As it happened, the election went through without any violence. Officially Camacho won an overwhelming victory, but the polling was marred by vote-rigging and intimidation of Almazán’s supporters. Almazán at first refused to concede defeat, then left for the United States, where he continued to make vague threats about challenging Camacho’s claim to victory. Ultimately, Almazán yielded, and fears of widespread unrest, even civil war, proved unwarranted.
At the house on Avenida Viena, where these developments were closely monitored, Camacho’s victory brought a measure of relief, though it took none of the steam out of Cannon’s fund-raising drive in the United States. In the two and a half months following the Siqueiros raid, the Socialist Workers Party raised over $2,250 toward improving Trotsky’s security. Trotsky’s household finances were a separate matter. With no further income expected from the Stalin biography until its completion, Trotsky placed his hopes on the sale of his archives, an idea that had percolated for more than two years before it was finally realized in the spring of 1940.
Trotsky initially hoped the sale of his papers might bring in upwards of $50,000, but in hard economic times this proved to be far too optimistic. The deal Goldman concluded on May 10 with Harvard University earned Trotsky a relatively modest $6,000, to be paid only after the materials were delivered and inspected. Two weeks later came the Siqueiros raid, which appeared designed to destroy Trotsky’s archives as well as to end his life. The rush was now on to organize and catalogue these voluminous papers for shipment to Cambridge as soon as possible. The precious cargo, packed in three dozen crates and boxes, left Mexico City by train on the morning of July 17.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF Trotsky’s home into a fortress began on the very afternoon of the assault. By a stroke of good fortune, there happened to be a man on the scene with the necessary wherewithal. He was Hank Schultz, a comrade from Minneapolis who had come to Coyoacán on vacation with his wife and child in order to meet Trotsky. Schultz was a railway brakeman by trade who volunteered to help Local 574 during the great Minneapolis Teamsters’ strike of 1934, when, as night picket dispatcher, he worked in close collaboration with Dobbs. Subsequently, he joined the Trotskyist movement and met his wife, Dorothy, who was also a party member. They arrived in Coyoacán four days before the raid but were out of town when it happened.
Schultz was a skilled mechanic and electrician, as well as an experienced organizer of men, assets that proved to be invaluable in the weeks after the assault. Had it not been for Schultz, Robins testified, they would have “all caved under the overload.” Trotsky called him “indefatigable, absolutely selfless, inventive, and in spite of sickness always in a good mood. Such people will build up the party.” Another enthusiast was Joe Hansen, now returned to Coyoacán to serve as a guard and help erect the fortifications. Schultz was due back at his job in Minneapolis in mid-July, so time was short.
Some of the renovations made to the house on Avenida Viena were visible from the street. The east windows were bricked in. The old wooden entrance to the garage was replaced with double iron doors: a heavy outer door that swung open and an inner folding gate, both secured by electronically controlled locks. The tower atop the roof at the northeast corner of the property was converted into a two-story bombproof redoubt, with cement floors and ceilings. Three new brick turrets appeared above the walls, each with loopholes overlooking the patio and the neighborhood. Two of these blockhouses—one at the northwest corner and another at the center of the north wall directly above the guards’ quarters—looked out onto the river. The one at the southeast corner, built on the roof of the house and looking down on the police casita and Avenida Viena, served as the main guard station and housed the electronic switches to the garage doors.
Security measures inside the house were delayed by the police investigation of the raid. On June 24, Trotsky and Natalia, accompanied by a formidable police escort, were brought to the heavily guarded city courthouse to give sworn depositions. The judge planned to come out to the house to see the rooms as they were at the time of the attack, an inspection that was delayed until July 16. On that day, the judge and his associates took about five hours to examine the bullet holes and other evidence and to interview Seva. Also allowed to inspect the house, much to the consternation of its residents, were the Communist lawyers for the captured raiders. Trotsky’s guards, their hands on their guns, kept a close watch on these unwanted visitors.
