Caridad Mercader

Eustacia María Caridad del Río Hernández (born March 29, 1892 in Santiago de Cuba , † 1975 in Paris ), better known as Caridad del Río , Caridad Mercader or Caritat Mercader - after the surname of her husband - was a Catalan member of the Spanish Communist Party and Agent of the Soviet NKVD . She is best known as Ramón Mercader's mother, the murderer of Leon Trotsky , and for her personal participation in that operation.

Caridad Mercader came from a wealthy family of Hispanic American origin from Barcelona in the early 20th century. As a young girl she married Pablo Mercader, a descendant of the industrial bourgeoisie of Barcelona, ​​whose surname she took and with whom she had five children. After the dissolution of her marriage to Pablo Mercader, she withdrew from her family and turned away from her social circles. She frequented anarchist circles and eventually joined the communist movement. She took part in the fighting to put down the military uprising in Barcelona and joined the columns that went from there to the Aragonese front, where she was injured and had to return to the stage.

In the ranks of the PSUC , she achieved a certain fame (she was introduced as the "Catalan Pasionaria "). Towards the end of 1936 she took part in a leading position in a propaganda mission to Mexico and then became an agent of the NKVD in Spain. Her son Ramón, also a member of the PSUC and an officer in the Republican army , was also recruited by the Soviet secret services during the war - probably through his mother - and trained to eliminate Leon Trotsky , who was in exile in Mexico stopped. Caridad, who had settled in Paris in 1937, also took part in the operation, but when Ramón was arrested after the assassination of Trotsky, she managed to leave Mexico and go to the Soviet Union, where she was received with honors . There she took an active part in the conflicts among the various factions of the Spanish communists in exile.

In 1944, she obtained permission to leave the country to obtain the release of her son. But, in violation of the agreed conditions, she traveled to Mexico, where an undercover operation was being carried out to enable Ramón Mercader to escape from prison. Caridad Mercader's presence turned out to be counterproductive as the Mexican authorities tightened his detention conditions and the Soviets abandoned the operation without having obtained his freedom. Ramón never forgave his mother's interference.

After the operation failed, Caridad settled in Paris , where she lived on a Soviet pension. She occasionally traveled to the Soviet Union to visit her sons Luis and Ramón. The latter had settled there after serving his sentence in Mexico. She died in the French capital in 1975.

Life

First years

Caridad Mercader and her brothers, ca.1895.

Caridad Mercader was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1892 to a wealthy family. Her father, Ramón del Rio, was from Santander , but when the family returned to Spain a few years before Cuba's War of Independence , he settled in Barcelona , where the family members integrated into the city's high society. Caridad had at least two brothers. Although she later claimed that her father was the governor of Santiago and the first plantation owner on the Caribbean island to free his slaves , none of this is true. Contrary to Caridad's report, her mother did not sympathize with the independence fighters in Cuba. Caridad attended the school of the Sagrado Corazón of Sarria , as well as at times the centers that this Catholic community administered in Paris and London . As a result, she spoke perfect French and English . In her youth she evidently felt a religious calling, but did not choose it.

When she was just sixteen, on June 13, 1908, the Barcelona newspapers announced the engagement of Caridad del Río to Pablo Mercader Medina. Mercader was seven years her senior and a member of a wealthy family who worked in the textile industry. His father, Narciso Mercader Sacanella, had started with a factory in Badalona and later expanded his business by acquiring more factories in Barcelona. The future marriage represented a bond that united two wealthy families of the Barcelona bourgeoisie . Both fiancés practiced horsemanship and, as Caridad herself explained, she fell in love with Pablo Mercader because of his skill as a rider. The wedding took place on January 7, 1911.

Mercader was kind. Politically, he lined up in conservative Catalan nationalism and was a member of the vigilante group . At that time Caridad was "a beautiful teenage girl, with a round face, pleasant facial features and a sweet look [...] with her green eyes, which were always the most distinctive features of her". The couple settled on Illas i Vidal Street, in the upscale residential area of Sant Gervasi de Cassoles . The young wife took her husband's family name and was later called Caridad or Caritat Mercader. The couple had five children: Jorge (* 1911), Ramón (* 1913), Montserrat (* 1914), Paul (* 1915) and Luis (* 1923). Shortly after the birth of Paul, Jorge developed poliomyelitis , which paralyzed both legs.

Separation of the couple and stay in France

"[Caridad Mercader is] the symbol of the seduction of the enlightened classes by the Soviet revolution, as well as the fanaticism that can be achieved." - Javier Rioyo : at the presentation of the Documentary Asaltar los cielos

The marriage was not happy and after the first few years of living together the relationship began to fail. Pablo Mercader, a seemingly devoted family man, displayed some unconventional sexual preferences in his private life, according to his wife. According to the description of her son Luis in the documentary Asaltar los cielos , Caridad told him that her husband took her to brothels in order to stimulate her to new sexual experiences. There she was forced to observe the sexual encounters between the prostitutes and their customers through peepholes hidden in the walls of the rooms. These episodes aroused a deep contempt in Caridad not only for her husband, but also for her social class.

