My Art, My Life

by Diego Rivera

  On our arrival at the restaurant, we found General Hernández rolling in agony on the floor. He had been poisoned, but no doctor had been summoned by the frightened waiters and customers.

  Gasping his last breath, he told Vargasrea to sell his horse, his saddle, and his side arms and use the money to pay his debts. These possessions, he said, were all he had left in the world. And then he died. Thanks to our being delayed, Vargasrea and I almost certainly escaped being poisoned, too. Many other opponents of the dictatorship had died after eating an apparently harmless meal.

  As a contribution to the revolution, I designed a huge poster, copies of which were distributed among the peasants throughout all Mexico. Its message to the poor, ignorant farmers was that divine law did not forbid them to repossess the land which rightfully belonged to them. The corrupt Church of the time had been preaching the converse.

  The slogan dominating the poster read: THE DISTRIBUTION OF LAND TO THE POOR IS NOT CONTRARY TO THE TEACHINGS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE HOLY MOTHER CHURCH.

  Since the majority of the peasants could not read, the message was illustrated by a painting showing a family plowing their field behind a team of oxen. Above the oxen hovered a benevolent image of Christ fondly gazing upon his children, whom he blessed for preparing the field for growing.

  My paintbox might symbolize my state of mind at this time. Underneath the tubes of color was live ammunition, which I carried to partisans behind the government lines. Many of these revolutionary fighters were friends of my childhood and early youth.

  Every district of Mexico City had its network of underground cells. I was sometimes invited to speak to the members, usually about painting. I fulfilled my assignments to the letter, but I also seized upon every pretext to inspire my audience to greater revolutionary fervor.

  But, the poster excepted, I did not do a single sketch expressing my revolutionary feelings. My eyes were, however, transmitting to my brain continuous, vivid images, which have never lost their distinctness. When I later painted scenes going back to this period, I seldom had any need of preliminary drawings.

  A PLOT TO KILL DIAZ

  FROM TIME TO TIME, I continued working on landscapes. I also began to prepare an exhibition of the paintings I had brought back from Europe. I went about this task with inward repugnance because of my dissatisfaction with these works. However, I was badly in need of money. I wanted to return to Europe to resume my studies, and I had not forgotten Angeline.

  I was helped in my preparations for the exhibition by my friend Francisco Urquidi, then Secretary of the School of Fine Arts, and its Director, Lebrija. My former teachers José Velasco, Felix Parra, and José Posada also took part in arranging the show.

  Perhaps because I was bored and disgusted, I hatched a plot with Lebrija and the architect Eduardo Hay to give the exhibition a more worthwhile purpose. Our aim was nothing less than the assassination of Díaz, which we believed would save the lives of many brave Mexican freedom fighters.

  The exhibition was to open at eleven o’clock in the morning on November 20, 1910. My part in the plot was to smuggle explosives into the school in my paintbox. My friends, the officials of the school, pulled wires to get Díaz to attend the opening. We were elated when we received word that Díaz had accepted their invitation.

  I arrived at the school long before eleven and met Lebrija. A tall and gaunt Don Quixote, he was nervously wringing his hands in impatience.

  He said, “All right, Diego, we are awaiting the command of the pestilente,” and his eyes shone with a bright unnatural fire.

  As I climbed the stairway, paintbox in hand, I saw Urquidi staring down at me. He didn’t say a word but practically pushed me into his office, took the box, opened the small steel safe which contained the school funds, and locked the paintbox inside it.

  “It will stay there till the right moment,” he declared, embracing me warmly and whispering in my ear, “Viva la Revolución.”

  But, unfortunately, the right moment to open the safe never came. A few minutes after the explosives had been stowed away, the Chief of Police arrived at the school, accompanied by plainclothesmen, uniformed police, and soldiers of the regular army. Politely, he asked for Lebrija, the Director, who, I knew, was now too scared to come down. I told the Chief that he had not yet been seen.

