Cold War Exiles in Mexico: U.S. Dissidents and the Culture of Critical Resistance

In Cold War Exiles in Mexico, Rebecca M. Schreiber examines the experience and the work of American artists, writers, and filmmakers who settled in Mexico in the late 1940s and early 1950s in order to escape a political climate in the United States that was increasingly uncomfortable for left-wing cultural figures. Through an analysis of the prints, paintings, novels, and films produced in Mexico by a disparate group of artists seeking refuge from HUAC subpoenas, the Hollywood blacklist, and institutionalized racism, Schreiber asserts that the experience of exile gave rise to “a culture of critical resistance” that was “characterized by a distinctly transnational mode of cultural production” (p. xii). In other words, “coerced migration” to Mexico gave visual artists such as Elizabeth Catlett and John Wilson, novelists such as Willard Motley, and screenwriters such as Hugo Butler and Dalton Trumbo a new perspective on their home country and prompted...