Breathe
By Claudia Pérez Atamoros
It was one night in May 1940 when, at the head of a handful of poorly trained barbarians, David Alfaro Siquieiros burst into Leon Trotsky 's house with the clear mission and conviction of ending the life of the Russian exile, a staunch enemy of his buddy Stalin.
That early morning, Leon Trotsky (who was head of the Red Army) and his second wife Natalia Sedova as well as his grandson, Esteban Volkov, saved their lives by sheer luck, Operation Duck had failed. Wife Natalia, hearing the shots, pushed and pulled Leon out of bed (behind the headboard) and protected him with her body while little "Sieva" hid under his bed with a minor injury to his foot.
Not so lucky was Robert Sheldon, Trotsky's personal guard, who days later was found covered in lime, dead, and with traces of torture.
Three years earlier, in 1937, the Russian ideologist had arrived in the port of Veracruz as a politically persecuted person and thanks to the intervention of Diego Rivera with President Lázaro Cárdenas , he was able to go into exile in our country.
Negotiations that a couple of years later Diego Rivera surely regretted when he found out about the love affair that Frida Kahlo -some "evil tongues" say- had with Trotsky in a fit of revenge for the amorous flirtation that Diego had had with her sister and that, finally, led the Mexican muralist to sponsor Siqueiros -this is also rumored, I was not there to verify it- in his attempt to become an assassin.
The rest is history.
A story that Leon Trotsky knew, since he disembarked in the port of Veracruz, would end up being written in our territory: his assassination. He commented that he would be betrayed by someone in his close circle, by those present there, or by those who would arrive.
Last year Esteban Volkov, grandson of Leon Trotsky, died at the age of 97. The only survivor of that bloody extermination of relatives. They killed everyone. He survived, he married Palmira Fernandez, they had 4 Mexican daughters: Veronica (1955), Doctor of Letters from UNAM, philosopher and essayist; Nora (1956), medical doctor graduated from UNAM, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in the United States of America and the twins Natalia and Patricia (1957).
He dedicated his life between his family, chemistry and the task of keeping alive the memory of his grandfather who received him in Mexico, at the age of 13, after the suicide of his mother, an overwhelmed and persecuted woman who was forbidden to return to Russia at that time.
Esteban was protected by his grandfather's wife after his grandfather's murder and pursued his professional studies in our country. He entered the National Autonomous University of Mexico and graduated as a Chemical Engineer. He joined the research team of the Faculty of Chemistry and soon after he jumped to the pharmaceutical industry. He began to collaborate with the staff of Dr. Ernesto Miramontes Cárdenas, who eventually discovered a chemical route that allowed synthesizing the active substance of the contraceptive pill in 1951.
In such a way that Esteban Volkov participated in the technological development that designed the first contraceptive method in the world. What a feat and Mexican! Norethisterone has been considered one of the most significant inventions in the last two thousand years by some Nobel Prize winners. Others consider it one of the 17 most important molecules in the history of mankind; the Mexican Academy of Sciences concluded that the synthesis of norethisterone by Miramontes Cardenas is Mexico's greatest scientific contribution. And Volkov was on that team.
The history of the contraceptive pill and its development in Mexican laboratories is a separate story that must also be told. To remember it. To keep it in mind because it revolutionized sexuality and allowed women to exercise it freely. But that, that is another very interesting story. It is still pending, then.
Returning to Esteban Volkov, he was always moved by the paternity and consideration Trotsky had for him until his last breath. "I was always touched that at the end of his life he still said, as if to protect me: 'keep the kid away, he mustn't see'." "Sieva" was a man, all things considered, fortunate. He became the first member of the family to reach old age and die at the age of 97.
His daughters, three of whom survive him, are an example of tenacity and dedication, Nora being perhaps the most renowned for her tireless fight against drugs and her unquestionable work to raise awareness of the harmful effects of these substances on the brain. By the way, he was recently in Mexico, in the city of Puebla, and gave a master conference on drugs and addiction, including marijuana. "Cannabinoids produce psychosis with high frequency", an assertion that she maintains before friends and strangers alike, which is why she declares herself a staunch enemy of their use in society.
A woman and a Mexican woman, she declared: "Because of my work as director of NIDA, I have a lot of visibility, which other researchers do not have. There is something beneficial in this visibility and that is that being a woman I break the schemes, since the leadership of the medical system has basically been held by men. The idea is that women, working or studying in medical fields, have an example so that they do not think that there are things they cannot achieve because you have to be a man to do it. So, as a Hispanic American and as a woman, it is important to serve as an example for the girls who are starting out, taking leadership positions in fields that have traditionally been dominated by men, and to demonstrate that really you can."
-What if we legalize them? She gets angry.
Our Mexico will continue to be bloodied. We will continue to pay the high cost of addictions on the other side of the border and beyond. It is a never-ending drug story.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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