  At last, having screwed up his courage, Lebrija appeared, exchanged introductions with the visitors, and took them on a tour of the school as he was expected to do. Along the way, the police examined everything they came upon—except the safe. Which goes to show how their respect for property can be used against the police.

  I was with Urquidi, near the door of his office, when the police approached. The Chief stepped forward to shake hands with Urquidi, who then introduced me. When the cops looked around, Urquidi made a gesture as if to open the drawers to show them that nothing was hidden there, but the Chief stopped him.

  “What do you mean, architect?” he asked good-humoredly, and then ordered his men to leave the building. Then, promising to return with the President to see my paintings, he bowed himself out.

  But instead of Díaz, his wife, Doña Carmen Romero Rubio de Díaz, patroness of the arts and philanthropy, arrived as the President’s representative. It was she who officially opened the exhibition. Señora Díaz asked permission to make the first purchase. She paid handsomely for “Pedro’s Place,” actually the most important canvas in the show. It pictured a group of Basque fishermen and their wives returning from work. This painting, as well as many others of my early and late years, is today in the collection of Solo Hale in Mexico.

  Before leaving, Señora Díaz congratulated me with a fine aristocratic smile. But I was really disappointed; there had been no occasion to open the steel safe.

  Perhaps the Chief of Police was cleverer than we were. I prefer to believe that Señora Díaz was cleverer than he and the men who had hoped to murder her husband.

  DEHESA

  THOUGH OUR PLOT against Díaz fizzled, the exhibition was a huge success. Of all my paintings only two were not adorned with the cards of purchasers when the opening day was over. But the day had had its bad side. At four o’clock in the afternoon, I had received the news of the heroic resistance and death of a brother revolutionary, Aquiles Serdán. With the support only of his wife, his brother, two sisters, and a neighbor, Serdán had stood off the entire garrison of Puebla. His aged mother had passed the ammunition for the guns. When the troops finally broke into his house, his little daughter was shot down by an officer. The child had been found still holding some cartridges in her hand.

  A few months later, the memory of Serdán and his family would revive the flagging spirits of the revolutionaries and help to bring about the downfall of Díaz.

  After the exhibition, I went to the south, where I joined Zapata’s peasant partisans in the state of Morelos. Much of the time I worked with a former schoolmate named Penioroja. An able mechanic, Penioroja had invented a small, simple bomb, so designed as to blow up only the baggage cars of trains. This saved the locomotives, which were useful to the rebels. It also spared the lives of the passengers, most of them the very people for whom the revolution was being fought.

  Penioroja’s valuable invention was just the size of my paintbox. That is why, in this period, my artistic output showed no appreciable increase.

  At the end of six months as an active rebel, I received a message from Don Antonio Rivas Mercado, an old and trusted friend who was also an official in the Díaz government, asking me to come to see him at once. He had sent this request with one of his coachmen. As soon as I had digested the words, I jumped into the coach and was driven away.

  I found Mercado waiting for me. He immediately directed that I pack a valise with only the barest necessities and arms and tell my family that I had to leave the city for a few days. I was to say that I was visiting the farm of one of Mercado’s friends, where I would find interesting subjects to paint. When I told this story in a hasty leave-tak
ing in my home, my mother showed anxiety, but my father seemed to understand perfectly.

  Bag in hand, I now rode to Don Antonio’s house a second time.

  He said, “You might well say you’ve been lucky to have a friend in the Díaz government. Unless you leave in my carriage at once and get as far from Mexico City as you can by tonight, without being seen, you’ll certainly find yourself before a firing squad. The order for your arrest and execution for treason has already been issued. Fortunately, the Chief of Police is a relative of mine and a good friend of your father. He was the one who passed on the warning to me. He promised, even if he gets fired, to hold up the order till seven o’clock tonight. Good luck.”

  Urgency in his face, he embraced me. I hurried out and lay down flat on the floor of the carriage. The coachman, already instructed, took the road towards Puebla, passed through Tlaxcala, and arrived late at night in Apizaco. There I felt safe enough, seeing no government soldiers about, the partisans being in control of much of the territory in this region.

