Pan American Unity

Diego Rivera's Dramatic Interlude

With Trotsky

Elsie Casler

"I believe in order to make an American art, a real American art, will be necessary this blending of the art of the Indian, the Mexican, the Eskimo with the kind of urge which makes the machine, the invention in the material side of life, which is also the artistic urge-the same urge primarily but in a different form of expression."

-Diego Rivera in conversation with Dorothy Puccinelli

_V

isual art has the ability, as no other medium has, to synthesize and concentrate in potent symbolic form the events of an era. Viewing a piece of art can have the sensory effect of transporting the observer to another time as if through a portal to another dimension. In 1940 Diego Rivera, the renowned Mexican artist and muralist, created such a work of art when he painted the Pan American Unity Mural, which is now housed in the lobby of the Diego Rivera Theater at San Francisco City College. Timothy Pfleuger, one of San Francisco’s premier architects, commissioned Rivera to paint the mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) that was held on Treasure Island during 1939-40. His work was the centerpiece of the Art In Action exhibit that featured many different artists engaged in creating works during the Exposition while the public watched. At the time that the mural was created Diego Rivera was perhaps the most famous Mexican artist in the world. He was friends and colleagues with major players in the international art world, such as Pablo Picasso and André Breton, and he lived his own life, like his personal dimensions, in large, broad flamboyant strokes. Rivera's Pan American Unity Mural is both a time capsule of the events that surrounded its creation as well as representative of the evolution of the ideology that underlay the Mexican Muralism Movement as understood and experienced by Rivera.

The mural is constructed in five panels that are ordered from left to right. Panel One's theme is "The Creative Genius of the South Growing from Religious Fervor and the Native Talent for Plastic Expression." This panel is cross-referenced with Panel Five's theme, "The Creative Culture of the North Developing from the Necessity of Making Life Possible in a New and Empty Land." Panel Two's theme, "Elements from the Past and Present" cross-references Panel Four's which is, "Trends of Creative Effort in the United States, The Rise of Woman in Various Fields of Creative Endeavor Through her Use of the Power of Manmade Machinery." Finally, the central and third Panel represents the overarching theme of the mural, "The Plastification of the Creative Power of the Northern Mechanism by Union with the Plastic Tradition of the South."[1] The intricacy of the mural lies in the reflexive quality of the outer panels that lead the viewer's eye to the central panel containing the artist's underlying intent and overarching theme of Pan American Unity. While the biography of Rivera by Patrick Marnham and Anthony Lee's examination of San Francisco's Public Murals painted during the 1930s and 40s, Painting on the Left, present the Pan American Unity mural in some respects as a lesser work of the artist, the mural is nonetheless an important historical document in regards to its symbolism and content.

The themes presented in the mural are universal and as large as the events that engulfed the world, as well as Rivera's personal life, during that time. His stormy and passionate marriage to Frida Kahlo, a famous artist in her own right, as well as his relationship to the world of revolutionary politics would inform his efforts to paint this mural. The message of Pan American Unity had evolved out of the Mexican muralist project overseen by José Vasconcelos, Minister of Education under the Mexican president Alvaro Obregón's administration, and expounded in the minister's philosophy which he expressed in his work La Raza Cósmica. The evolution of the concept of Pan American Unity also ran parallel to the evolution of international events ranging from the end of Porfiro Diaz's reign in Mexico and the world's entanglement in World War One to the looming destruction of World War Two. There was for Rivera a convergence of the ideological conflict embodied by the evolution of the Russian and Mexican Revolutions as seen from his vantage point in Mexico at the end of the 1930s. This would be crystallized by a brief interlude spent as host to Trotsky, the once-commander of the Red Army in the Russian Revolution, during which time Rivera's personal and political worlds would collide. There is evidence of specific events that had current import to the period of time that the mural was created. Likewise there is the essence of an overarching dialectic in the mural that wrestles with how human society would progress from the shambles it seemed to be in at the moment to a better future. The thematic sweep of history and humanity's struggle for self-determination are interwoven with Rivera's imagery representative of two important aspects of his life besides his artistic creativity: politics and love. Rivera captured all of it in his mural, like a snapshot of himself and his world displayed within his own creation.

