Each year the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP; People’s Print Workshop) produced a special broadsheet to commemorate the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), celebrated on November 1 and 2. The members satirically depicted current events—both mundane and sensational—with rich illustrations of calaveras (animated skeletons, directly translated as “skulls”) laid out in a newspaper format. TGP artists carried on the tradition of creating calavera sheets for the Día de los Muertos from their graphic predecessors Manuel Manilla (c. 1830–1895) and José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), who used complementary images and texts to humorously address difficult political realities.

The 1942 broadsheet took up the theme of calaveras estranguladoras (strangling calaveras). For the cover, Alfredo Zalce created the top image of Truck Drivers and Shopkeepers who strangle consumers with their prices; below, Leopoldo Méndez portrayed the recently arrested serial killer and media sensation Gregorio Cárdenas Hernández (1915–1999). Méndez contributed the full-page back image as well, a representation of Soviet military commander Semyon Timoshenko (1895–1970) alongside a text titled "Corrido de Stalingrado." The corrido (ballad) was a favorite narrative device in TGP broadsides, with these publications using the folk storytelling technique to communicate the news in rhyming stanzas.