Trotsky in Mexico

Chapter Three focuses on the ongoing debates between Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, including their central disagreements over Leon Trotsky and his significance to global revolution, to analyze the multiple roles of culture within Mexican society and the profound connections between art and politics during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. This chapter examines the importance of art and artists in Mexico’s post-revolutionary state formation to argue that the radical artists and government officials utilized art and culture as a medium to negotiate larger issues whose general relevance fell well beyond art’s more traditional influence. Chapter 3 also utilizes the arrival of Trotsky to Mexico in January 1937 to highlight a crucial time in Mexico’s history when the artists influenced Mexico’s politics in profound and lasting ways.