  The next day I boarded a train to Jalapa, the home of my sponsor, Governor Dehesa. This noble man, always highly esteemed by all the old liberals, was still respected, even by the revolutionaries. The City of Jalapa was surrounded by insurgent troops, but because of Dehesa they hesitated to lay siege to it.

  As the train approached Jalapa, it was halted by a party of guerillas. Their chief and an armed escort climbed into my car to look for arms and ammunition. The partisan leader asked the passengers if any of them wanted to give money or clothes for the revolution. Everyone in the car contributed something.

  I removed my ammunition belt with its revolver, and I presented it to one of the partisans. He laughed aloud.

  “Do you carry such an arsenal with you that you can afford to make a present of these?” he asked. “With what are you, yourself, going to fight?”

  Looking directly into his face, I recognized the worn, tired features of my uncle, Carlos Barrientos.

  We shook hands warmly.

  “Diego, where are you going? Did you come here to stay with us?” he asked.

  “No, Uncle, I’m going to Jalapa.”

  “All right. In that case, you can give us your arms and get as many weapons as you need from Governor Dehesa. I understand now why you offered them. Good. The more we have, the better. You can tell Governor Dehesa that he has nothing to fear from us. We know him to be a real liberal, always opposed to the damned reactionaries. Tell him we’re sorry he can’t be one of us, but we realize that, as a man of honor, he has to show loyalty to his old friend, Díaz.”

  On my arrival in Jalapa, I went directly from the depot to confer with the Governor. He greeted me warmly, and when I gave him my uncle’s message, he was deeply moved. A sad smile passed across his face. He said not a word, but shook his head in a gesture of gratitude while tears gathered in the corners of his eyes.

  After about a minute of thoughtful silence, he asked, “And why can’t I join them? They are my own people, really my sons. My big brother Díaz mistook his way. Nothing can again stop the revolution. There may be a long fight, but once the people are aroused, they always win. But should I renege on my old friendship with Díaz for that? Could the historians of the future be sure of my motives? Would it not be thought that I joined the uprising to be on the winning side? I fought beside Díaz when he was a persecuted rebel and trapped like a mad dog. Also, my boy, I’m old. You like me because my door and my hand have always been open to anyone who wished to enter my house.”

  What he had said was true. In fact, the hinges of his doors were rusted because, in all the years of his administration, they had never been closed.

  Dehesa then asked me my plans, and when I told him that I wanted to return to Europe, he expressed his gratitude for the trust I had shown him, an official of the Díaz government. He gave me some messages to bring to the rebel leaders, saying that he would send an escort party with me.

  I took my leave and went to my room. While I waited for the escort, I changed into a rough riding habit. Dehesa’s guard arrived at the same time as my friend, the painter Argüelles, and everyone’s eyes opened wide on seeing my costume.

  Argüelles exclaimed, “Caramba! What a big bandit you look like in that getup!”

  When I glanced at myself in the mirror, I had to agree with my friend. I certainly looked big and tough.

  In the insurgents’ camp, the leaders refused to deal with anyone but me. I gave Dehesa’s messages to them and afterwards they gave me a message of friendship to bring back to the Governor.

  At the rebels’ invitation, Argüelles and I spent four or five days in the camp. As we were preparing to leave, one of their chiefs approached me.

  “Why are you going, Rivera? If you live long enough to be an old man, you will realize that you could not have fared better anywhere in the world than right here among us.” He threw back his head proudly and gestured toward the wonderful landscape.

  I thanked him but told him I knew the only road I must travel.

  For the truth was that this phase of the revolution was almost at an end. The peasant irregulars of Orozco, Zapata, and Pancho Villa were sweeping on to certain victory. There was no more I could do now. I knew that the masses who were toppling the leaden throne of Porfirio Díaz were not ready to take power for themselves. Díaz’s henchmen would be supplanted by “professional politicians” and petit bourgeois time servers who would move quickly to harness the strength of the people. There would be a show of reform, but the social and economic inequalities which had given rise to the revolution would appear again out of the smoke and dust. And there would be more conflict and violence.

