Leopoldo Méndez was a longtime member of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Graphic Art Workshop), which he helped to found in 1937. From the outset, the left-wing and collaborative mission of this printmaking workshop was committed to representative art, declaring that “in order to serve the people, art must reflect the social reality of the times and have unity of content and form.” Méndez’s "Imperialist Industrialization" points to the complexities of Mexico’s shift from an overwhelmingly agricultural economy to an industrial one, particularly when such a post-revolutionary, modernist goal was implemented at the expense of the poor. Here a rickety, jerry-rigged cart piled haphazardly high with industrial parts, evocative of a factory, is being pulled forward by scores of anonymous workers who are bent over in their exertion.