Coyoacán

Today I went to Coyoacán and saw Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's house, as well as Trotsky's house, both which are now museums. Rivera and Kahlo were communists, which was very common for Mexican intellectuals and artists of their era. Frida actually had a picture with Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (as well as some guy I didn't recognize) hanging above her bed. Trotsky fled Russia because he was an enemy of Stalin, he initially stayed with Rivera and Kahlo upon arriving in Mexico, but after he had an affair with Kahlo, Rivera kicked him out. He moved a few blocks away to a house that he built for he and his companion. He was working on a biography of Stalin that was also an attack on Stalin's brutal methods that resulted in the murder of many Russians. Of course, Stalin couldn't let this happen, he, or someone under him, sent assassins to kill Trotsky. In May 1940, a first assassination attempt on Trotsky's life was led by a Russian spy and Mexican muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, they shot up his house with about 200 bullets, but did not kill him. After this, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas ordered that the house be made into a fort. Doors were bricked up, there was a watch tower, and Trotsky lived and worked in this small house/fort. In Augist of that same year, a security guard let a Spanish spy into the compound and he snuck an ice pick into the house and delivered a blow to Trotsky skull. They struggled and guards subdued the spy, but Trotsky died a day later. This is the stuff of fiction, if someone were to write this in a novel, it would be unbelievable. International Communism, spies, Mexican painters that are part of rival socialist ideological groups helping/attempting to murder a political figure? Awesome. Seeing these things in person is a radically different experience from seeing pictures of them. And yet, dear reader, I would like to share some pictures with you.

"El marxismo dará la salud a los enfermos/Marxism will give health to the ill" Frida Kahlo  (no date)

"La mujer sentada/Seated Woman" 1915. Diego Rivera: From his cubist period.

This is an example of Frida Kahlo's apparent love for indigenous cultures. This is in the garden area of her former home.

Trotsky's ashes are inside of this monument, as well as those of his companion, Natalia Sedova (his wife was murdered in Sibera years before he came to Mexico)

This is the room where Trotsky was sleeping when Siqueiros and others tried to shoot him. He hid in the corner where the table was as they shot through the windows.

This is one of several bullet holes that can still be seen in the room where the  failed assassination attempt occurred.