Russian and other celebrities who, for various reasons, decided to live in Mexico

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

For Russians, Mexico is a source of television series and a country where once a year people dress up as skeletons. But this country is also one of the centers of Hispanic culture and a place where people who want to drastically change their lives have found and are finding refuge. Some of them went down in history.

Guillermo Calo

Artist Frida Kahlo seems to be the epitome of Mexico, but she is actually the daughter of an immigrant from Germany. Guillermo (aka Wilhelm) Kahlo entered history, however, not at all because he was able to conceive and raise a brilliant daughter. He is one of the famous photographers of the twentieth century. He meticulously captured all aspects of Mexican life in the early twentieth century on camera, which made his photographic collections very valuable historically and documentary - apart from the fact that they are artistically good. And he moved to Mexico because … he did not get along with his stepmother at home.

Leon Trotsky and Natalia Sedova

Mexico was one of the centers of attraction for disgraced European communists, including Leon Trotsky and his wife, the former chairman of the Committee for Aid to the Wounded and Sick Red Army soldiers, Natalia Sedova. Their family life cannot be called cloudless. Firstly, despite the fact that Natalia was a loyal friend and companion to her husband, he constantly cheated on her - including with Frida Kahlo. Secondly, both of their sons were killed - one was shot in the USSR, the other died in Paris under mysterious circumstances. Lev and Natalya were well aware that they were next.

However, in the end, the assassin sent by Stalin attacked only Trotsky. After his death, Sedova wrote his biography, and then … left the Fourth International he created. Because of ideological differences. She died in Paris, away from the communist hangout.

Fidel and Raul Castro

If you recall the revolutionaries who took refuge in Mexico, one cannot but recall the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, and his brother Raul, who stood at the head of Cuba after Fidel's death. In the fifties, together with Che Guevara, the brothers founded the July 26 Movement in Mexico. It was from Mexico that Fidel Castro landed in Cuba to start a revolution.

Jose Napoles and Damian Zamogilny

Just to get a little distraction from communists of all stripes, consider two famous Mexican athletes. They are both immigrants! Multiple world boxing champion Jose Napoles was born in Cuba. When Fidel Castro banned professional sports on the island, young Napoles fled to Mexico. There he made a brilliant career and lived a long life. The champion died only in the summer of 2019 - and he was born in the fortieth year.

Damyan Zamogilny was noticed by Russian football spectators mainly because of his name and surname. It is obvious to everyone that Damian is not a Mexican, especially since he has the nickname "El Ruso", that is, "Russian." But Zamogilny was born in Argentina, in a Polish family. It's just that in Latin America, the Slavs are not very well distinguished. By the way, his full name is Jorge Damian.

Luis Buñuel and Luis Alcorisa

But back to the forties, when the society in Mexico City got really brilliant - thanks to the number of famous refugees from Europe. Among them were two renowned directors, Luis's namesake - Bunuel and Alcoriz. Luis Bunuel is most often remembered in Russia in connection with a friend of his youth, Federico Garcia Lorca, but in fact he is a renowned master of cinema, whose career has not rolled off for fifty years in a row. He conquered his native Spain, distant Mexico and picky France.

Luis Bunuel has received numerous awards at the Cannes Film Festival, and his "Modest Charm of the Bourgeoisie" was awarded an Oscar. Mexico, too, kindled the director: the main film award of the country, "Ariel", in 1950 was awarded to Bunuel in four nominations, for the film "Forgotten" about street children. In Mexico, the director remained to live almost by accident. I was driving through Mexico City on my own business and learned about the cancellation of the film adaptation of The House of Bernard Alba, which I was invited to direct. And since they didn’t let him put Lorca, he decided to stay where he was.

Luis Alcoriz also has many awards, including Ariel and Goya, two very important awards for cinema in Spanish. Alcorisa was born into a Spanish theatrical family, which after Franco's victory decided to leave the country. First they sought refuge in Algeria, then moved to Mexico. She became Alcorice's second home. By the way, while Buñuel lived in Mexico, Alcorisa constantly collaborated with him as a screenwriter.

