José Clemente Orozco, The Unemployed (Los desempleados), c. 1929

Marcela Guerrero: This painting is in reaction to the market crash of 1929, which Orozco witnessed when he was living in New York in the late 1920s.

Narrator: Marcela Guerrero.

Marcela Guerrero: Seeing so many unemployed people caused him such an impact that he recorded it in his autobiography.

“Panic. Suspended credit. A rise in the cost of living. Millions suddenly laid off, and the numerous employment agencies on Sixth and Seventh Avenues vainly stormed by the jobless. Those in power had promised endless prosperity and a chicken in every pot, but now there was not even a fire in millions of hearths. The municipality found itself obliged to open soup kitchens, and in the outlying districts there were frightening lines of powerful men queued up, hatless, in old clothes that offered little protection through hours of sub-zero weather as they stood on the frozen snow. Red-faced, hard, desperate, angry men with opaque eyes and clenched fists. By night, in the protection of the shadows, whole crowds begged in the streets for a nickel for coffee and there was no doubt, not the slightest, that that they needed it. This was a crash. Disaster.”