In the early 1920s, Caridad, who had previously lived according to the conventions of her social circle, began to show an attitude that was not in line with civil customs. According to the journalist and writer Gregorio Luri , who includes the report by Isaac Don Levine , Caridad took painting lessons from the artist Vicente Borrás y Abella , in whose studio she was able to contact intellectuals and the easy-going scene. This is how her personal change began and gradually Caridad began to socialize with marginalized groups, frequent fringe areas and consume morphine . According to reports from her son Ramón to his brother Luis, Caridad was secretly addicted to opioids for years .

In the midst of the booming pistolerismo in Barcelona, ​​Caridad frequented circles of anarchists , even passing them on information that would enable them to carry out attacks against the business interests of the Mercader family. Since her brother, José del Río, was a city judge and knew which judges were responsible for a particular criminal case, Caridad passed on information to the anarchists on the identity of the judges who presided over the respective terrorist process against her fellow believers. They in turn used the information to threaten these judges and thereby preserve the defendant's freedom. At the same time, the couple's economic situation began to deteriorate, which could possibly have had an impact on the metamorphosis of Caridad. When in 1921 the patriarch of the family Mercader died, was his eldest son, Juan, who hereu , at the head of the family business. However, it was run down by him. The business went bankrupt and he eventually fled to Argentina with his family. The rest of the Mercader family were in a precarious financial position, and the Mercader-Del Rio couple had to move to a modest apartment on Carrer Ample ("Breiten Street") in the Gothic Quarter , by the Basilica de la Merced . According to journalist and researcher Javier Juárez, Caridad had to start teaching to help feed the family and it was it (not her relationship with Borrás y Abella's studio) that started her having relationships with circles very different from her class to maintain. Pablo Mercader worked as an accountant, mostly for small publishers.

Airplane of the Lignes Aeriennes Latécoère , 1919.

Another factor that contributed to the end of their marriage was the love affair that Caridad had with the French aviator Louis Delrieu. In 1919, while Caridad was staying near Alicante for a time , Delrieu, who flew the route between Toulouse and Casablanca for Latécoère (later Aéropostale) , had to make an emergency landing nearby . The aviator's identity was established in 2013 by Gregorio Luri: “He was young, elegant and distinguished, surrounded by that mythical aura of heroism that accompanied the aviation pioneers .” Louis and Caridad fell in love and became lovers, if not it is known exactly when. Delrieu was the godfather of Caridad's younger son Luis, born in 1923. In fact, a rumor circulated that Luis's real father was Delrieu. The anti-Stalinist writer Julian Gorkin attributed the personal and ideological change of Caridad to her relationship with this aviator: "She had connections with a flying pilot, a communist activist who infected her with his fanaticism". However, Luis claimed his godfather, who was not named, was a member of the Croix de Feu , a French fascist organization founded in 1927.

All of these scandals led the Del Rio and Mercader families to take drastic measures. According to Caridad's report to her son Luis, her involvement in anarchist bombings had been discovered and her arrest was possible. One night in 1923, nurses from the New Bethlehem Asylum in Sant Gervasi, accompanied by Caridad's brothers, came to her home, put on a straitjacket, and assigned her. Her husband and brothers preferred that they be mistaken for insane rather than imprisonment. There she spent three months in isolation, subjected to extremely aggressive treatment with frequent cold showers and electric shocks. “I thought I was going really crazy,” she later confessed to her son Luis. She never forgives her family for this traumatic experience and from then on she no longer felt any obligation to her family or social class. When she managed to get out of the mental hospital - according to her son Luis, it was Caridad's anarchist friends who, after learning where she was detained, reportedly made death threats against her husband and brothers in order to end her force Caridad to be released from the asylum, which they eventually did. As a result, Caridad decided to radically change her life, to break with her family and to continue to have no contact or connections with her. Between 1924 and 1925 she took her five children with her and moved with Delrieu to the French town of Dax in Landes . She lived happily with her lover until 1928 when she decided to end the relationship. Shortly after moving to Toulouse, where she ran a restaurant, Caridad attempted suicide. When Pablo Mercader, still her husband, was notified, he traveled to the French city and took responsibility for the three younger children: Montserrat, Pablo and Luis. All four returned to Barcelona together, where the three children continued their education in religious boarding schools, mainly because of Pablo Mercader's modest economic situation. Jorge and Ramón stayed in Toulouse, where they attended hotel management school. Jorge trained as a chef, Ramón as a maître d'hôtel .

