Red & Hot

In the heady old days of the Mexican Revolution, stormy Communist Painter David Alfaro Siqueiros used to complain loudly that he was always the fall guy for his comrades: "Let Orozco draw a strong cartoon; Siqueiros was arrested." With the death of Orozco in 1949 and then Diego Rivera in 1958, Siqueiros at 63 is today the sole survivor of the Big Three. Living quietly in his Mexico City mansion with his wife Angelica, downing highballs of unproletarian Scotch (at $18 a fifth), Siqueiros has been turning out portraits at top prices, putting up new murals in hospitals, generally enjoying his reputation as a type muy simpatico. But last week it was like old times again.

Commissioned by the National Actors' Guild to do a huge, 127-ft. mural for the Jorge Negrete Theater on the subjects of "Tragedy," "Comedy" and "Farce," Siqueiros was one-third finished before the guild's horrified Secretary-General Rodolfo Landa saw what Old Party Member Siqueiros was up to. By "Tragedy," it turned out, Siqueiros meant "the aggression of the government against the workers." A blazing blue-eyed soldier is slugging a striker while near by a mother weeps over the body of a youth draped in the Mexican flag. Sketched out on adjacent walls were Siqueiros' interpretations of "Comedy" ("the gangsterism of our unions") and "Farce" ("the follies of the newly rich" and "the corruption of our legislative processes").

Secretary-General Landa ordered the murals boarded up, explained plaintively: "The actors wanted the mural to depict scenes related to their art." Siqueiros promptly let out a cry of rage, called it wanton censorship, threatened to take the issue to the actors themselves, by "force if necessary; jail does not frighten me." With the fire of battle glinting once again in his green eyes, Siqueiros scoffed: "What kind of tragedy did you expect me to portray in a mural?DEGA Greek tragedy? Nonsense. For me, tragedy in present-day Mexico is the struggle of labor to become independent of government control. Besides, why are you so shocked? You knew what my politics were before you contracted me."

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