Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the formation of socialist solidarity networks in Africa, North America, and Latin America through the proliferation of the image of the woman and mother revolutionary in political posters.

Paper long abstract:

In the late twentieth century, the image of the armed woman and mother revolutionary became a global visual trope, featured in North American, Latin American, and European political posters in support of socialist armed forces in Vietnam, Eritrea, Mozambique, El Salvador, Angola, and Nicaragua—and often in posters produced within these countries. Why was the woman/mother revolutionary such a widespread figure through which the causes of socialist movements were celebrated and promoted? How were networks of solidarity demonstrated through this image? To answer these questions, I consider American, Canadian, and Cuban posters produced in solidarity with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua that depict the woman/mother revolutionary. Through comparative and iconographical analysis, I examine how the woman/mother revolutionary migrated from imagery produced by the MPLA and FSLN to posters in circulation across the globe. I argue that socialist organizations in the Western Hemisphere seized upon the image of the woman/mother revolutionary because it conflated two foundational ideals of socialism—the revolution and motherhood—into a single figure. At the same time, the image of the woman/mother revolutionary reflected the specific ideologies of the MPLA and FSLN, and the sociopolitical and cultural circumstances of the liberation movements in Angola and Nicaragua. By circulating this image, socialist-oriented organizations could speak to these realities while communicating their own ideologies to an international audience. Thus, through the study of a prevalent visual motif, a network of solidarity across continents emerges.