Maurice Thorez, General Secretary of the French Communist Party , 1932. According to Isaac Don Levine, Caridad Mercader was his lover during her stay in France in the 1930s

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After her health recovered, Caridad moved to Paris , where she was a member of the Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière , ("French Section Workers International", SFIO) in Paris, XV. Municipality entered. This grouping was quite far to the left of the party and was led by Marceau Pivert , who would found an opinion faction in the SFIO in 1935 (the Gauche révolutionnaire , "revolutionary left"), which would later split off and move closer to Trotskyism . There is a photo from 1928 in which Caridad Mercader appears on a trip to the country with several other members of the SFIO, including Pivert himself and his daughter Jacqueline. There are versions according to which Caridad made contact with the Soviet secret service at this time - Gorkin claims that this was done as early as 1928, according to a statement by "a former cultural attaché to the Soviet embassy in Paris". She may have made the acquaintance of Leonid Eitingon , a Soviet intelligence officer who was later to recruit her, at that time . In her biography of several members of the Eitingon family, published in 2012, Mary Key-Wilmers does not provide any information about Eitingon between his departure from Istanbul, his next assignment to China in 1931 and his arrival in Spain in 1936. Pawel Sudoplatow makes in his in Description of his work in the NKVD, Special Tasks , published in the 1990s , only stating that Eitingon was in the USA after his stay in China in the early 1930s and that he got a managerial position in the NKVD after his return to the Soviet Union. In any case, at the beginning of the 1930s, Caridad had grown closer to the French Communist Party (PCF) and, according to Levine, acted as a courier for the Communist International and possibly the NKVD. As Levine claimed, Caridad enjoyed telling those around him how Maurice Thorez - the general secretary of the PCF -, Jacques Duclos and other French communist leaders behaved in bed. It was also during this period, around 1930, that Montserrat fled the boarding school where she was trained in Barcelona and moved to live with her mother in France. She joined the PCF, where she met André Marty , whose secretary she would later become during the Spanish Civil War .

After the Republic of Spain was declared, Ramón returned to Barcelona, ​​where he got a job at the Hotel Ritz - according to his brother Luis, Ramón confessed to him that by the time his mother returned to Spain in 1935 he had been a staunch communist for years had been. Both his siblings, Jorge and Montserrat, and his mother stayed in France - their son Luis remembered that during his entire stay in a boarding school in Barcelona, ​​from the age of five to eleven, he had one visit from Caridad accompanied by Ramón got. Jorge did not return to Spain and Luis did not see him until he moved to France in 1937. For her part, Caridad had problems with the French police, who forbade her to stay in Paris, which is why she moved to the area around Bourdeaux . She was arrested in 1935. As she told her son Luis, the agents brutally beat her, leaving her blind for fifteen days. She was then expelled from the country. In June 1935, Ramón was arrested for membership in the Communist Party.

Return to Barcelona and take part in the Spanish Civil War

After her expulsion from France, Caridad settled in Barcelona and joined the Partit Comunista de Catalunya (PCC), the tiny Catalan branch of the PCE , of which her son Ramón was already a member. She took part in the process of unifying almost all the Catalan workers' parties, which gave rise to the Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC), and in early July 1936 the PCC, along with Pere Ardiaca , made her a member of the editorial team of Treball , the new one Central organ of the new party. At the same time, in mid-1936, Caridad was a member of the Secretariat for Press Services of the People's Olympics , the multisport event that was to take place in Barcelona in July of that year in response to the Summer Olympics in Berlin . Luis said that at the time he was staying with his father, he rarely met with Caridad.

“Grammar teaches us that the masculine plural of certain names can very well contain persons of both sexes . But since at the front of Madrid, as well as in Oviedo and Catalonia, women fought like lionesses, by the side of their fathers, husbands, fiancés, brothers, or simply comrades; [...] since Caridad Mercader covered herself with medals, embossed in the folds of her wounds; [...] since it is impossible defenders and the martyrs of the Iberian freedom to call, no, next to the one male name, to use the word white as a maternal bosom and energetic like a wake-up call at dawn, the word of a new dictionary: militiamen! " - Aguilera, Francisco, (May 29, 1937). "Tome nota la Academia" (Note the academy). Repertorio Americano , San José de Costa Rica, XXXIII: 20, 319

At dawn on July 19, 1936, the uprising of the Barcelona garrison took place. Caridad took an active part in the fighting against the insurgent troops, especially in the storming of the Capitanía General in Barcelona, ​​where the leader of the insurgents, who had arrived from Palma de Mallorca a few hours earlier, General Goded , was staying . Apparently, it was Caridad Mercader who, after the military surrendered on the evening of the 19th, persuaded the militiamen to take him in the presence of the President of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys , instead of having him shot - in the face of the President Goded sent a radio message acknowledging the defeat of the uprising in Catalonia and calling on those still resisting to surrender. The French journalist André Jacquelin reported on Caridad Mercader's leading role in this episode in his work Espagne et liberté: le second Munich (1939): “Militiamen gathered around him [General Goded] and among the latter must be the role model of the Catalan Louise Michel , real name Caridas [sic] Mercader, to be highlighted, with tattered clothes, but sublime in her ardent faith. At the risk of her life she had rescued the famous rebel general Goddet [sic] (the governor of Barcelona) from the massacre in order to hand him over to the tribunal alive ”- the story was also published on July 26th in La Dèpêche de Toulouse .

Facade of the building of the Capitanía General on the paseo de Colón in Barcelona, ​​where General Goded had holed up. After he surrendered, Caridad Mercader convinced the militia officers to spare his life and hand him over to the President of the Generalitat, Companys.

