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Trouble for a Career. "Everyone was either for us or against us," Siqueiros remembers. The painters had to carry guns to protect themselves and their work. They all lived in tenements in the center of town, partying, painting and loving violently. Siqueiros' love-life was characteristically impetuous; he had a long succession of lady friends.
When they found time, the painters published a magazine—El Machete—to express their violent view of the world, and to print their drawings. "Orozco used to eat a priest for breakfast every morning," says Siqueiros. "He drew some very powerful anti-church cartoons for us. . . . Once I met a tough old lady warrior who had been a colonel in Zapata's army. She was also anticlerical so I brought her around to meet Orozco. Foolishly, I left them alone for a couple of minutes. When I came back she had Orozco by the hair and he was kicking her in the shins. Seems the woman believed all whites should be thrown out and the country returned to the Indians. Orozco was very much opposed to this theory."
In 1924 El Machete's editors entered the Communist Party. "I was identified as the spokesman," says Siqueiros with a hard grin. "Let Orozco draw a strong cartoon; Siqueiros was arrested. Let Rivera wave a red flag in the streets; Siqueiros was arrested."
Rivera and Siqueiros once went to Moscow to attend a Comintern session. On the German ship coming home they began arguing: Siqueiros was for Stalin, Rivera was for Trotsky. No one else on the boat understood Spanish, but they all stared fascinated at the table where the two men sat, meal after meal, fighting it out with high words and bitter tears. Finally the two asked for separate tables and Rivera, shaken by the fury of the quarrel, took to his bunk. Says Siqueiros, "When we reached Veracruz there were two delegations at the pier. One was composed of Rivera's friends, and they took him to Mexico City in style. The other was a delegation of police, and they took me to jail."
Siqueiros was a hell-for-leather Communist of the old-fashioned sort, and could never keep his eagle beak out of trouble: jail was always interrupting his painting. He is still a devoted party liner, though the Communists expelled him in 1930 for visiting his girl friend when he was under orders to hide out. They thought that the girl friend was being watched by the police. The police were on his trail anyway, replied Siqueiros: he was being tailed by a detective all the time, and 20 feet behind the detective lurked a party comrade. Usually, when he was arrested, he was treated as Mr. Siqueiros, a prominent artist who just happened to have some silly political quirks. But after leading a forbidden May Day parade he was beaten by cops until his body was covered with welts, thrown into solitary, and fed on what slops he could catch in his hands when the guard upturned the bucket. He spent a year in jail that time, and another on parole.