Poster Call Out - Getty MUI 2025 Intern Char Austria

Third World is Your World

Patricia Valencia, Aida Salazar, Shawn Mortensen

Resistant Strains: Zapatista Poster Series

Offset, 1996

Printed in: Glover, Vermont

7946

Mabuhay and hello! I’m Char Austria (she/he) and I’m a recent graduate of CSU Long Beach, with a major in Asian American Studies and a minor in Printmaking. I’m also the 2025 Getty Marrow Undergraduate intern for the Center for the Study of Political Graphics. 

As the Collections and Research intern, I’ve been able to explore and contribute to the preservation of CSPG’s vast collection, and while I feel like I’ve learned so much about different histories around the world, I know I’ve only scratched the surface. The history of political art is endless and ongoing, and it’s been an honor to help preserve it.

This poster depicts a Zapatista guerilla fighter in Chiapas, Mexico alongside a woman laborer in Echo Park in Los Angeles. With the caption, “Third World Is Your World,” the poster highlights how the roots of their conditions and struggles are the same, despite the physical distance.

As a Filipino American, I’m only here because of the history of US imperialism in the Philippines. My people face unimaginable plunder at the hands of the US military, violent neglect and political suppression from their own government, and severe exploitation when they migrate abroad for better opportunities. As this poster shows, these conditions are not isolated to the Philippines, but are symptoms of imperialism and the decay of capitalism across the Global South. I could never see myself as separate from what many see as the “third world,” because their world and their struggle is mine. I hope that as an organizer and an artist, I can contribute to dismantling the rotten systems that affect all oppressed people across the globe.