Meanwhile, the hunt for Siqueiros and his artist-accomplices continued. The trail led to midtown Manhattan and the Museum of Modern Art, where five Siqueiros paintings were on display as part of an exhibit called “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art.” It was there, at MOMA, that several witnesses spotted the Arenal brothers behaving like innocent museum-goers, a development that set the FBI on their trail and prompted the Mexican police to initiate a request for their extradition.
ONCE THE JUDGE had paid his visit, the security installations inside the house could proceed. Steel shutters went up on the interior windows. The Trotskys’ bedroom was equipped with new doors, each made with two layers of heavy iron encasing sand-filled centers. Along the north wall, a second level of guards’ rooms was under construction. An underground bunker was in the planning stage.
After several weeks of deliberation, it was decided not to install a photoelectric alarm system. The main reason was that the new fortifications would have necessitated an elaborate arrangement of mirrors in order to convey the light beam uninterrupted along the tops of the walls surrounding the property. And anyway, as Hansen wrote to Dobbs in New York on July 31, “the next attack will most likely be bombs.” The several hundred dollars designated for the photoelectric system would be spent instead on barbed-wire entanglements and bombproof wire netting.
All of these renovations were paid for by the contributions of the American comrades, but also thanks to the generosity of a few wealthy sympathizers in the U.S. who were stirred to action by the attempted murder of Trotsky and his family. One of these benefactors, a certain “Mr. Kay” who wished to remain anonymous, was rewarded with a personal letter from the grateful beneficiary. “The only thing I know about you, through my friends Jim Cannon and Farrell Dobbs, is that you are a very sure and generous friend,” Trotsky wrote on August 3. “We live here, my family and my young friends, under the permanent threat of a new ‘blitzkrieg’ assault on the part of the Stalinists and, as in the case of England, the material aid comes from the States.”
Trotsky was referring to the intensifying Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe’s massive bombing raids designed to knock out the Royal Air Force and prepare the way for a German invasion. “During the past two months the house has been undergoing a transformation into a kind of ‘fortress’ in a few more weeks we will be very well protected against new ‘blitzkrieg’ assaults.”
One generous supporter who had the opportunity to witness the transformation was Frank Jacson, Sylvia Ageloff’s “husband,” who was becoming a familiar figure within Trotsky’s tight circle of comrades. Around the time that Trotsky wrote to thank his American benefactor, he asked Jacson what he thought of the new fortifications. Hansen and Cornell were standing there in the patio with Trotsky, admiring their handiwork. This was all fine, they heard Jacson say, but “in the next attack the GPU will use other methods.” “What methods?” he was asked. Jacson just shrugged his shoulders, but he now spoke as an authority on these matters. Thanks to the incompetence of the Siqueiros gang, the NKVD penetration agent had been promoted to assassin.
Jacson had met Trotsky for the first time four days after the assault. Alfred and Marguerite Rosmer were leaving Mexico for France and had booked passage on a ship sailing to New York from Veracruz on May 29. Jacson was to drive them to their ship.
Trotsky in the winter of 1939–40.
Alexander H. Buchman Papers, Hoover Institution Archives
Sylvia had returned to New York City eight weeks earlier, after an extended sick leave from her job as a social worker. In her
absence, the Rosmers had proved to be an invaluable connection for Jacson. Marguerite Rosmer was very close to Natalia, so Jacson’s friendship with the couple put him in good standing with Natalia, and thus indirectly with Trotsky. The Rosmers’ departure, therefore, was a setback for the Soviet operative, but he maneuvered to take maximum advantage of their send-off. Jacson told them he traveled to Veracruz on business every two weeks and would be happy, once again, to serve as their chauffeur.
On the eve of the departure, Natalia decided that she would like to accompany the Rosmers to Veracruz. That would mean returning alone with Jacson, with an overnight stop along the way, and nobody at the house thought this was a good idea. Instead, it was agreed that Evelyn Andreas, Trotsky’s American typist and the companion of one of his guards, would drive Natalia in her car.