Politics were an integral part of life for Diego Rivera. This perspective came from his personal political journey that was enmeshed with the history of Mexico. This history was contained in the folklore that as a youth he saw depicted in the etchings of José Guadalupe Posada. Posada’s art greatly influenced Rivera's own incorporation of myth and folklore into his mural representations. Within Mexican folklore was space for the survival of traditions that were primarily pre-conquest. "It was he (Posada)," Rivera writes in his autobiography, My Art, My Life, "who revealed to me the inherent beauty in the Mexican people, their struggle and aspirations."[2] The Spanish had attempted to acculturate the indigenous societies and thus assimilate and eliminate the most foreign aspects of Indian culture from Mexican society. But the reality that would be embraced by Revolutionary Mexico, even in the somewhat corrupted form it took during the post-Porfiriato, would be the mixture of cultures that were uniquely Mexican. Hence, the mestizo and indigenismo projects were encouraged in the hope of developing a national cultural identity that would lend its support to the newly established and seemingly ever-besieged government of Mexico. This was attempted most earnestly under the rule of Alvaro Obregón, from 1920-24.[3]

The Liberty Tree, depicted in Panel Two, portrays the founders of the Independence Movements of both Anglo and Latin America. Rivera's symbolism draws a parallel that reflects the common heritage of liberal ideology and the struggle for equality that both regions shared. He reflects the theme of Pan American Unity in this panel with Hidalgo, Morelos and Bolivar standing next to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, with John Brown exhorting the crowd to revolt against slavery. Jefferson holds a document on which his famous words are written that read, "The Tree of Liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."[4] Lincoln holds the Gettysburg Address rededicating a nation divided to the principles of representative government and union "of the people, by the people and for the people." Hidalgo holds a document with a list that reads, "Abolition of Slavery in Mexico by Hidalgo, Dec. 6, 1810 -- In South America by Bolivar, 1819-1821; In the United States by Lincoln Jan.1, 1863; Panama Conference for Pan American Union called by Bolivar, 1826." All of these images contrast to the decapitated and amputated image of the tree of liberty, still standing and strong enough to support the work of the weaver whose loom is supported by it, but whittled away nonetheless. This echoes the threatening words of another American revolutionary, Thomas Paine, who wrote that "the price of liberty is constant vigilance." At the moment Rivera was painting this mural at the GGIE, liberty was seriously threatened by events in Europe and elsewhere. The tree of liberty must have appeared to be in danger of being pulled up by the roots.

Vasconcelos' work, which was published in 1924, stated prophetically that "there is a certain fatality in the destiny of nations, as well as in the destiny of individuals, but now that a new phase of history has been initiated, it becomes necessary to reconstruct our ideology and organize our continental life according to a new ethnic doctrine."[5] According to Vasconcelos, this doctrine was one that the nation of Mexico was predestined to obey as "the cradle of a fifth race into which all nations will fuse with each other to replace the four races that have been forging History apart from each other."[6] This philosophy would be broadcast in the images of Mexico's history depicted in murals on public buildings. In his role as minister of education under Obregón, the development of the Revolutionary Art Movement, as epitomized by Mexican Muralism, would be the vanguard of a pictorial education for the masses. It would go hand in hand with Vasconcelos' literacy program for the proletariat and peasant classes. The Ministry's patronage of the Muralists would be "a means of fostering pride in the achievements of the people."[7] Such a pictorial course was approved by the state, regardless of the more radical views depicted in the murals by the artists. A visual attack was believed necessary to jump-start the process of legitimizing revolution for the traditionally conservative peasants. Educating the illiterate segments of the population to their role in a society transformed by revolution was the job of the Muralists. Their work "served to consolidate a state ideology of common citizenship and progressive nationalism."[8]

The atmosphere that informed and encouraged Rivera's work as well as the work of his fellow members' in the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors was one of celebration of all things mestizo, but more specifically Indian. José Clemente Orozco writes in his autobiography that within Mexico in 1920

excitement over the plastic work of the contemporary indigenes was at its height...Extreme nationalism put in an appearance. Mexican artists considered themselves the equals or the superiors of foreigners. Their themes had necessarily to be Mexican. The cult of the Worker was more sharply defined: 'Art at the service of the Worker.' It was believed that art must be essentially an offensive weapon in the Conflict of the Classes."[9]

All of this was incorporated into and a product of the official philosophy of the post-revolutionary government in Mexico and it was the foundation for continued government support of the muralists' projects as well as represented in much of their work. Unfortunately, from the rule of Obregón to that of Cardenas and beyond, Rivera's and Vansconcelos' idealism was betrayed by the official reality. Besides some land distribution and nationalization of private industry under Cardenas, the power in Mexico remained in the control of caudillos who represented the criollo/mestizo upper class. Basically the government was still an oligarchy consisting of new landowners and entrepreneurs. The most successful aspect of institutionalizing the idea of the Revolution in Mexico would be the Muralist project, but the very success of such openly critical and radical art would be an embarrassment to the ruling class in Mexico.

