In art as in life, Diego Rivera was a man constantly in rebellion. At 16, he left the prestigious San Carlos Academy in Mexico City in protest against the academy’s emphasis on representational art. He became an avid Marxist but outraged the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union by welcoming Trotsky to Mexico. Rivera shocked […]
Continue ReadingThe term ” corregidor” is normally associated with an island in the Philippines that witnessed one of the most dramatic and tragic episodes of the Second World War — when a starving, outgunned, and outnumbered band of American and Filipino soldiers finally surrendered to a Japanese invasion force after heroic but futile resistance. But how did […]
Continue ReadingIt is hardly coincidence that the Chiapas rebels under Subcomandante Marcos call themselves Zapatistas and not Villistas or Carrancistas or Obregonistas or even Maderistas — to name other illustrious figures from the Mexican Revolution. Of all the revolutionary leaders, Emiliano Zapata was the most radical and the most committed to social justice. Detractors say that […]
Continue ReadingIn any political struggle, the spectator’s first instinct is to look for a hero and a villain. But you don’t always encounter a good guy-bad guy matchup. Though the Soviet Union was our ally in the war against a mega-meanie like Hitler, Stalin was later unmasked as a paranoid tyrant and mass murderer whose malefactions […]
Continue ReadingNote: Click images for summary biographies of the key individuals Mexico in September 1910 could be compared to a shiny apple whose glossy skin conceals a putrifying interior. But the corruption underneath was still a secret to the rest of the world. Porfirio Díaz, the old dictator who had held power since 1876, was probably […]
Continue ReadingThe transition from military to civilian rule is not always an easy one. High ranking officers become entrenched in top positions of government and — as the 1989 fall of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile demonstrates — these politicized generals and admirals have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a system where the military […]
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Villa broke jail on Christmas Eve and was in El Paso when Huerta engineered the coup that overthrew Madero. In February 1913 Huerta staged a fake 10-day artillery duel with a fake rival, Felix Díaz, nephew of the old dictator. The battle was phony only in the sense that Huerta and Díaz were secretly in […]
Continue ReadingThis is a story that would have been laughed out of a Hollywood studio had it ever been submitted as script material: that a leading figure in the Spanish Conquest of Mexico was a shipwrecked priest who learned a new language but refused to yield to temptations of the flesh. Truth, to parrot a well-worn […]
Continue ReadingThis title has nothing to do with the state of affairs that precedes matrimony. It is intended in the sense of what the French call an homme engagé, literally, a man engaged in a cause or in some important work. From Winston Churchill to Leon Trotsky, from Andrd Malraux to Charles de Gaulle, the writer in […]
Continue ReadingIn history, there are innumerable cases of dynasties toppling because of the weakness of incumbents. The incompetence of do-nothing rulers had much to do with the fall of the late Roman Empire. In France, during the Dark Ages, the feeble Merovingians were completely dominated by mayors of the palace until one of them (Pepin, father […]
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