Diego Rivera. Gerry Souter

his academy-trained mind embrace the reality-splintering concepts of Cubism, on February 19th, 1913, General Victoriano Huerta staged a coup and sent the trusting intellectual Madero to prison. The general proclaimed himself President of Mexico with the support of United States ambassador and fellow alcoholic, Henry Lane Wilson. Supporting Huerta (called El Chacal – “the Jackal” by the Mexican campesinos and peons who knew him best), Lane sought to steer Mexico back to the days of Díaz when international big business had a free hand in the impoverished country. On February 22nd, Madero was being transferred from one prison to another when one of his guards pumped a revolver full of lead into the former president. On the same day – Washington’s Birthday – American President Woodrow Wilson and Mexican President Huerta toasted George Washington in the White House. During the time that Diego Rivera remained in Paris and travelled in Italy, his homeland once again went up in flames and was riddled with violence. The combined armies of Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza opposed Huerta’s government. Villa fought to avenge Madero and to become the next president, Zapata led an agrarian revolt of the campesinos, and Carranza claimed he fought to create a democratic Mexico. During the ten years that followed the assassination of Madero – the Decada de Dolores (the Decade of Sorrow) – all three of Mexico’s legendary champions were assassinated. The last was the retired Pancho Villa, machine-gunned in an ambush in 1923.