Such tensions would push artists like Rivera to broaden these sentiments beyond the nationalist intention that underlay the state sponsorship of muralism in Mexico. By the time of Rivera's work on the Pan American Unity Mural these sentiments would have blossomed fully. Yet, homage is paid to the motivating ideology, depicted in Panel One of the Pan American Unity Mural, with echoes of the Indigenismo movement loudly proclaimed. Alan Knight explains the depth of meaning that the representation of Indian culture had for the Mexican Muralists in his essay, "Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-1940." It was these artists who were the "most celebrated representatives of this new official philosophy...who provided pictorial affirmation of Indian valor, nobility, suffering, and achievement, which they set against a revived black legend of Spanish oppression."[10] Although little real positive effects would result from this message of respect for Indians, the Muralists, like Rivera, who included this idea in their works of art, embraced the elevation of all oppressed people as part of their personal revolutionary philosophy. It is striking then, when looking at the Pan American Unity Mural, to observe the contrast in the overall image presented by Rivera of pre-contact Indian cultures and Latin-American crafts people hard at meaningful work, to the myth current in the United States in 1940 that branded Mexicans with the racist stereotypes of laziness and thievery. This was the favorite propaganda used by a nation with a guilty conscious. In 1848 the United States acquired, some would say it had stolen, the southwest territories that included California from Mexico. It seems a straightforward commentary on the racist views held in the United States towards Mexico and with which Rivera would have been well acquainted. On another level, as Anthony Lee points out, the artisans depicted can be read as being engaged in the task of merely manufacturing tourist items, thus ironically gesturing for the observer and visitor to "The Pageant of the Pacific" to see the "ethnic entertainment and native commodities" as the demeaning of indigenous tradition.[11] Rivera is able to make this statement subtly by using his imagery on multiple levels and this gives profound sentiment to the mural.

This belies Patrick Marnham’s comment about the mural found in his recent biography of Diego Rivera, that "Pan American Unity is outstanding illustration...but it does not move us."[12] If one considers the fact that the portrayal of Indian civilization in the mural is at one and the same time a reflection of the Indigenismo movement of post-revolutionary Mexico, central to the theme of unity between the American North and South as the origin of the gifts that the South has to contribute, as well as the mural’s silent commentary on the racism generally exhibited towards Latin America by the United States, it becomes hard to countenance Marnham's statement of disregard. The images of Women, Workers, Peasants, Artists and Crafts people, although perhaps not as strident as similar images in other murals by Rivera, do carry a quiet dignity that stands in mute witness to the depth and complexity of the imagery. Throughout the mural these everymen and everywomen are a reflection of the evolution of Rivera's understanding of revolutionary ideology. In this regard it is interesting to also note the relative absence of people of color from the part of mural concerned with the North's contribution. The commentary that this absence makes on race relations in the United States is biting, but not overt. The only person of color is depicted in Panel Five and appears to be a mission Indian laborer, but his face is downcast and indistinct and he works at a mill wheel without relief. Directly under this image is further commentary on the subjects of race and class in the image of a wood carver making a Cigar Store Indian. The wood carver is mirrored above in Panel Four by the representation of a masthead carver, who in the age of industrial technology has become as extinct as the native culture of the North that the wooden Indian in traditional dress symbolizes. There is thoughtful complexity to the Pan American Unity Mural that is multi-layered in its symbolism and as politically committed as Rivera's other murals, although perhaps not as rigidly married to specific ideology.

This low-key approach may have been intentional on the part of Rivera in order not to antagonize the United States' own view of itself as a guardian of liberty and democracy. His hope that the United States would enter the war against Hitler's Germany might have encouraged him to broaden the philosophy beyond Vasconcelos' nationalist vision to incorporate all the Americas into a unified whole dedicated to resisting fascism and totalitarianism. Rivera was an internationalist by virtue of his personal travels and experiences as well as his choice of political affiliation. This fact stemmed as well from the parallel evolution of the two revolutionary societies of Mexico and Russia and Rivera's experiences in both. He was a founding member of Communist Party of Mexico in 1922. Following a visit to Moscow in 1927 Rivera resigned, had himself expelled, or was expelled, depending on which version you read, from the Mexican Communist Party in 1928. His hopes for revolution, like the hopes of many others, were great. One would expect he would have been greatly disturbed by the repressive direction taken by post-revolutionary Stalinist Russia. What would be more unappealing to an independent artistic spirit? Conformity. Therefore it is no wonder that he very early sought membership in the International Communist League affiliated with Trotsky's opposition to Stalinism. He would even co-author, with Trotsky and André Breton, father of the Surrealist movement, a manifesto entitled "For an Independent Revolutionary Art," which called for an "International Federation of Revolutionary Writers and Artists to resist totalitarian encroachments on literature and the arts."[13] William Richardson clarifies Rivera's relationship to the political ideologies that were close to his heart:

