Posters, Records, Spoons: The Revolutionary Design of Allende's Popular Unity

Under the Plaza de la Ciudadanía, in front of the south façade of the La Moneda presidential palace in Santiago, Chile, those who appreciate history and art can find a treasure. The exhibition How to Design a Revolution. The Chilean Way to Design, set up in the basement of the center of the capital, at the La Moneda Cultural Center, hides true jewels of the role that design played in Salvador Allende's Popular Unity (1970-1973). For the first time, a synthesis of the posters, editorials, furniture, record collections and even the spoons that were manufactured for the campaign Half a liter of milk daily for the children of the country during that time is presented. Curators Eden Medina, Hugo Palmarola and Pedro Ignacio Alonso present a book of the same name, published by the Swiss publisher Lars Müller Publishers, as an extension of the exhibition. It is a complete record and analysis of the graphic and industrial design projects of the Allende era.

U.S. researcher Eden Medina, associate professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), began researching the Cybersyn project 20 years ago, a revolutionary technological bet that sought to control economic information coming from all corners of Chile during the Unidad Popular. During this period, the author of Technology and Politics in Salvador Allende's Chile (LOM Ediciones) met the designer Hugo Palmarola, from the Catholic University, who was also researching Cybersyn, as part of the projects carried out by the Committee for Technological Research. Thinking about the 50th anniversary of the commemoration of Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état, last September, they decided to put together an original, innovative exhibition, where the protagonist would be the explosion of creativity that marked Allende's mandate. "We knew that there was another interpretation of history, of Popular Unity, and that was design," says Palmarola on a tour of the exhibition.

Hugo Palmarola and Eden Medina, curators of the exhibition. Sofía Yanjarí

The exhibition – a joint work of the Catholic University, MIT and La Moneda Cultural Center – brings together more than 350 pieces, most of them original, from political projects developed between 1970 and 1973, many of them linked to nutrition or music, escaping from what is known about campaigns. The backbone themes were the care of the population and children, in contrast to the high-tech of Cybersync, whose operating room is meticulously replicated outside the exhibition, where visitors can experience how they intended to control the economy collectively across the country.

The main image of the exhibition, which is also the cover of the book, is a woman embracing faceless adults and children, based on a poster by designers Waldo González and Mario Quiroz. They chose it because it conveys the idea of a collective project rather than that of a caudillo directing a political process. "One of the criticisms that was made of Popular Unity is the focus they put on the men of the countryside, of the unions, when women may not appear so much in photos and posters. But the exhibition shows that they were actors in terms of the creators of the program and how the revolution was imagined," says Medina.

The replica of the Cybersyn, exhibited at the Palacio La Moneda Cultural Center.Sofía Yanjarí

The context of how the projects impacted and coexisted with the society of the time plays a key role in the exhibition with images by photographers, mainly foreigners, such as the American Ted Polumbaun, the German Leonor Mau or the Portuguese Armindo Cardoso. The effort to democratize art is reflected in how posters and murals impaled cities throughout the country, with the aim of giving all of society access to works of graphic design. For the first time, the complete original collection of the Discoteca del Cantar Popular (DICAP), a record label created between 1967 and 1973 by the Communist Youth of Chile, is on display. There are the albums of Inti Illimani and Quilapayún, for example, with the covers designed by the brothers Vicente and Antonio Larrea, enormously recognized for their work on posters, rather than for their facet linked to music.

There are real gems. As the only remaining copy of the 18 poster designs to support the anti-fascist days of prevention of a coup d'état and civil war. 9,000 copies were made of the pieces made by designers from the graphic workshop of the State Technical University, one of the focal points of repression after the democratic breakdown of 1973. They destroyed all of them, except the one on display, the curators say. "Each object in this exhibit has a 50-year history of survival. Each object has its own story and its own difficulty of being here. It's very significant," Medina says.

The bulk is original, but in the case of extinct posters, such as some from the campaign to nationalize copper, the curators worked with the cartoonist Hernán Vidal, known as Hervi, to reconstruct them. One of the most prominent efforts to replicate the objects of the period is the wall where furniture designed specifically for the National Board of Kindergartens (Junji), created in 1970, is displayed. Colorful chairs and tables built on the basis of geometric figures, with ergonomic measurements, statically admirable. They were made by the same people who designed the ultra-avant-garde Cybersyn room. With the scraps of furniture, they made everything from wooden toys to cribs.

The exhibition hall in which the furniture designed for the National Board of Kindergartens (Junji) is located. Sofía Yanjarí

"Just as there was the ideal of the new man in the socialist bloc, we propose in this curatorship that infrastructure is also for the new child," says Palmarola. An example of that is the milk dosing spoon for infants. The display can be seen on the huge walls. But the spoon is displayed in the center of the room, as the heart of the proposal. "Here, the technical or scientific nutrition project is mixed with the political project," adds the designer from the Catholic University. The object, as it could not be otherwise, is complemented by the posters and photographs that accompanied the campaign.

The most significant stories of the design experience of Popular Unity are told in the book How to Design a Revolution. The Chilean Way to Design – translated into Spanish and English – which launches this Tuesday in Santiago, on Thursday in Chillán, on Saturday in Concepción and on January 25 in Valparaíso.

A poster that promotes healthy children's nutrition, designed and printed during the Popular Unity.Sofía Yanjarí

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