After the failure of the uprising in Barcelona, ​​she took an active part in the formation of the first units that were formed in the city to crush the insurgents. There are discrepancies in the sources as to which section Caridad Mercader was assigned: according to several sources, she set out for the Aragonese front, in the column led by Durruti and Pérez Farrás - the columna Durruti , although it is also possible that it was about that of Trueba-Del Barrio , which had been formed by communist militiamen. Her sons Ramón and Pablo also joined their mother's column, while their daughter Montserrat and son-in-law, Jacques Dudouyt, volunteered in Spain - Montserrat worked as the secretary of André Marty, who led the International Brigades with an iron hand. A few days later, Caridad was seriously injured in an air raid - some sources claim it was in Tardienta where the Carlos Marx column fought, while others suggest Bujaraloz , which corresponds to the section of the Durruti column. The shrapnel caused eleven wounds, some of them quite life-threatening, which is why she had to be evacuated to Lérida , where she was operated on and soaked up from her injuries. Although she was able to restore her health almost completely, she still had some chronic consequences, such as an intestinal ailment. Eight weeks after her front line injury, Caridad left the hospital.

Communist propaganda did everything possible to make them a model for the anti-fascist Catalan fighters and called them “the Catalan Pasionaria” or “the Pasionaria of Catalonia”. So it happened that Treball , the central organ of the PSUC, presented Caridad Mercader in its September 1st issue as an example of the female volunteers who had joined the militia because of their political commitment and not out of frivolity: “Mercader is far from it removed from being that noisy young woman who puts on a work suit for reasons that no one can understand, such as those that appear today on the pages of certain sensationalist magazines or even the tabloid press ”. Proof of their prestige was the work of the Cuban writer and revolutionary, Juan Marinello, who met Caridad Mercader in 1937. Caridad Mercader dedicated one of the chapters of his work Momento español (Spanish moment), a collection of articles on the Spanish Civil War from 1937, with great and exaggerated praise to her person: “Long-time anarchist, trainee of direct action as the only possible course of action, worshiper of the attack and churchgoer of the bomb, she came to Marxism by slow and firm conviction. When she found the truth, it entered her with sensual passion. [...] What this woman did for the freedom of the world on Spanish soil would not fit into the most comprehensive anthology of heroism [...]. The most amazing thing is the calm determination with which she approaches certain death. There are innumerable cases of women who consciously approach the ultimate sacrifice without hesitation, without trembling, without grimacing, without complaining [...] ”.

She did not go back to the front, but took over the leadership of a propaganda mission sent by the Generalitat de Catalunya , the PSUC and the Comitè Central de Milícies Antifeixistes de Catalunya ( Central Committee of the Antifascist Militias of Catalonia ) to Mexico and the United States, in whose frame weapons should also be bought. The expedition went on board on September 18, 1936 in the port of Barcelona. Among other communists, they accompanied their daughter Montserrat, as well as Lena Imbert, a communist teacher, the bride of her son Ramón, who acted as her secretary. The ship they were traveling on, the Manuel Arnús , entered Havana on October 25th . There the officers deserted and took the side of the insurgents , while the members of the expedition were detained by the Cuban authorities, which were hostile to the Spanish Republic. It is thanks to the initiatives of the Mexican government that they were able to reach that country on board a Mexican warship. The participants of the expedition reached Veracruz on November 10th and were received by President Lázaro Cárdenas and his wife. On the 17th of that month, Caridad and two other members of the Mission addressed the Mexican House of Representatives .

“And here we are, Citizens Mexican MPs; Here we are present and we place in your hands, as official representatives of the Mexican people, this message, which we ask you to convey to each and every district of the vast Mexican territory , as the faithful and felt voice of Republican Spain: Mexicans, generous brothers and friends !: All of Spain cheers and greets you. The name of your great country, together with that of your famous President Cárdenas, are already hallowed as two milestones in the new history of Spain and are also indelibly carved in the hearts of all Spaniards. " - Caridad Mercader, before Chamber of Deputies of Mexico (November 17, 1936).

From this stay in Mexico comes an anecdote about Bartolomeu Costa-Amic , then a member of the POUM , which she addressed publicly in 1994 when her memoir was published. Costa-Amic, along with other members of the anti-Stalinist party, had come to Mexico in October 1936 as part of a delegation that was on a propaganda tour to obtain arms and money in that country. In his memoirs, on behalf of Andreu Nin , he claimed responsibility for the initiatives that led to President Lázaro Cárdenas granting Trotsky political asylum in Mexico. On November 20, Caridad Mercader, dressed in militia overalls and wearing the arm of Mexican trade unionist Lombardo Toledano , took part in the front row of the annual parade to commemorate the Mexican Revolution in Mexico City . According to Costa-Amic, his first wife, who had worked at the same time as Caridad Mercader in the sewing workshop of the La Innovación trading house in Barcelona, ​​recognized the Catalan communist and hit her by saying to her in Catalan : “You bitch, have come to organize the assassination of Trotsky, ”to which Mercader replied evasively. It has been pointed out, however, that as of the date of the move, November 20, there was consensus among sources that no decision had been taken to grant Trotsky asylum, which would undermine the credibility of Costa-Amic's statements . In any case, the expedition under Caridad Mercader returned to Spain at the end of the year and made a stop in the USA , where propaganda activities were also carried out. She arrived in Spain on January 7, 1937 , on board a ship on which about one hundred American volunteers traveled to Spain to join the Lincoln Battalion .

