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Trump's New Mexico Envoy Stirs Hornet's Nest With Frida Kahlo Jab

Reuters

   MEXICO CITY - The new U.S. ambassador to Mexico has taken aim at
   Mexican icon Frida Kahlo for her support of Marxism, stirring up a
   fierce social media debate with a tweet asking if the painter had not
   been aware of atrocities committed in the name of that ideology.

   Few Mexicans have enjoyed greater global recognition than Kahlo, who
   spent long periods bedridden after a traffic accident in her youth,
   attained international fame following her death in 1954 and became a
   feminist symbol in the 1970s.

   She created some 200 paintings, sketches and drawings - mainly
   self-portraits - in which she transformed her misfortune into works of
   bold color.

   U.S. Ambassador Christopher Landau, who was appointed by President
   Donald Trump and sworn in last month, must navigate a volatile
   bilateral relationship. Trump frequently berates Mexico over trade and
   immigration.

   Not shying away from controversy himself, Landau took to Twitter on
   Sunday during a visit to Kahlo's house, now a museum in the
   colonial-era Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacan.

   "I admire her free and bohemian spirit, and she rightly became an icon
   of Mexico around the whole world. What I do not understand is her
   obvious passion for Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism. Didn't she know about
   the horrors committed in the name of that ideology?" he wrote in
   Spanish.

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