ANDRE BRETON
eyewitness accounts, landed squarely
where it was aimed -- in the seat of his
pants.
She shouted loudly and very per-
tinently, "From André Breton!"
Siqueiros' friends cried, "Long
live Communism! Long live Cuba!"
Breton's friends responded, "Cuba
si; Siqueiros no!"
Neither 1'Humanité nor 1'Unita nor
other organs of the same stripe have
given the slightest publicity to this
embarrassing "aggression."
In this world, so many kicks in
the ass do not land where they ought to.
But for once we have a case where it
landed squarely on target. Bravo!
AS TOLD BY SIQUEIROS
Mexico City
Upon his return from the Cultural Congress of Havana, David Alfaro Siqueiros was interviewed by the Mexico City daily Excelsior (January 19) on his reaction to the unexpected award of a swift kick which he received from a member of another delegation.
"The aggression occurred in a street in Havana," said Siqueiros. "In front of an exposition of Cuban painting that was to be inaugurated a few hours later, the New Gallery of Modern Art. I think it was the fifth of January, although I'm not sure about that.
"I had just entered the grounds and had not yet reached the stairs. A group of thirty French youngsters, Trotskyists, were raising a hullabaloo, as is usual with then."
On being asked who did it, Siqueiros replied with a "half-nervous, halfingenuous smile":
"A young girl. Very young. She
walked up and gave me a beautiful kick,
here, below the knee."
The interviewer asked Siqueiros,
"Is it true that they yelled 'murderer'
at you and you answered, ‘Long live the
party' on
"That's correct," Siqueiros re-
sponded. "They yelled the names of Trot-
sky and Breton. I was Breton's friend.
But that was a long time ago. He and I
separated because of ideological differ-
ences. He was a Trotskyist.
"Let me clear things up. Some
journalists say that I answered in Rus-
sian, but I don't know that language at
all. I speak English and French and some
Italian. I studied French when I was a
child at the Colegio Franco-Inglés. I
learned all the common words there, those
that hurt, and I answered these young-
sters with that kind of language."
"You didn't lose your head?"
"I believe I did. I challenged them to step outside if they wanted to take me on. But they didn't want to. I won that round. The police intervened between the two quarrelling groups. Later I made a fiery speech in which I exposed the Trotskyists for their idiocies."
Later in the interview, which covered other topics,