Diego Rivera And Frida Kahlo Visit Trotsky In This Rare Film From Mexico In 1938

moray mair | Culture and politics | July 17, 2012

In this rare film footage from 1938 we meet the great Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo paying a visit to the exiled Soviet revolutionary
Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, in Coyocoán, Mexico.

Trotsky and his wife had arrived in Mexico in 1937 after Rivera petitioned the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas to grant the Marxist sanctuary in Mexico. When the Trotskys arrived on a Norwegian oil tanker at the port city of Tampico Rivera was not well so Kahlo boarded the ship to welcome the Trotskys and accompanied them on an armoured train to Mexico City.

By the time this film was shot, by a visiting American called Ivan Heisler, Trotsky and Kahlo had either had, or were about to have, a brief affair. Soon after the friendship between the two couples was over. In early 1939 Trotsky moved to another house in the same neighborhood, where he was assassinated in August, 1940 with an ice pick by the KGB.

A fascinating meeting that has long since gone down in legend.

Via Open Culture