The political and the creative worlds had always intermingled in Mexico City, which had been the site of some infamous assassinations—of the Cuban Communist leader Julio Antonio Mella in 1929 and of Leon Trotsky in 1940. Modotti was Mella’s lover. Kahlo had had an affair with Trotsky. The muralist Siqueiros had led an attack with machine guns against Trotsky’s home before the Stalinist agent Ramón Mercader achieved grisly success with an ice pick.
