Leon Trotsky Museum

Visiting the Leon Trotsky Museum, Coyoacan, Mexico City, 29 September

After having a 'bionic coctail', I set off once again to visit the three museums. Just as I alighted from the train, I heard a terrible scream. A woman who was following me out the door of the train had an infant in her arms, and the sliding door of the of the train had caught his hand. It looked probable that it would be severed when the door closed again. I joined several people in shouting to get the and frantically waving to get the guard's attention. Luckily, we did, he put the brakes on, and the hand was soon carefully extracted, though the little one screamed non-stop.

I went to the Leon Trotsky museum first. It is located on a corner, and it was his residence at the time he was assassinated. The first room had an exhibition of of photographs of nude pregnant women; the second had an exhibition of tattoo and body-piercing photos; neither exhibit had anything to do with Trotsky. I wondered if old Leon would be turning in his grave if he knew his residence was being used to exhibit such rubbish; he is, after all, buried in the garden, the next part of the museum that you came to.

There was a courtyard surrounded by a a high brick wall. Watchtowers are plainly visible. A solitary flagpole flew the red Soviet flag in the middle of the courtyard garden. The words LEON TROTSKY and a hammer and sickle insignia were written on the adjacent concrete block, which houses his ashes. Another plaque, set in the wall in the corner of the courtyard, honours 'Robert Sheldon Harte, 1915-1941, murdered by Stalin'

Following the path through the small garden, I entered what was once Trotsky's bedroom. Inside was a man with a Van Dyke beard, dark clothes and a cap. He looked uncannily like the popular image of Lenin. He in turn commented that I, with my beard, looked a bit like Trotsky! I was wearing a green vest that had about twenty different pockets integral to it, the type that professional photographers wear. When he saw me taking notes he asked, in Spanish, if I was a journalist. No, I replied, but showed him a copy of the translated letter of introduction from Ernie Page. I don't know whether this man worked at the museum, but after reading the letter, he took it upon himself to give me a guided tour.

I asked him who Harte was. Trotsky's secretary, he replied. He asked me to look at the walls of the garden in the garden again. He drew my attention to how the walls had been raised and the windows bricked in, at Trotsky's behest, after the first unsuccessful attempt on his life. Look here he said, pointing to the steel reinforced doors. Trotsky had 10 bodyguards at the time of the assassination, but they had failed to foresee that he, like Julius Caesar, would be killed by a trusted friend. Trotsky's bed looked, and probably was, a lot older than mine back at the Zamora. He had survived the first attempted assassination by hiding under the bed with his wife, when a mob opened fire with with a machine gun, and his grandchild was wounded in the foot.

In his en-suite bathroom there was an ancient wood-burning water heater and a vintage bottle of Colgate Talcum Powder. Everything looked in place, like it had been the day he was killed. His clothes hung on a rack. In his study, where he assassinated by one of Stalin's agents wielding an ice pick, were old copies of Pravda, and books in Russian, English, and German. A 1940 desk calendar lay open at the date 20 August 1940, the day he was killed. An 'Ediphone' recording device, complete with wax cylinders stood behind his desk. The windows were stained glass. It is not hard to imagine that the house had been modern and fashionable in 1940, everything looked new, from the gas oven in the kitchen to the shiny multicoloured plastic table-cloth on the dining room table. A wooden-cased GE shortwave valve radio and more Ediphones in the front office. The man who looked like Lenin showed me some big bullet holes in the wall.

"Forty-five millimetre" he said, staring into my eyes.

We wandered out and 'Mr Lenin' gestured that there was more to see in what looked like a small shed to one side of the courtyard. In 1940 it housed Trotsky's rabbits and hens, but now was a museum adjunct to his house. A photographic biography of his life gave a fascinating insight into the hectic political events Trotsky was caught in. A Jew born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, Trotsky spoke nine different languages, and was the Soviet Union's first Foreign Minister, till he fell out of favour with his government. His daughter committed suicide, his relatives were interned, and his colleagues were purged from the Politburo. He then spent a period of exile in ten other cities around the world before Mexico. The then President of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, (father of the current Mayor of Mexico City, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas) offered him asylum after lobbying from Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Trotsky lived with Diego and Frida Kahlo when he first arrived. Ironically, it was another artist, Siqueros, who organised the first attempt on his life. Photographs on the wall show him walking, boating, and writing at his desk; the map on the wall featured in the old photographs was the same one I had just seen in his office. The final exhibits were newspaper reports about Trotsky's and Harte's assassinations.

Perhaps the most touching exhibit was a faded letter in a glass case which was a New Year's message from Cardenas to Trotsky's widow, Natalya, which translates as:

30 December, 1947
Esteemed and Distinguished Friend
Amalia and I remember you with affection and wish you a happy new year.
Your attentive friend and servant,
Lázaro Cárdenas.

Reading that simple letter, 51 years after it was written, I could feel myself being drawn into the turbulent history of this country. Penned to the widow of the man he had invited to Mexico and promised protection, but twice failed to provide, I felt some of the same sadness and guilt still haunting Cardenas after the murder. As I walked out of the former chicken coop, I turned to thank Mr Lenin, and ask him if he would mind taking a photo of me in front of Trotsky's tomb, but he had mysteriously disappeared.

- excerpt from Chapter 3 of An Odd Odyssey, California to Colombia by Bus and Boat, Through Mexico and Central America, Glen David Short, Trafford Publishing.

More excerpts:

From Chapter 3: Frida Kahlo

From Chapter 6: One Day in Antigua Guatemala , Experiencing Hurricane Mitch and Friday the 13th and the Madman

From Chapter 12: Death and Thievery on Isla Grande

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