Vicente Lombardo Toledano , general secretary of the Confederación de Trabajadores de México and, according to the released documents of the VENONA project , an employee of the NKVD , was one of the hosts of Caridad Mercader's expedition to Mexico in 1936.

After returning from her North American tour, Caridad Mercader received news that her son Pablo had died on the Madrid front a few days earlier . On January 3, at the start of the Third Battle of the La Coruña Motorway, an enemy tank drove over the machine gun nest it was in near Brunete. It was his son Luis, who still lived with his father, who told her about Pablo's death after his return. Caridad then asked him to move in with her, to which Luis consented and left his father. In Luis' words, “my father was an ordinary citizen, unaware of what was happening around him. By contrast, they [Caridad, Ramón and Pablo] were heroes ”. Luis, who had hardly lived with his mother during his life, saw her request as an opportunity to approach her and therefore consented. He would never see his father again. Mother and son lived in a palace on paseo de la Bonanova , in Sarrià , which had been requisitioned by Ramón and which had belonged to a member of the Mercader family. The palace also served as the headquarters of the General Staff of the “Jaume Graells” battalion commanded by Ramón, which was trained in an old monastery known as the “cuartel Vorochilov” nearby.

At that time, Caridad Mercader became the person in charge of the Agrupación de Mujeres Antifascistas , but she increasingly turned away from the tasks of mobilization and propaganda as she became more involved in working with the Soviet political police that she did had recruited earlier this year. Nonetheless, along with other female members of the PSUC, she took part in the fighting of the May events (1937) - according to her son, by transporting weapons and ammunition for the communist units that took part in those fighting. A snapshot of Agustí Centelles has survived showing Caridad Mercader helping to clear barricades after the events in Barcelona . It is also known that Marinello met Caridad Mercader when he traveled to Spain on the occasion of his participation in the II Congreso Internacional de Escritores para la Defensa de la Cultura , which took place in July 1937. Also in July, so that he could continue his studies, Caridad sent her son Luis to Paris, where he moved in with his sister Montserrat and her husband, who had returned to France after having had major differences with Marty.

Agent of the NKVD

Trotsky with his wife in Mexico, 1937

The information on Caridad Mercader available in old Soviet archives has not yet been systematically researched. It is certain, however, that she was hired as an agent in early 1937. We know of an episode reported by Luis Mercader, according to which he and his mother, shortly after returning from Mexico, visited the Madrid front in the winter of 1937 (Luis did not give an exact date), where Ramón was located. Ramón and Caridad had a long conversation, according to Luis, with the aim of convincing Ramón to join the NKVD as well. Months later, in April, Luis drew his conclusions: “... I learned that my mother had relations with the Soviets (we called her that). Later I understood that my brother Ramón was (also) in contact with them ”. With the mediation of Caridad Mercader, the NKVD also recruited other Spanish communists, such as África de las Heras , or Carmen Brufau, a friend of Caridad.

As for the question of who presented them to the Soviet security apparatus at the time, two alternatives have generally been considered: Ernő Gerő and Leonid Eitingon . Gerő, who used Pedro as a pseudonym, was a Hungarian communist who was a delegate of the Communist International in the PSUC in Barcelona (he had held this position in the PCC since 1932) and was head of the NKVD mission in Catalonia. According to Luis, Gerö was a person very close to his family who "could have been the link between the Soviets and my family [...] in those years". Caridad met him “with high esteem”. However, responsibility for recruiting Caridad Mercader has traditionally been attributed to Leonid Eitingon, whom she may have met years earlier in France. The documentation available at the FSB confirms Eitingon as the recruiter for Caridad. Eitingon, a respected officer from the NKVD's special operations department, was posted to Spain a few weeks after the war began, as adjutant to Alexander Orlov , the NKVD chief in Spain. He resided in Barcelona several times during the war (in fact, it was Eitingon who had Luis Mercader taken to the Soviet consulate to protect him during the May fighting in 1937). After Orlov deserted in 1938, Eitingon, who operated under the pseudonym General Kotov , became head of the NKVD mission in Spain. It has often been speculated that Caridad Mercader and Eitingon (seven years younger than them) were lovers. Gorkin asserted it categorically. Historians such as Robert Conquest or Hugh Thomas spoke out in the same vein, while Sudoplatov , the head of the NKVD's special operations department during World War II, denied it: “... that would be a violation of good professional practice. […] They were good friends, but not physically intimate, despite his well-deserved reputation as a man with numerous female affairs ”. Her son Luis also denied it: “I don't think my mother and Leonid had a relationship. […] They cultivated simple, friendly, fraternal relationships, as should be the case among communist comrades. That is exactly the opinion of the Eytintons children ”. Mary-Kay Wilmers , for her part, points out that Eitingon was a philanderer. In any case, Eitingon was responsible for Ramón and Caridad Mercader in the NKVD.