Jacson entered the patio on May 28 at 7:58 a.m., the time recorded in the log kept by the guards. Trotsky, who was tending to the chickens, greeted him and the two men shook hands. Jacson presented Seva with a toy glider, and he was invited to the breakfast table for a cup of coffee while the Rosmers finished packing. When they appeared, he carried their luggage out to the car. Evelyn, meanwhile, had arrived for Natalia. At the moment of departure, Trotsky surprised everyone by walking several steps out into the street to see them off, the only time he had ever done this.
The travelers stopped overnight at Jalapa, a couple of hours’ drive from Veracruz. In accompanying Evelyn to park the cars in the garage for the night, Jacson discovered that her car was in need of a major repair and that it would be unsafe to continue driving it. The garage attendant seconded this opinion, according to Jacson, so the next morning everyone made room in his car for the last leg of the trip. Reaching the outskirts of Veracruz, Jacson, who had claimed to be a regular visitor to the city, did not seem to know his way around and had to stop to ask directions to the ship. Natalia wondered about this, but not enough to question it.
The Rosmers sailed for New York and Jacson drove Natalia and Evelyn back to Coyoacán. The guards’ log shows that Natalia was returned to the house on May 30 at 3:42 in the afternoon. Jacson then drove Evelyn to her apartment in the city. There he was introduced to Dorothy Schultz, who together with her two-year-old daughter was staying with Evelyn. For Jacson, the connection to Evelyn and Dorothy would now prove to be extremely advantageous after the departure of the Rosmers.
It was at their apartment a few days later that Jacson met Hank Schultz, who seems to have been the only one of Trotsky’s associates to question him about his name, which did not seem French. Jacson clarified that it was spelled without a “k” and was French-Canadian. In fact, he was thoroughly French, he eagerly explained, for although he was born in Canada and kept a residence in Montreal, he had moved to France as a boy and was educated in Paris.
Jacson came by the apartment at least a dozen times when Dorothy was there, usually staying several hours, sometimes for lunch or supper. He played with the Schultzes’ baby daughter, Ann, for whom he expressed a deep fondness. He took them on trips to the zoo at Chapultepec Park and other points of interest in and around Mexico City. He brought them on a picnic to the foot of El Popo, which gave him another opportunity to boast about his mountain-climbing exploits in Europe and in Mexico.
Jacson told Hank and Dorothy that he was close to the Trotskyist circle in Paris and had made large contributions to the organization—for a while had even paid the entire cost of publishing its newspaper. This is what he also told the guards. In normal times these credentials could have been confirmed with the French comrades, but they were in flight from the German invaders, who entered Paris on June 14, a dizzying turn of events which, among other things, forced the Rosmers to terminate their voyage in New York. One of the casualties was Mark Zborowski—Trotsky’s indispensable Comrade Étienne and the NKVD’s agent “Tulip”—who was reportedly being held prisoner in a German concentration camp in France.
Jacson’s bragging tales about his business activities might also have been scrutinized, except that they were the kind that seemed indiscreet to question. To Hank and Dorothy he said his employer was a war profiteer from New York who was exporting supplies of food and raw materials to the Allies, mainly Britain. The business was illegal, he confided, and as a matter of fact, he himself was in Mexico illegally. His monthly income, he said on several occasions, was $400, on top of which he had a very generous expense account. He often remarked on the large sums of money he handled, and even carried on his person, intimating that these were bribes.
It was at Evelyn’s apartment, in the second week of June, that Jacson was introduced to Cannon and Dobbs, together with other visiting comrades from New York. Jacson proved to be a most helpful chauffeur and tour guide, on one occasion driving the visitors out to the ancient pyramids north of Mexico City. This was an especially valuable service because Trotsky’s Dodge remained in police custody since the assault. At the end of a day-long excursion to Toluca, Jacson bought Natalia a gift of sour cream and honey, which he delivered on the drive home, making a detour to the house, where Trotsky and Natalia came into the patio to greet everyone.
