While stating his unflinching loyalty to the communist cause, David Alfaro Siqueiros also provides some important autobiographical information in this letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party Central Committee. He talks about being under house arrest in the city of Taxco (Guerrero, Mexico) after being arrested and persecuted under the repressive policies enforced by the government (whose strings were pulled by the caudillo Plutarco Elías Calles), and about his contact with European and North American intellectuals, with whom he created the Bloque de Pintores de Los Ángeles [Los Angeles Mural Painters’ Block], which had just (in 1932) finished painting three murals in California. The letter strikes an exculpatory and prudent tone regarding his quest for support (though without jeopardizing the Central Committee). Siqueiros claims that after he was expelled from the PCM (Mexican Communist Party), he was imprisoned twice by the government for maintaining his political activism and his party affiliation, and was placed under house arrest from mid-1930 until mid-1931 in the colonial city of Taxco.     

While David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974) was under house arrest in Taxco he was visited by Serguéi Eisenstein (1898–1948), the Russian filmmaker who was filming ¡Qué viva México! at the time, by the historian and art essayist Elie Faure (1873–1937), by the Spanish painter and writer Gabriel García Maroto (1889–1969), whom he met during his time in Spain in 1918, and by the North American writer and journalist Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945), among many others. He also notes that, even though he had been expelled from its ranks, the PCM (Mexican Communist Party) charged him with directing the LIP (Lucha Intelectual Proletaria [Intellectual Struggle of the Proletariat]) and its journal Llamada. He was assisted in these endeavors by his Uruguayan companion, Blanca Luz Brum. The PCM also entrusted him with the reorganization of the LAI (Liga Anti-Imperialista [Anti-Imperialist League]). All of this, he claims, demonstrates both his eternal loyalty to the Party and his tacit re-acceptance following his de facto reinstatement.

He also talks about his trip to the United States and his part in the founding of the Bloque de Pintores de Los Ángeles (California) [Mural Painters’ Block], and goes on to mention the murals they painted on that trip. He says he intends to start a local chapter of the Bloque de Pintores in Montevideo according to communist procedure; he has no intention of interfering in the activities of the PCU [Uruguayan Communist Party], and would rather find ways to work together. He suggests that a PCU commission should be formed to supervise its activities, and asks the Party to give him the chance to demonstrate his loyalty through his actions.

[For complimentary reading, see in the ICAA digital archive the typewritten version of David Alfaro Siqueiros’ lecture at the John Reed Club in Hollywood on September 2, 1932: “Los vehículos de la pintura dialéctico-subversiva. Experiencias técnicas del Bloque de Pintores (Sección Los Ángeles)” (doc. no. 1238676)].