It was never the doctrines of revolution that appealed to him. Instead he responded emotionally to human misery and the exploitation of one man by another. He wanted revolution as part of his utopian hope for change and improvement of the lot of the poor. His enthusiasm for Russian Marxism-Leninism was a result of the promise, not its 'method' or its practice.[14]

Thus he saw his artistic endeavors in muralism as "his duty as an artist and a citizen to keep the revolution alive on the walls...even if it had died in the hearts of government officials."[15] All of these issues and events seem to have drawn Rivera to a conclusion about the Americas as whole that was similar to the Muralists conclusion about Mexico specifically, that a new art, and ideology to define it, must be born from the experiences in the Americas. It could not merely be copied from a European heritage that only partially represented the richer heritage of the complete populations of the Americas. Hayden Herrera's observation of Frida Kahlo's art is telling in regards to the idea of a purely American Art and seems to reflect Rivera's viewpoint as well.

Frida's outlook was vastly different from that of the Surrealists. Her art was not the product of a disillusioned European culture searching for an escape from the limits of logic by plumbing the subconscious. Instead, her fantasy was a product of her temperament, life, and place; it was a way of coming to terms with reality, not of passing beyond reality into another realm.[16]

Rivera's own style, like Kahlo's, also contained the elements of magical realism, an artistic genre which some claim originated in the art and literature of Latin America. In fact, Franz Roh coined the term in an essay published in 1925 as the next phase for art post Expressionism. The concept refers to the fantastic portrayed against a realistic backdrop. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian author of many literary works crafted in the style of magical realism, explains that this artform is one that is able to take "something which appears fantastic, unbelievable" and transform it "into something plausible, credible...by tell[ing] it straight, as is done by reporters and by country folk."[17] Rivera's work on Pan American Unity reflects an understanding of this genre; the imagery in the mural is the personification of Rivera's thematic call for an original art form.

Although Patrick Marnham, like Anthony Lee and Bertram Wolfe, is right to point out the contradictory and amorphous nature of Rivera's political beliefs and loyalties none, of Rivera's biographers give the proper emphasis to the advent and evolution of truly novel international political structures that had come about in Russia and Mexico during the artist's lifetime. The shifting growth of understanding about the ideologies as they were put into application would, one would think, encourage an open minded person to be somewhat fluid in the boundaries of their own personal ideology. The very fact that Rivera was an artist made him inherently concentrated on distilling his individual essence. He certainly cannot be accused of being a conformist. This fact also made him an astute observer. Perhaps Rivera was less willing to blindly embrace dangers he had seen with his own eyes arising from the absolutist interpretation of revolutionary ideology. This path seemed only to contribute to demagoguery and totalitarianism that was occurring in Russia under Stalin in the late 1920's. Rivera was traveling in Europe, under the auspices of a grant from the Mexican government awarded by Vasconcelos, to study frescos in Italy.[18] It actually was a good period for Rivera to find work elsewhere, since Plutarcho Elías Calles, who succeeded Obregón in 1924 as president of Mexico, did not like the Muralist Movement. Supporters of the new president called for him to destroy Rivera's work because it made people look like monkeys.[19] Still, William Richardson, in his article, "The Dilemmas of a Communist Artist: Diego Rivera in Moscow, 1927-28," makes the pertinent point that not until Rivera's experience in Moscow in 1927, where Stalin had begun to consolidate his power, did it become evident that he could not remain undecided about totalitarianism.

By 1928 he was faced with a choice that would have an impact on his position in the USSR and with his Mexican comrades: he could bend to the demands of the neotraditionalists increasingly supported by the government, or he could throw in his lot with the innovators who appeared to be fighting a losing battle.[20]

Rivera believed that in whatever style a public mural was painted, as long as the message were clear the public would gain an opportunity to not only raise their political consciousness, but to improve their level of understanding and appreciation of art. Thus, the artist would have fulfilled his duty to the worker and his artistic contribution would not be an obstacle to progress in the field.[21] Rivera seems to have had a greater estimation of the public's power of intellect to grasp the avante garde and experimental than his comrades.

