statements of non-white power such as Xico González’s “Stand” (an afro-headed woman with the caption “Stand for Justice and Equality for All”) and “Brown and Proud. Todos somos Arizona [We’re all Arizona]” by Melanie Cervantes. At the angrier reaches of the spectrum is Rupert Garcia’s “Down with the Whiteness.” The brave new world for which these posters advocate also encompasses LGBTQ+ people. Julio Salgado’s “Queer Butterfly: Yo Existo” shows a figure with wings, the left wing sporting messages in Spanish: “Joteria Migrante,” a reclaimed slur that used to refer to nonheteronormative Mexicans and “Amor Familia Unidad Paz.” On the right wing are their English translations.

It’s hard to leave the show and remain oblivious to the fact that all the progress these posters exalted are now imperiled. It’s also impossible to walk out of the museum’s Upper Jetté Gallery without wanting to join a picket line, incite a demonstration or, at the very least, write your representatives in Congress.

This column is supported by The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Radical Histories: Chicanx Prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum”
WHERE: Colby College Museum of Art, 5600 Mayflower Hill, Waterville
WHEN: Through June 8
HOURS: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday (Thursdays until 9 p.m.), noon-5 p.m. Sunday
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: 207-859-5600, colby.edu/museum