Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Reader's Indigest

A cover for "Salaciones del Reader's Indigest, showing a white farmer ploughing the ground.Shortly after Castro's rise to power, this satirical supplement to La Revista Mella was published in Havana.  Like a kind of anti-Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern or MAD magazine for revolutionaries, nothing capitalist or imperialist was spared from ridicule. The seemingly tame front cover, with its inspirational quotation from Winston Churchill and a depiction of a hard working European farmer, dissolves into a fierce social critique when opened fully.

The previous image unfolded to show that the farmer's plough is actually being pulled by a pair of black men with their necks bound by a yoke.

The issue goes on to lampoon bastions of middle-class America: Coca-Cola, Reader's Digest, and the Saturday Evening Post.  Despite the anti-capitalistic theme, some of the humor is universal, like the condensed version of Romeo and Juliet, which would not have been out of place on any supermarket shelf.

Two pages of satirical advertisements.

Come see it by asking for Salaciones del Reader's Indigest, Rare PN 6790.C7 S35

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