MEXICO: Coyoacan Idyll

In 1936, when Norway followed the suit of many another nation and asked restless Revolutionary Léon Trotsky to leave its shores, Mexico’s famed Muralist Diego Rivera arranged to have the exile go to Mexico. Muralist Rivera’s young, pretty German-Mexican wife, Frida Kahlo, a painter in her own right, put Trotsky in the blue-washed, bougainvillea-covered house in Coyoacán where she had been born, told him to stay as long as he wanted. At first the Trotskys and the Riveras got along beautifully. Diego Rivera issued a furious pro-Trotskyist manifesto to the world. Léon Trotsky settled down to the first peace he had had in years. Frida Rivera painted a picture of herself holding a little scroll on which was declared her love for Léon Trotsky.

But the idyll did not last: Trotsky was touchy, Rivera proud. Not long ago Diego Rivera wrote a letter to his (and Trotsky’s) good friend, the French surrealist poet, André Bréton, gave it to one of Trotsky’s secretaries to type. Léon Trotsky chanced to see a copy of the letter on the secretary’s desk, and before he could stop himself, he had read enough to get very angry at Rivera’s un-revolutionary and disloyal words. Trotsky made some remarks about Rivera. Rivera found the remarks “unacceptable.” Trotsky dispatched a friend to Rivera with 200 pesos ($40) as rent, so as to be free of obligation. Without indicating whether he thought that was enough rent for a two-year stay, Rivera handed the cash to a Marxist magazine, Cleve. Trotsky felt snubbed. Last week the two men came to a parting of the ways: Léon Trotsky announced that he was quitting the Rivera house, Diego Rivera promptly announced that he was quitting the Trotsky movement.