On the evening of June 11, Jacson drove Cannon and Dobbs to dinner at the Hotel Geneva, then afterward took them for a drink. He had a way of talking a lot while saying very little. It was difficult to pin him down on anything. He stayed away from political topics, although on the subject of the split among American Trotskyists, he made clear that his sympathies were with the Majority. In any case, not being a comrade, Jacson posed no threat to Cannon and Dobbs. He was, on the contrary, that relatively harmless creature in Marxist politics at that time: a capitalist.
Jacson’s conversations with Dorothy were a different matter entirely. He was remarkably blunt in his opinions about Sylvia and her support for the Minority position on the dialectic and the defense of the USSR. He described in great detail the arguments they had in person and by letter. On one occasion, after sharply criticizing Sylvia’s views on dialectical materialism, he expressed doubts that their “marriage” could survive. Nor was ideology the only irreconcilable difference: Jacson made disparaging remarks about Sylvia’s looks, her clothes, and her refusal to have children because, as he put it, she was a coward when it came to pain.
Jacson left Mexico City for New York on June 12, explaining that he had to go away on business. He asked one of the guards to drive him to the airport in his Buick, which he arranged to leave at the house for use by the guards while he was away. This gesture was greatly appreciated by the household, although ultimately the greater beneficiary was Jacson himself: during his absence from Mexico his automobile would continue to earn him goodwill.
MERCADER-JACSON WENT TO New York to receive instructions, funds, and encouragement from his NKVD handlers. He also used the time to re-engage with Sylvia, who was surprised to learn that her “husband” had visited the house in Coyoacán and met Trotsky and Natalia. Jacson told Sylvia that he had to make one final trip to Mexico before returning to take up a permanent position in New Jersey. He left New York by train on June 30, arriving in Mexico City on July 11, on which day he phoned Evelyn to say he had business to attend to in Tampico and would return in a week. When he resurfaced, he confided to Evelyn and Dorothy that his boss had decided to form a diamond-cutting syndicate in partnership with some Dutch émigrés who had fled the Nazis with large quantities of gems.
Jacson put off reclaiming his Buick until July 29. On that day, he came by the house at 2:40 and stayed for an hour and ten minutes. Sylvia had not heard from him since July 11, when he sent a telegram upon arriving in Mexico City. She grew impatient, and then desperate, for word from him when he failed to reply to her telegrams. Finally, he sent a cable and then called to say he had been very ill in a small town near Puebla and that he hoped to return to New York before long. She wired to ask if he wanted her to come and be with him during his convalescence. This was exactly what he was counting on, though he did not immediately reply. A few days later he telephoned
her. Again she asked if she should come to him, and after some hesitation, he agreed.
On July 31, Jacson stopped by the house to deliver an expensive box of chocolates to Natalia, saying it was a gift from Sylvia, who was preparing to join him in Mexico City. It was then that Leonid Eitingon, the NKVD field officer of Operation Duck, sent a coded message to his superiors: “Everything is in order.”
THE DAY JACSON came by the house to retrieve his Buick, he disappointed the guards when he admitted that while in New York he had not dropped in on the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party. All his free time had been taken up trying to convince Sylvia and her sisters of the correctness of the Majority view, he explained, while during the day he was tied up with business. The guards took this to Trotsky, who agreed that Jacson’s behavior was far from exemplary. On the other hand, Trotsky now had a better appreciation of what Jacson had to endure in contending with the Ageloff sisters. For, while Jacson was away, Trotsky had experienced his first gloves-off confrontation with members of the Minority.
The opposition associated with Max Shachtman and James Burnham was still called the Minority, even though its members had broken away and formed a separate Workers Party in April. A month later, Burnham stunned his comrades by announcing his resignation from the new party and his complete break with Marxism. Burnham’s astonishingly candid resignation letter proved to be an endless source of amusement and ammunition to Cannon and the Majority, whose suspicions all along that Burnham was a petty-bourgeois fraud had now been forcefully validated.
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