Contrary to this was the Stalinist view espoused by the Party organization, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR), which stressed that forms of art had to be "realistic and comprehensible to the broad masses of the workers".[22] This would make official commissions difficult to come by in Mexico as well as abroad, within radical circles. Access to large commissions in the capitalist art circles of North America were already difficult to come by due to the controversy that surrounded some of Rivera's projects there in the late 1920's, early 1930's. The Michigan public for whom it had been painted had rejected the industrial imagery of the Detroit Institute of Art murals as inappropriate. The Rockefeller Center Mural was destroyed because of its communist paean to Lenin and Trotsky that was unacceptable to arch capitalist John D. Rockefeller, whose son Nelson was the patron who had commissioned the work. Rivera was an artist unwilling to compromise his vision and had paid dearly for his attitude by the time of the commission from Pfleuger.

When Pfleuger traveled to Mexico City in the spring of 1940 to invite Rivera back to San Francisco, he met the painter at a most propitious moment. In the arena of Mexican politics Rivera was a self-declared Almazánist with an uncomfortable antilabor agenda. On the international leftist stage he had recently broken with Trotsky, perhaps the only major leftist who championed his work. Behind his perimeter wall, he continued to be targeted by Stalinists for harboring a treasonous criminal. His artistic skills were called into question; his major competitors were at work on grand projects; and he had received no major commission in years. He greeted Pflueger enthusiastically and by June was back in San Francisco.[23]

Certainly, as Lee contends here, it was an opportune moment for Rivera to get out of town. But it does not detract from the Rivera's commitment to voice his protest to the violence occurring in the world at that time.

As has already been discussed, Rivera's experience of Stalin's early repression of Soviet society made him question absolute obedience to ideology dictated by such a will. Likewise Rivera had early experiences of Hitler prior to WWII. Once again his artist's sense and keen observation noticed the danger of Hitler much earlier than his friend, Meuzenberg, a German member of the Communist Party. When he visited Berlin in 1928, five years before Hitler would be elected chancellor, Meuzenberg and his fellow German comrades referred to Adolf as the "funny little man."[24] But as Rivera watched Hitler deliver a speech in front of the headquarters building of the Communist Party in Berlin he was not amused.

As he left, Hitler’s followers closed ranks around him with every sign of devoted loyalty. Thaelmann and Meunzenberg laughed like schoolboys...I actually felt depressed...I was filled with forebodings. I had a premonition that, if the armed Communists here permitted Hitler to leave this place alive, he might live to cut off both my comrades heads in a few years...[25]

Unfortunately, his intuition would prove correct and his friends would be among the victims of the holocaust. Rivera would become familiar with the terror of the war as refugees. Some fellow artists like Max Ernst were escaping similar fates and sought sanctuary in Mexico. Events began to be personally threatening to the artist. Gestapo agents visited Rivera.[26] He informed the authorities about a submarine refueling ship anchored under the disguise of a German merchant vessel.[27] Stalinist agents, in the guise of Loyalist refugees who had been granted asylum after Franco won the Spanish Civil War, were ever present in Mexico at the time.[28] So, Rivera's level of concern must have been very great indeed when Hitler and Stalin agreed to an alliance between Russia and Germany and signed the Non-aggression Pact of 1939. This event seems to have cemented Rivera's belief that the United States needed to enter the war in order for conflict to end. It was imperative to engage the United States in conflict as the it was the most powerful industrial nation at the time and the most untainted by collaboration with these forces of tyranny. The Pfleuger commission for the Pan American Unity Mural was a perfect vehicle for this purpose.

