El último integrante de la guardia mexicana de Trotsky, Carlos Fernández

Abstract

Carlos Fernández Vilchis was the last living member of León Trotsky’s Mexican guard during his exile. This article comments on Fernández’s experiences alongside the Russian revolutionary in the “Blue House” where he was received by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. It traces Trotsky’s footsteps, from his arrival at Tampico to his assassination at the hands of the Stalinists, without forgetting the foiled attack led by David Alfaro Siqueiros. To help us understand these events, we revisit Trotsky’s role in the Bolshevik Revolution, and look at the establishment of a bureaucratic dictatorship in Russia, as well as the rise of revolutionary nationalism in Mexico, driven forward by Lázaro Cárdenas, whose moment of glory was the expropriation of the oil industry.