The news about Caridad's whereabouts from mid-1937 onwards is rare and sometimes contradictory, almost always related to Ramón's forays. It is generally accepted that Ramón disappeared from Spain that summer for training. That is how Luis Mercader described it, without commenting on where those teachings took place. Although authors such as Wilmers, Levine or Gorkin claim that it was in the Soviet Union, the documentation preserved by the FSB claims that Ramón received his education in France (this agrees with the statement of Luis Mercader, who claimed that Ramón was not first trained until 1960 visited the Soviet Union after being released from prison in Mexico). For his part, Sudoplatov reported in his work Special Tasks how, when he was still a simple agent, he murdered the Ukrainian opposition leader Yevhen Konovalets in Rotterdam at the end of May 1938 . On his escape to the Soviet Union, he spent three weeks in Barcelona, ​​where he is said to have met Ramón Mercader. In the summer of that year Eitingon is said to have sent him from Barcelona to Paris. Once there, Eitingon commissioned him to infiltrate the French Trotskyist organizations. Although Stalin had not yet issued the order to assassinate Trotsky , the NKVD had begun preparations for the operation, although Mercader was not yet directly involved in the matter. Leon Trotsky, who had been one of Lenin's closest collaborators , had lived in exile in Mexico since January 1937 after he was forced to leave Norway under pressure from the Soviet government. Thanks to the efforts of the American Trotskyists through the mediation of Diego Rivera , the Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas had promised to grant him asylum.

According to Clemence Béranger's statement, Ramón moved to Paris at an unspecified time in 1938 (where his mother is said to have been for "some time"). According to Eitingon's instructions, Ramón was supposed to seduce Sylvia Ageloff, an American Trotskyist and social worker who was to be used to invade Trotsky's surroundings. Ramón Mercader used the false identity of Jacques Mornard, allegedly the son of a Belgian diplomat. Ageloff came to Paris at the end of June 1938, on vacation and on the occasion of her trip to attend the founding meeting of the Fourth International . Little did she know that her chance meeting with Mornard-Mercader had been prepared by Soviet intelligence. Mercader seduced Sylvia Ageloff and continued his relationship with her until she left for New York in February 1939. Then they continued writing, which did not prevent Ramón from trying other ways of approaching Trotsky's circle. After his murder, Frida Kahlo declared that she had met Mercader during her stay in Paris (January – April 1939). The latter asked her to help him find a house near Trotsky's domicile in Coyoacan , on the outskirts of Mexico City , which Kahlo refused to do.

As for Caridad, she did not share accommodation with her children, although Montserrat and Luis also lived in Paris. Ramón, on the other hand, lived with his partner, Lena Imbert. Her son Luis initially lived with Montserrat and her husband, who had previously returned from Spain. Later, in mid-1938, Caridad forced him to move into Daniel Béranger's mother's house. Luis and his mother met about twice a month. In March 1939, Caridad and Eitingon organized the relocation of their son Luis to the Soviet Union, as they foresaw the beginning of the Second World War .

Participation in the assassination of Trotsky - Operation Duck

Current condition of Trotsky's house in Coyoacán, currently Museo Casa de León Trotsky .

In March 1939, Sudoplatov, now head of the Special Operations Department, received express instructions from Stalin to put an end to Trotsky's life. Eitingon, who had just arrived from Moscow, designed Operation Utka ( duck ) at Sudoplatov's behest . The plan did not take shape until July and was not personally approved by Stalin until early August. Operation Duck involved several operational groups made up of Spanish and Mexican Communists recruited during the Spanish Civil War. One of these groups was led by the Mexican muralist David Siqueiros and had the aim of murdering the exiled politician; the other consisted of Caridad and Ramón Mercader. This should only take care of monitoring and information gathering tasks. Mother and son participation was envisaged from the first version of the plan.

At the beginning of the summer of 1939, Eitingon, coming from the USSR, traveled with Sudoplatov to Paris and spent a few months training Caridad and Ramón. Both traveled to New York in late August. The outbreak of World War II resulted in orders being received from Moscow to stop the transfer of Eitingon and the Mercaders to America, but those orders were not followed. From New York, it is believed that Caridad traveled to Mexico via Cuba (Ramón stayed in New York for a few weeks before traveling to Mexico in early October, from where he convinced Sylvia Ageloff to join him), albeit real it is not known when he actually arrived in Mexico, as there is only sparse information from the period from December 1939 to May 1940. From the documentation in the possession of the FSB , we know that Eitingon, after spending some time in New York, also traveled to Mexico and that Caridad, who was also in Mexico, was forced to leave the country and across Cuba to return to New York because she was recognized in Mexico (she started on May 21). At dawn on May 23-24, a group of armed men under the command of Siqueiros attacked Trotsky's home in Coyoacan without even wounding him.