Given this atmosphere of uncertainty and desperation as well as Rivera's own involvement in international intrigue, much of which would ultimately surround the persecuted revolutionary leader in exile, Trotsky, it is not surprising that the artist's concerns are made apparent in the Mural. Rivera's awareness of GPU (the Soviet secret police) and Gestapo activity in Mexico might have led to suspicions about his government's loyalty, leading in turn to Rivera's break in support of his friend Cardenas and his inexplicable support of a right wing challenger, Alvaras.[29] In Panel Four Rivera inundates the viewer with multitudes of Hitlers amplifying his warning of danger, a danger that seemed to be literally stalking him, his loved ones, and the world. While it does not speak directly to the theme of Pan American Unity it does so indirectly by portraying the artist's desire for resistance to fascism and totalitarianism. It is also a contrast to the heritage of struggles for liberty and equality that the people of the Americas share, as Rivera depicts in Panel Two. He has also placed Stalin in triumvirate with Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin, who at one point was part of the Revolutionary leadership of the great Soviet experiment, was now the murderer of a fellow Revolutionary, Trotsky. Stalin is shown holding the murder weapon that was wielded by a proxy assassin in Mexico City a short while after Rivera had left to begin the mural in San Francisco. The imagery of Hitler is actually drawn from the film "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin, whom Rivera admired and with whom he would later became friends. The film had not yet been released when Rivera saw a preview of it. By placing such imagery in the mural Rivera sought to encourage the United States to enter WWII by acknowledging the uniquely American art form of film, but at the same time he got to make a statement using images of the current conflict at hand. This part of Panel Four, although somewhat out of context with the broader theme, places the work in specific time. The Hitler panel makes clear the difference between the heritage of liberty in America and that of totalitarian dictatorships current then in Europe. Perhaps, as Lee points out, "in public discourse nearly all the formalized leftist positions were closed to him as defensible options."[30] Thus Pan American Unity and the mural's seemingly amorphous humanist position were the only defensible positions Rivera could take in the face of the Communist Party's acceptance of Stalin's contradictory relationship with Hitler and his own support of Alvaras.

The circumstances surrounding Rivera's acceptance of the commission at Golden Gate International Exposition were personally, as well as politically, motivated. The events that immediately preceded the assassination of Trotsky were tragic and dramatic, and Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo would be participants in the final chapter of this legendary life. This period for Rivera was closely associated to one of the two important aspects of life for Rivera -- his love for and relationship with his wife, Frida Kahlo. The effect of this emotion is also prominently depicted in the Mural. Lev Davidovich Bronstein, who is known to history as Trotsky, had lived the life of a fugitive since Stalin had exiled him from Soviet Russia in 1929.[31] He was a man who stood alone against Stalin as the rest of those who opposed him began to crumble under the pressure of the Purge Trials. These trials commenced in the 1930s and resulted in the execution of thousands. Trotsky had sought refuge in Turkey, France and Norway and had successively, along with his wife, been kicked out of one country after another. Comrades, associates and even his children were systematically being eliminated, killed or imprisoned, by the GPU. "I know I am condemned," Patrick Marnham quotes Trotsky as saying. "Stalin is enthroned in Moscow with more power and resources at his disposal than any of the Tsars. I am alone with a few friends and almost no resources, against a powerful killing-machine...So what can I do?"[32] Things were in a desperate state when he made his way to Mexico in 1937 and the sanctuary Rivera had secured for him, but once he was safe he proceeded to actively plan and participate in The Joint Commission of Inquiry in the Moscow Trial. This was a counter-trial to Stalin's purge trials at which Trotsky was being accused of heinous crimes against the state. The trial was held in Frida Kahlo's family home, Casa Azul located in Coyoacán and was chaired by North American philosopher John Dewey[33]. The house was placed at Trotsky’s and his wife Natalya's disposal for which they were most grateful. "It was gratifying, even thrilling, for Trotsky and Natalya to find refuge with such friends," Deutscher writes.[34]

Trotsky and Kahlo were drawn together and had an affair for many reasons. This was not the first time that there had been infidelity in the Kahlo/Rivera household. Diego was a notorious womanizer and Frida had affairs as well. For Trotsky one can only imagine the exhilaration of being in a beautiful country and close to a beautiful woman. He still faced imminent danger, but with a fire in the belly from his recent legal battle, successfully defending himself against Stalin's charges. He could not have been aware that he was entering a relationship that was like a minefield. His own despair is evidenced by his oblivious treatment of his loyal and loving wife, Natalya, who had suffered and survived so much alongside her husband, from the days of the Russian Revolution until their time together in Mexico. While terror and loneliness might have heightened Trotsky's need to feel alive, Frida's participation in the affair with "el viejo," as she called him, was perhaps motivated more out of revenge. Rivera previously had an affair with Kahlo's sister, Cristina, and this affair seemed the pinnacle of betrayal out of the multitude of liaisons in which Rivera seems to have engaged.[35] Besides this fact, Cristina may have been the one to inform Diego of Frida's affair with his revered guest, as she was in her sister's confidence and does not appear to have been happy that her affair with Rivera had ended.[36] But, however it came to be known, Rivera seems to have considered it unacceptable behavior on the part of his guest. The artist also appears to have seen this relationship as a breech of the double standard by which Diego and Frida lived. He was to be allowed his affairs, but did not want Frida's liaisons to be publicly known as it would make him seem a cuckold, which would besmirch his masculinity. This preferred arrangement allowed Rivera to avoid tarnishing his macho persona, but the affair between Kahlo and Trotsky was a threat to this arrangement. After all, Rivera had used his influence with his friend, Lázaro Cárdenas, who had been elected the president of Mexico in 1934, to gain Trotsky asylum there. Initially, his empathy for Trotsky’s plight must have been strong due to shared political beliefs and respect for Trotsky's place in history as a father of the Russian Revolution. These feelings must have also, at least in part, derived from Rivera's own fall from favor under the Calles regime in 1924, when his murals were attacked and defaced.[37] For a two-year period, from 1937 until 1939, the Trotskys, Diego and Frida remained good friends.

