Our Oil under Your Land?

Uncle Sam's Mexican Policy
by Gordon Brewster, 29 January 1927
By kind permission of the National Library of Ireland

This is one of my favourite Brewster cartoons because it is timeless. It specifically refers to the USA response to Mexico effectively nationalising its own oil resources, many of which were being exploited by US oil companies at the time.

It reminded me, in my own time, of the UK/France/Israel response to Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal, and, more recently of the invasion of Iraq, where the US administraion resented its oil happening to be located beneath someone else's land.

Much of the Brewster collection of cartoons in the National Library of Ireland is timeless and that which is not is usually a very perceptive take on a contemporary event. And they are all beautifully drawn.

My own interest in Brewster dates from 1946 when Gordon died in my mother's shop in Howth.