  Perhaps, at a later time, when I had found myself as a man and an artist, I would return to my beautiful homeland and teach the people what they must learn.

  So I went back to Jalapa and delivered the rebels’ message to Governor Dehesa. Then I took time out to paint a landscape. I used the nearby forest as a foreground and limned the majestic mountains in the distance.

  About a week later, I sailed for Havana. There I booked passage to Europe.

  SEA DUTY

  I SAILED ON THE Alfonso Trece, an old Spanish steamer, overdue for the scrap heap. The Alfonso, however, was the easiest vessel to board with my irregular papers. Her destination, Spain, was also the least difficult country through which to enter Europe.

  The ship remained in Havana for about three days. From Havana, the journey to the nearest Spanish port usually took eighteen or nineteen days. This voyage, however, lasted seven days longer.

  The third day out of Havana, I perceived a great deal of uneasiness among the officers and for a good reason. The Alfonso was short of lifeboats and other rescue equipment. A gale was blowing, piling up high seas in which the old steamer rolled dangerously. The passengers grew sick, and every day fewer of them showed up in the dining room.

  Finally, there were only three coming to meals. I was one. The other two were both sea captains. Naturally, we became good friends.

  The younger of the captains, a Catalonian named Roig, was about thirty-five and full of sharp Mediterranean humor. His conversation was as tangy as garlic and as light as olive oil. Roig was a minor executive of El Valle Nacional, a wealthy tobacco firm, infamous for its exploitation of its workers during the Díaz regime, and he himself was anything but gentle. In addition to supervising the virtually enslaved tobacco workers, he made commercial sea voyages to South America with cargoes of tobacco products, vanilla, and indigo, which he traded for algaroba in Peru and coffee in Brazil. When the opportunity presented itself, he was not averse to enlarging his exchequer by smuggling contraband.

  The older sea captain possessed the almost unpronounceable name of Hurucháustegui. He had sailed in such faraway waters as the Indian Ocean and the Melanesian and Micronesian Seas. He could recall experiences of seventy years before. He must have been at least eighty-five. This venerable sailor was returning to Spain to die in peace on his native coas
t. Captain Hurucháustegui spoke a strange language which consisted of almost no Spanish, a little Japanese, more Chinese, and a great deal of Malayan. Though it was almost impossible for anyone to understand him, he would make long speeches throughout the day.

  Each morning, the two captains and I would meet for breakfast. The crew, aware that my companions were captains and I their friend, made us the delighted recipients of the choicest food and the most devoted service. Our dining-room steward wore his pants rolled up high above his knees, because the sea washed in through all the doors.

  With so few customers the ship’s cook had opportunity to use all his art, and we encouraged him with congratulations and applause. Breakfast was so enormous that we only had time to smoke two or three cigars before lunch was served. Besides, there really was no reason to leave the dining room.

  What marvelous lunches we had! No soups, because it would have been impossible to eat them, but unbelievably juicy steaks, delicious red snappers, and huge sweetmeated crabs.

  When the dishes were ready, the steward would place them before the older captain who, making the sign of the cross over his head and chest, would then commence to cut the meat into three equal parts. As he served, he would chant, “In the name of the Father,” putting the middle part in his plate, “in the name of the Son,” in the Catalonian’s plate and “in the name of the Holy Ghost,” in mine.

  Many bottles of wine were likewise emptied in honor of the Holy Trinity. We made each other laugh and sing, and each of us would retell the story of his life without any of the others listening, caring, or understanding.

  On the eighth day of this ecstatic regime, the first mate entered the dining room and politely asked permission of the captains to have a few words with me privately. We were about to be served our lunch-hour liquor, and I assumed the mate was going to speak to me about the way we had been swilling the ship’s supply of intoxicants.