Derek Larson: Made in Mexico: The Anti Communist Cartoons of Dibujos Animados S.A.

On view in the Dodd 3rd Floor landing are a selection of animated films produced in Mexico City between 1952-1956 by the studio Dibujos Animados S.A. Created with covert support from the United States Information Agency, these cartoons were
distributed throughout Latin America as part of a Cold War propaganda effort promoting American capitalism and individualism while opposing collectivist ideology.

Produced by Mexican animators using local labor, humor, and visual styles, these films reveal a transnational media operation in which American political messaging was localized and animated for regional audiences.

Slapstick comedy, didactic narration, and modernist graphic design frame capitalism as natural and inevitable while portraying communism as irrational and dangerous. The films were located through archival research conducted by Derek Larson at the National Archives in Washington, DC, in 2022 where they remained largely unexamined.

Derek Larson’s solo exhibition, Derek G. Larson: Très Mall, Episodes 1-8, is currently on view in the Margie E. West Gallery (1st Floor) through March 20. Larson is an artist, animator, and scholar based in New York City. He is Director of the Animation and Games Program at Fairleigh Dickinson University and a former editor at PBS. Both presentations are supported by UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, The Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Marjorie E. West Endowment Fund.