This time, the collection of poems is preceded by a hand-colored piece of wood, painted by the muralist Fernando Leal, who concentrates on this image: the vertical city, the strike, and the world of the factory. The trip to Mexico by John Dos Passos leads him to become acquainted with Maples Arce, and in 1927, to translating Urbe, which—under the title of Metropolis—appears in New York in 1929. Its importance derives from being one of the first avant-garde Latin American books translated into English in the United States. Maples Arce’s poem is part of the production of Estridentismo, early Mexican avant-garde movement that arose in 1921, parallel to the Muralist movement. Its creator, and for a time only member,was Manuel Maples Arce (1898-1981), a poet from Veracruz who rebelled against modernist poets and academic painting. Related to Dadaism, Futurism, and Creationism—in both its European and Latin American manifestations—Estridentismo was a movement centered on strategies to create disturbance and closely devoted to a mechanical aesthetics. The followers of the movement tended toward new urban sensory values in which experiences accumulated simultaneously, at the rhythm and speed of modern life. The very name of the movement refers to city noise, as well as to their wish to be heard for its embedded transgressions and excesses.It was a movement of artists devoted to literature music, painting, engraving, photography, and sculpture. The movement’s center of operations was El Café de Nadie in Mexico City. Later on, it relocated to the city of Xalapa (Veracruz) where its members became involved in an educational revolution. It also counted on several information disseminating sources, such as the magazines: Ser, Irradiador,and Horizonte.