Rivera's break with Trotsky does not seem to have been motivated by political disagreement. It seems to have been motivated more by personal, rather than any other factors, since the break occurred after he became aware of the affair Trotsky had engaged in with Rivera's wife. The effect that this information had on Rivera, who fancied himself a disciple of Trotsky, can only be imagined. Just as the artist never hinted at his anger towards Trotsky in the public statements he made, so too did Trotsky continue to express mutual reverence for Rivera as a revolutionary and an artist. Marnham writes that only a week after Trotsky had moved out of the Casa Azul, Rivera, in an interview with a United States news agency reporter "described Trotsky as 'a great man for whom...I continue having the greatest admiration and respect."[38] Trotsky, even after the break in their friendship and Rivera's support of Cárdenas' right-wing rival for the presidency, Almazar, defended the artist against Stalinist attacks. Deutscher writes that Trotsky "expressed undiminished admiration for the 'genius whose political blunderings could cast no shadow either on his art or on his personal integrity.'" Trotsky wrote these words in 1939 for an article entitled, "Ignorance is not a Weapon of Revolution."[39] But the attempt on Trotsky's life that Rivera's old friend and fellow muralist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, had organized and the successful assassination of Trotsky by an agent of Stalin's which followed, were only possible because of the split between Rivera and Trotsky. This act of separation made the exiled Russian vulnerable to such an attack. Marnham explains that Trotsky was not only a guest of Rivera's, but of the nation of Mexico. Anything that was done to him would besmirch the nation's honor, and the GPU agents in Mexico were under strict orders that their ties to Moscow remain unknown. All of this was not a concern to Stalin's agents once the protection of one of Mexico's "most celebrated figures" had been withdrawn from Trotsky.[40] It is unfortunate that such an unsubstantial emotion as masculine pride should come between Rivera and Trotsky, but it is hard to believe, given both men's continued public support of each other, that there was very deep animosity since Rivera was not one to shy away from public confrontation over politics.[41] Marnham mentions that because Kahlo and Rivera never spoke of the events involving Trotsky that this is somehow evidence that they did not think twice about the fate of the man they had both called friend. It is just as likely that this period of time was so traumatic and that each felt deeply the tragedy of Trotsky's assassination on multiple levels. Perhaps they did not speak of him because of the knowledge of their own unintentional complicity in his death.

Certainly, the strength of the Kahlo/Rivera relationship is evidenced by their reunion that occurred during the creation of the Mural, just as the importance of their involvement with Trotsky was evidenced by the separation and divorce that preceded it. The couple was remarried in San Francisco after Frida was spirited out of Mexico by Rivera. Once he learned of Kahlo's ill health and her interrogation by Mexican Police he had her come to San Francisco to be treated by their old friend Dr. Eloesser. Following Trotsky's assassination and Diego's separation from Frida, his wife had become distraught and the stress of all of this had contributed to her ill health.[42] Dr. Eloesser, a physician friend Rivera knew in San Francisco, suggested that Diego and Frida remarry as a remedy. This was something that Diego had been attempting to finagle unsuccessfully ever since the couple had split up in 1939. But there would be a difference in their relationship the second time around- double standards could not be permitted, more honesty had to exist. Dr. Eloesser admonished Frida not to expect anything different from Rivera. "He has never been, nor ever will be, monogamous."[43] Just as Rivera would never change, Kahlo did not want be forced to either, so their reunion was accomplished on the basis of a compromise -- they would remarry and share their lives, but they would no longer be sexually intimate, thus avoiding the trap and pain of jealousy.[44]