Eitingon had no choice but to report that the operation had failed. The message reached Moscow by way of a message that was brought to New York by a courier and transmitted from there to the Soviet capital via an encrypted radio message. When the news arrived, Stalin was enraged and called Sudoplatov and Beria , who told him that the alternative plan would be set in motion. However, the role of Caridad Mercader in the new operation appears to be of secondary importance and it is not known what her specific functions were in the context of the new operation. Ramón had already been in Mexico for several months, under a false identity and as the bridegroom of Sylvia Ageloff, and had devoted himself solely to gathering information without having any personal contact with Trotsky. A few days after the Siqueiros' failed attempt and through his relationship with Angeloff, Ramón Mercader finally met Trotsky. In late June he traveled to New York for ten days to receive instructions. A few days after his return to Mexico, Caridad also returned. After several months in which Ramón had cultivated his relationship with the exile politician, he managed to break into his house on August 20, 1940 and meet him alone, under the pretext of reading an article he had written. He hit him on the head with a pimple . Sudoplatov reports that Eitingon and Caridad Mercader originally planned an attack on Trotsky's house for the moment when Ramón was in there. He would use the confusion to shoot his victim. Ramón contradicted the plan and decided to single-handedly murder Trotsky himself.

Trotsky would die the following day. As planned, Caridad Mercader and Eitingon expected Ramón in a car near the fortress house (other sources speak of two) to help him escape. They became aware of the fact that the attack had failed when they watched the hustle and bustle and heard the police sirens without Ramón having come out, whereupon they fled the place and quickly traveled out of the country. Nevertheless, according to the testimony of the later defense attorney for Ramón Mercader, the lawyer Eduardo Ceniceros, it was Caridad who, prior to her illegal departure, took the necessary steps so that her son could be assisted by a defense attorney. The chosen one, at the suggestion of Lombardo Toledano, was Octavio Medellín Ostos. Caridad did not reveal to him either the identity of the alleged murderer Trotsky or the fact that it was her son: “Look, lawyer, what this boy did. He is the son of a most revered comrade outside Mexico, and in view of this friendship with his mother, I have struggled to ask that his defense be taken up. "

In the Soviet Union

Badge of the Order of Lenin. This was awarded to Caridad Mercader in 1941 after her arrival in the Soviet Union.

Caridad Mercader and Eitingon traveled from Mexico to Cuba and hid there. The versions from the documentation of the FSB and the Sudoplatows differ from each other in some points (with regard to the route Eitingon after leaving Cuba), but they agree with regard to Caridad. According to Sudoplatov, they both stayed in Cuba for six months, which is consistent with the time it took them to get to the Soviet Union. From there, they maintained contact with Ramón through the lawyers who took care of his defense. Lawyer, writer and Cuman communist Ofelia Domínguez Navarro was a member of the defense team for Ramón Mercader in Mexico. According to her memoir, 50 Years of My Life (1971), she was secretly hired in Havana by a mysterious Spanish woman who could have been Caridad Mercader herself. But at this point the versions diverge. The FSB documentation claims that Eitingon left Caridad in Cuba and traveled to the Soviet Union after a stopover in Europe. Instead, Sudoplatov reported that both had left Cuba for New York, they had crossed the country as far as California (where Eitingon) made contact with the agents he had recruited during his mission to the United States, and that they had been from San Francisco , cross the Pacific by ship and arrive in Moscow with the Trans-Siberian . The route followed by Caridad according to the FSB documentation is similar.

On June 17th, Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD, held a grand reception during which the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet , Mijaíl Kalinin , awarded Caridad Mercader the Order of Lenin . She was the first foreign woman to whom it was awarded (for Ramón the star of a Hero of the Soviet Union was reserved). Caridad got an apartment that could be considered luxurious by Moscow standards; there she would move in with her son Luis, who had been in the country for almost two years. But they could only spend a few months together there, because the German invasion of the Soviet Union had to separate them again. Luis volunteered for the Red Army after obtaining Soviet citizenship, a condition of being able to join the militia.

Despite all the urgent petitions by the emigrants to enlist in the army and thus be allowed to defend the Soviet Union, the cradle of socialism, they were always rejected at the beginning, both because they were foreigners and because of the future need for them To deploy cadres in their countries of origin. Given the persistence with which the emigrants, not just the Spaniards, insisted, in July 1941 they were given permission to report to a military unit dependent on the Special Operations Department of the NKVD: the Independent Motorized Rifle Brigade for Special Use (OMSBON ), which was strong up to 20,000 fighters. This unit had volunteers from different countries and was one of the units entrusted with the defense of Moscow and the maintenance of public order in the city. A company was set up in the OMSBON, the fourth, consisting of a little over a hundred Spanish volunteers. During the siege of Moscow , the "Spanish" company defended the city center without becoming involved in combat operations. This company included Luis Mercader (who was assigned the post of telegraph officer in August), as well as several Spanish émigrés, including Lena Imbert and África de las Heras . Caridad was with them for a few weeks in the company's training camp, but according to the memoirs of Sebastiá Piera , a member of the PSUC, she disappeared before the end of the battle for Moscow. Their son Luis was assigned various assignments, but he returned to the capital repeatedly (early 1942 and that summer). According to his report, his mother continued to live in her apartment. Luis was demobilized in February 1943 and began studying engineering in Moscow, moving back to Caridad.