Remedios Varo and Tamara de Lempicka

The surrealist and cubist, who have gone down in the history of painting in the twentieth century, both died in Mexico. Remedios Varo fled there from Paris, fleeing the advancing German Nazis. She was Spanish, so she had fled from the Francoists in the same way - by marrying a French admirer of the Spanish Republicans and going with him to France. However, this union, it seems, suppressed her as an artist - almost all the paintings Varo wrote, moving to Mexico and replacing a man. Alas, Varo could not survive her fame, although before that she had experienced many difficult situations - from the excitement of exhibitions, she once had a myocardial infarction. She died young.

On the other hand, Tamara de Lempicka, a migrant from Russia, lived for a long time and wrote most of her works in Paris. She fled from the Nazis in the same way, only in the United States. There her work soon turned out to be unclaimed, and Tamara lived quietly for a long time. But in the seventies, they again became interested in her vivid paintings, and she … urgently left for Mexico to lead a mysterious secluded life. Lempicka always felt that the buyers of her canvases would like them, and indeed: the price of the artist's paintings, who left for the sake of spiritual searches in the Mexican wilderness, skyrocketed. Dying, Tamara bequeathed to scatter her ashes over the Popocatepetl volcano. Do I have to say that this also influenced the price of her work?

Alexander Balankin and Marcos Moshinsky

The nineties became a time of brain drain for Russia. But when they discuss this, they often think about such countries that lured scientists, such as the United States, Britain, Israel or Germany. But the physicist, winner of the UNESCO Prize and the silver medal Einstein Alexander Balankin was invited to Mexico. And he agreed. Now he not only teaches and is engaged in science, but also actively participates in supporting young Mexican scientists.

I must say, this is not the first physicist from Eastern Europe who found his scientific career happiness in Mexico. A native of Kiev, Marcos Moshinsky at the age of twenty-one received Mexican citizenship - his family left in the early twenties, first to Palestine, and then to the New World. At that time, Marcos was not yet a scientist, but he was already very interested in physics. After receiving a bachelor's degree, he went to finish his studies in Europe, and then, already with a doctor of sciences, returned to Mexico to raise his native physics. He himself is a laureate of a number of prizes, and after his death a medal named after him was established in Mexico.

The interests of Moshinsky were not limited to physics. For many years he wrote a weekly political column in the Excelsior newspaper, and this column enjoyed great interest among readers.

Tina Modotti and Edward Weston

And again to the topic of revolutionaries: one of the most famous photographers of the twentieth century, Italian Tina Modotti, lived in Mexico for several years, and all because there was a very interesting circle of revolutionaries of all stripes for her. She arrived in the twenty-second, with her American colleague, one of the most important representatives of the "new vision" (then fashionable photographic trend) Edward Weston, and soon began to exhibit together with him.

Of course, Weston and Modotti talked a lot with Frida Kahlo and her Diego Rivera. In the twenty-ninth, before her eyes, a prominent Cuban revolutionary, the leader of the Cuban students Julio Melho, was killed, and in the thirtieth she was expelled from the country, accused of preparing an attempt on the life of the Mexican president. The couple went to Germany, then - away from Hitler - to the Soviet Union. In the thirty-fourth, Modotti decided to leave for Spain, to support the Republicans; took part in the Civil War.

After Franco's victory, she managed to return to Mexico. She lived there for three more years and died, it is believed, of a heart attack (although her death seems too suspicious to some). Weston had long since parted with her and had a life of his own, traveling around the United States. In 2018, a film project was launched, in which Monica Bellucci stars as Tina Modotti. Ashley Judd played Tinu in Frida opposite Salma Hayek.

Mexico will surprise us with the treasures of the twentieth century more than once: recently in the archives they found the only audio recording with the voice of Frida Kahlo.