David Alfaro Siqueiros is as peppery as a dish of chili and Red as a matador's cape. A veteran revolutionary, he knows just about as much about gunpowder as he does about paint, and is almost as much at home in a cell as in a studio (he has been jailed 70 times). Also, he wields a big brush, ranks second in Mexican art only to his friendly enemy Diego Rivera. Last week Siqueiros' latest mural was unveiled in Mexico City's Palace of Fine Arts, and it made a bang, as usual.
He had attacked his job with soldierly ferocity, quick-drying pyroxylin paint and a spray gun. The mural has more force than feeling, but it is clearly in line with Siqueiros' oft-repeated theory that the right, true end of art is propaganda. His subject this time is Cuauhtémoc—the Aztec hero who tried to defend Mexico City against Cortés after the death of Montezuma. One panel shows Cuauhtémoc being tortured by the Spaniards, along with a bleeding woman and a child with its hands chopped off. Morbid? Goodness, no, said Siqueiros, "unless paintings of Christ on the Cross are, too."
In the mural's other panel, Cuauhtémoc appears as a conqueror (which he was not), dressed in the armor of the men who beat him and wearing an Aztec crown. "He's a fighting symbol of our national independence," Siqueiros said, "of independence not yet entirely won." Added Siqueiros, who keeps up to date on party literature even when busy with a spray gun: "I see in Cuauhtémoc [a prototype of] Mao Tse-tung of China, Luis Carlos Prestes of Brazil, the leaders of the Viet Minh and the fighters for the nationalization of Iran's oil."