Project Pedro, 2024
HD video, color, sound
10 minutes
Project Pedro takes its name from a secretly funded program by the United States Information Agency (USIA) during the 1950’s to produce and disseminate propaganda and newsreels in Mexico. Operating between 1957 to 1961, Project Pedro extended U.S. efforts to militarize cinema and media as a way to combat neutralism and prevent the spread of propaganda in Mexico during the Cold War. During its run, Project Pedro’s newsreels screened across 53 theaters in Mexico City through an agreement with the Cadena de Oro national theater chain, reaching an audience of 1.6 million viewers per week. Project Pedro is an experimental documentary that records my research as I visit the sites and ruins of old cinemas that screened these clandestine newsreels to understand the connection between politics and privately owned mass communications in midcentury Mexico. This film pieces together historical fragments to reframe the media produced during this time. Project Pedro is only one of many covert campaigns the U.S. government operated during the Cold War throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa.
Project Pedro not only reveals the U.S.’s attempt to export democracy, but also reframes Mexico’s position within the global history of the Cold War. Far from passive consumers, the content and trajectory of the newsreels reveals the distinct limitation of the U.S. to ever successfully achieve the program’s objectives. Beyond the familiar Cold War narrative of bilateral tensions, Project Pedro, more interestingly, proposes that representation is inherently political––to be represented is to be implicated in the constructions of representation by an imperial culture. For these newsreels to have any traction amongst domestic Mexican audiences, the U.S. had to articulate and reflect Mexican sentiments and values. This articulation determined not only the images seen on the screen, but also reinforced the real powers that produced the images.
This project was made at The Lab Program: Art-Research and Mobility Network. Special thanks to Valeria Montoya, Gabriela Mendizabal, Carla Giaccio Darias, Lynn Hong, and Yuchi Ma.
Film Credits:
Director and Editor: Camille Wong
Producer: Valeria Montoya
Director of Photography: Juli Martinez