Introduction

Visual Index (Entire Poster Collection)

Catalogue

Chronology of the War

Acknowledgements

Lists of References

Afterword: Herbert R. Southworth Collection

Campo! Semanario campesino

[Campo! The weekly country magazine]. . Confederación nacional del trabajo Lithograph, 3 colors; 22 x 16 cm.

This poster is an advertisement for a periodical Campo! published by the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). The poster shows a farmer wearing a red shirt with a clenched fist raised in the air. Both the color of shirt and his gesture were symbols of the revolutionary movements in Republican Spain. Even though mechanized farm machinery was quite scarce during the civil war, many of the posters directed toward farmers and other agricultural laborers use the tractor as a symbol of agricultural labor and success. The farmer behind the wheel of the tractor may also be serving as an image of progress and efficiency especially when juxtaposed with the outline of a farmer driving a horse-drawn plow in the background.

Periodicals, as well as posters and the radio, were common means for political organizations and government to communicate with their constituents. The first edition of Campo! was published February 6, 1937 in Barcelona. It cost 15 cents. The masthead of the newspaper indicates that the CNT and the AIT (Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores) published the newspaper. The first edition contained various articles on chicken farming as well as a discussion of the collectivization of agriculture in Republican Spain. A letter from the editor on the front page indicates that the paper was intended to serve the "Iberian proletariat" and to be an open forum for all ideologies. Consequently, the article on collectivization supports the process without supporting the mandatory imposition of collectivization.

The anarcho-syndicalist movement, of which the CNT was the largest and most formalized representation in Spain, was diffuse among the rural population in region of Aragon, where Barcelona is situated. Nonetheless, harkening back to earlier attempts in December of 1933, nineteenth rural collectives were established at the start of the Civil War in July 1936. Seven of these were established under the auspices of CNT militias. Since the Aragonese peasantry showed a propensity toward spontaneous collectivization, it may explain why the article in the first edition of Campo! is quick to diffuse the memory of the forced collectivization imposed by the CNT militias at the start of the Civil War. This move was especially important in the context of the CNT's waning political power in Republican Spain as evidenced by the disbandment of the CNT-FAI organized Council of Aragon in September 1937.

This poster was produced by the CNT. The artist is unknown.