Kahlo is also careful to be even-handed herself. She acknowledges that all people are entitled to their opinion, and that art conveying a range of beliefs—both the traditional and the revolutionary, the religious and the secular—should be supported. “In democratic Mexico…we paint saints and Virgins of Guadalupe, as well as paintings with a revolutionary content, on the monumental staircase of the Palacio Nacional,” she pointed out. “Let people from all over the world come to Mexico to learn how in Mexico we respect freedom of expression!”
In 1948, the effects of World War II and the dangers of tyranny remained palpable, and Kahlo goes further to identify censorship as a floodgate for authoritarianism. “That type of crime against the culture of a country, against the right that every man has to express his ideas—those criminal attacks against freedom have only been committed in regimes like Hitler’s,” she insisted. “…If you do not act as an authentic Mexican at this critical moment, by defending your own decrees and rights, then let the science- and history book burning start; let the works of art be destroyed with rocks or fire.”
Despite the passion of Kahlo’s words, Alemán never stepped in and the mural remained covered for nine years. Kahlo, for her part, never stopped fighting for causes she believed in. Even as her health failed significantly in the early 1950s, the political content of her own paintings increased in works like Marxism will give Health to the Sick (c. 1954) and Frida and Stalin (c. 1954). “I am very worried about my painting,” she wrote in a 1951 diary entry. “Above all I want to transform it into something useful…I must struggle with all my strength to ensure that the little positive that my health allows me to do also benefits the Revolution, the only real reason to live.”