Manuel Ruas
1st May, Day of the Worker
Two-colour offset lithograph, DNPP, Maputo
This poster is unusual in its depiction of industrial workers, to the exclusion of peasant farmers. At the time of independence, the industrialised working class in Mozambique was a tiny minority compared to the peasantry, a configuration that left little hope for socialist revolution in an orthodox Marxist sense. Machel turned to Maoist thought as one solution to this dilemma, reframing the peasantry as historically oppressed masses who could be mobilised for revolution.
