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notes on the Rivera fresco at the GGIE 1940 by Emmy Lou Packard

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My father and I drove Rivera to Brownsville, Texas, where he caught a non-stop plane to Mexico City. He was always recognized by the Mexican-American employees of the hotels we stayed in through the Southwest, and they offered him much assistance that the hotels would not ordinarily have extended to their guests.

My father and I continued on our drive down from Brownsville to Mexico City. I stayed in Mexico for the rest of the year, painting for a show in the United States the following year. Frida and Diego lived in Frida's house in Coyoacan, and I would join them for lunch and supper. The rest of the day I worked in the studio at San Angel. Rivera would dictate letters to me, sometimes on English, sometimes in Spanish, and I would translate (either one) into fairly presentable English, though spelling was never my strong point. However, I had a typewriter, and managed to keep his business correspondence in fair order. I also prepared canvases for oil painting and kept tourists curiosity-seekers away from the studio. Many Northamericans seemed to feel that Mexico was a U.S. possession, and would walk into any building, public or private. One elderly female schoolteacher told me indignantly, "This gateboy tried to keep me from coming into the yard. He didn't realize I was an American!" She wanted me to tell her whether it was true that Rivera was a wicked immoral revolutionary who never divorced his wives. The gave Prudencio and me quite a bad time before we got her out the gate. 

Because of his Trotskyite leanings, Rivera was no longer center of Mexican political life as he had been in the late 20's and 30's. He missed his attention and was extremely bitter toward many of his former friends, particularly David Siqueiros then in exile. He continued a warm friendship with Carlos Chaves at this time, and saw Juan O'Gorman and others occasionally. He was extremely worried about the influence of German Nazis in Mexico, and also about the growth of the Sinarquista movement. He followed the war in Russia with avid interest, and began, I believe, the change which eventually led him back into the Mexican Communist Party (see letter)

I left Mexico in November 1941, and was having a show of my Mexican paintings at the Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles when Pearl Harbor was attacked. It was there that I received the letter from Rivera enthusiastically welcoming the US into war against fascism.

I had an hour's visit in 1954, a short while after Frida's death. Rivera was terribly sad and not feeling well. He said then that he thought the Taller de Grafica Popular was the most significant are manifestation in Mexico at the present time.

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