There is much of this romantic turmoil contained in the mural's depiction of women. The symbolism of women and what women and love meant to Diego is contradictory in nature and this is reflected in their depictions in the Pan American Unity Mural. He obviously felt reverence by depicting Helen Crlenkovich, the 1939 national diving champion, as the metaphoric bridge between time and space. The female form is the supernatural conduit for the relationship between North and South America. In the center of the mural, presiding over all is Coatlicue, the Aztec Goddess of Life, Death and the Earth.[45] For the Aztecs she was "Lady of the Serpent Skirt," goddess of all life, gods as well as humans, animate as well as inanimate.[46] For Rivera the creative spirit is embodied in the ancient symbol of the sacred female that also reminds man of the humility in the face of the great mysteries of death and of birth, which woman is so intimately bound to by virtue of motherhood. Yet the scars of the disillusionment Rivera experienced due to Trotsky and Kahlo's betrayal (if it can accurately be called that, given the structure of Rivera's and Kahlo's marriage up to that point) are evident too, but on a more personal scale, not meant to compete with the larger image of the sacred female. What's more, the personal disregard he often showed for the women he was involved with, like the outright abandonment of his first wife, Angelina Beloff, is also evident in the mural. His back is turned toward Frida while he faces his current paramour at the time, the actress and wife of Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard. This imagery is resonant with an insincere petulance of hurt pride, considering the numbers of extramarital affairs in which Rivera participated. Still Rivera's love and respect is also apparent with Kahlo positioned at the forefront of the mural. She personifies the theme of unity by benefit of her German-Mexican ancestry coupled with her pursuit of the plastic arts. Naturally there must have been conflicted and confused feelings on Rivera's part, but the absence of Trotsky does not necessarily mean that Rivera did not still admire the contributions of such an important man. In this regards he does make note of Trotsky by placing a bloody icepick in Stalin's hand, the very weapon used to kill Trotsky. Ill feelings towards his wife are likewise arguable as Kahlo is not excluded from the painting either, evidence of her continued importance to, and influence on, Rivera.

The universal image of the great mother, as represented by the Aztec goddess Coatlicue, is at the heart of the symbolism of the mural. In fact, it is featured prominently in the mural's center as its unifying image. It is important as a symbol depicting the union of North and South America, the machine and plastic arts. It also represents the power and importance of the female as an embodiment of creativity. Finally, Rivera's Pan American Unity Mural is an homage to the Indigenismo movement that was the impetus for the official patronage of the Muralist movement in Mexico. There is hope in Rivera's imagery for a unified and productive future not unlike the attitude Trotsky expressed in his summary statement to the Dewey Commission:

The experience of my life, in which there has been no lack of success or of failures, has not only not destroyed my faith in the clear, bright future of mankind, but, on the contrary, has given it an indestructible temper. This faith in reason, in truth, in human solidarity...I have preserved fully and completely. It has become more mature, but not less ardent.[47]

While there is a connection between Rivera's work on this mural and Trotsky's words, there is as well in the work a reflection of the magnitude and immediacy of events and conflicts in the world and in Rivera's own life at the time that informed his creation of the Pan American Unity Mural.

The success of Rivera’s Pan American Unity mural in relation to the Mexican (?) muralists’ intent to serve as a source of mass education through public works like this would be hard to gauge. Certainly, it was a representation that was part of an to persuade the United States to enter WWII on the Allied side. Although the mural may not have been seen by the greater public, as was the muralists’ goal, the fact of the mural's inaccessiblity is more representative of the awkwardness that resulted from the splintering of the left’s opposition to the rising tide of fascism than from any artistic and political failure on the part of Rivera's creation. The mural was quickly crated after it was viewed by some 10,000 people in 1940. It remained stored until 1961, when it was finally installed at City College of San Francisco. For over twenty years no one had the opportunity to view and decry, or ignore, the mural. Therefore it is difficult to countenance Lee's assertion that the fact that the mural "was never shown to working-class San Franciscans" somehow means that Rivera failed. In fact, Rivera's accepting the "Art in Action" commission demonstrated that while there were mitigating personal factors that made the offer appealing, Rivera remained faithful in his commitment to the ideal of the muralist project: to create art for the public regardless of what fate had in store for the finished artistic product. Even the fate of his Rockefeller Center mural, which was ordered destroyed by its patron, would not deter Rivera from using his art for the purpose of informing as well as depicting. As a visual representation of the theme of Pan American Unity, the mural is an encapsulation of a specific period of time that is an interpretation of global and personal events by the artist, Diego Rivera. It is, as well, a representation of the evolution of the ideology that underlay the muralist movement pioneered by Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros in Mexico, an ideology that would make its indelible mark outside their native country as well.