African American and Mexican Film History in the 1970 Angelitos Negros Poster

Juanita Moore

Broadside

Angelitos Negros is a 1970 Mexican film poster documenting the circulation of racial melodrama across Mexican popular cinema and African American screen history. The film starred Manuel López Ochoa, Martha Rangel, Titina Romay, and African American actress Juanita Moore, and was written and directed by Joselito Rodríguez as a remake of his 1948 film of the same title. Its story centers on anti-Black prejudice, racial passing, motherhood, and colorism, placing the poster within a transnational visual culture where Mexican cinema addressed Blackness through melodrama, performance, and family conflict.

Angelitos Negros. Cinematográfica Roma. Mexico: Cinematográfica Roma, 1970. Framed poster measuring 41" x 31". The poster advertises the 1970 Mexican drama known in English as Little Black Angels, with Juanita Moore appearing as Mercé, the Black mother whose daughter has lived as white. The film’s narrative turns on a prejudiced woman who learns, after giving birth to a Black daughter, that her own identity is tied to the Black mother she has socially disavowed, making the poster a visual remnant of a film concerned with racial concealment, maternal sacrifice, and the limits of whiteness in Mexican melodrama.

The poster’s importance is strengthened by Moore’s participation in a Mexican production after her major role in American racial melodrama, connecting African American film history to Latin American treatments of race and color hierarchy. Light wear consistent with display and framing; image presents well. Overall very good. A visually compelling artifact of Mexican and African American film history centered on colorism, passing, and Black representation in popular cinema.

Item #19665

Price: $485.00