According to Dimitrov's diary , Caridad stayed there until the end of 1944, working for the Soviet foreign broadcaster's French service. Lena Imbert, her son's partner, who died of tuberculosis in April 1944, lived with her in the sanatorium where Dr. Carlos Díez Fernández worked (the leadership of the PCE denied the existence of tuberculosis in the ranks of the Spanish emigrants). Luis Mercader, however, gave 1943 as the year of Lena Imbert's death and testified that after a stay in a sanatorium she died in Caridad's apartment.

“When she walked on the street, everyone looked at her. And I asked them: - Why are they looking at you? - They always looked at me. Always. I've already got used to it. ' She had a penetrating, commanding look and probably that was what impressed people. I have a photo of ... when she arrived in Russia in 1940. She was forty-eight years old and weighed 82 kilos. Tall, sturdy, and very elegant. She was of good taste and was always well dressed. I remember her with her nylon stockings from the Dupont house, which had only just been invented, and brown snakeskin shoes with high heels. " - Luis Mercader about his mother (between 1941 and 1945). :

During her stay in the Soviet Union, there were deep differences of opinion between Caridad Mercader and Dolores Ibárruri , the Pasionaria . The divergences between the two were expressed in two areas. On the one hand, Caridad supported Jesús Hernández and Enrique Castro Delgado , who faced Ibárruri after the death of José Díaz to take control of the PCE. According to Luis Mercader, Hernández and Castro Delgado "visited us every day and the three of them spent many hours talking". In fact, according to Líster's testimony , both he and the other military leaders who initially supported Hernández ( Modesto and Cordón ) had expressed their support for the new General Secretary, the Pasionaria , Caridad Mercader and Carmen Parga (the wife of Manuel Tagüeña ) directed biting criticism against them: "[Our rapprochement with Dolores] has brought us that some have said to our faces that we have lost our masculinity as communists". The other area of ​​disagreement was that of the participation of Spanish emigrants in NKVD operations. While Pasionaria did not always agree to the unrestricted use of the Spanish emigrants by the Soviet secret services (especially those from the PSUC) without asking the PCE, Caridad, on the other hand, was a dedicated advocate of the interests of Soviet espionage and assumed that you have to do everything they asked for, because the Soviet Union is the "motherland". One of the Spanish emigrants who entered the service of the NKVD was Sebastiá Piera , whose entry Caridad Mercader had vouched for himself. Piera described her in her Soviet years as follows: “... an extraordinary woman who felt herself to be a PSUC member and who had a strong bond with Catalonia. At every opportunity she invited us to dinner and cooked for the Catalans ”.

Based on the information that Enrique Castro Delgado had sent him in 1960, Julian Gorkin assigned Caridad Mercader various missions on behalf of the NKVD, such as participating in the failed assassination attempt by the Soviet secret services against Franz von Papen , the ambassador of Nazi Germany in Turkey on April 24th. February 1942. Her son Luis, who stayed in Moscow for most of the war, claimed the opposite: that Caridad did not take part in any NKVD mission, “partly because she was exposed through her work”. In fact, according to Luis Mercader, between her work at OMSBON and her departure, "Caridad spent the days dressed in bed, with a pillow in her back, a cigarette in her mouth, drinking one coffee after another and knitting" . In contrast, Castro also assigned her to missions in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, in which she was involved in the murder of about thirty people. At the same time, on behalf of the NKVD, she was monitoring the leading officials of the Bulgarian Communist Party who were in exile in the Soviet Union, many of whom were ultimately executed. Sudoplatov claimed that Caridad Mercader stayed in Tashkent between 1941 and 1943 , which her son Luis firmly denied.

There are various testimonies who claim that Caridad Mercader intervened to allow Spanish emigrants to leave the Soviet Union. Manuel Tagüeña claimed that Caridad had helped Spaniards who wanted to leave the country to enter the service of the NKVD and in this way achieved that they could leave the Soviet Union. Doctor Díez Fernández himself, who treated most of the Spanish colony in Muskau, was one of them. Castro Delgado confirmed this statement and said that after the defeat of Hernández and himself in the struggle for power in the Spanish Communist Party in the summer of 1944 he fell victim to a purge. Despite his expulsion from the party, Caridad got him help and was one of the people who stood up for him to get permission to leave the Soviet Union because the leadership of the PCE refused to allow him to leave (he did not manage to leave until late 1945 ). On the other hand, and according to her son's statements, Caridad played a role in highly dramatic scenes at that time: “Every now and then my mother got hysterical and said unimaginable things, she screamed that she was going to kill herself and I had to take the gun out of her hands ". Luis also suspected, however, that it could be a tactic to exert pressure on the Soviet authorities to take care of the fate of their son Ramón. During those years it was also rumored that Caridad had started again to use drugs that had been given to her under the supervision of the doctor Díez Fernández, who had treated Lena Imbert and who regularly visited the house. During the war, their daughter Montserrat stayed in France, where she worked in the communist organizations of the French Resistance . Jorge, who had also remained in France, fell ill with osteomyelitis and, while he was on the way to treatment in the Soviet Union with his wife, on a stopover in Germany, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and Jorge was interned in a German concentration camp, where he was spent four years.

Finally, in February 1945, Caridad received permission to leave the Soviet Union. At this point, Caridad was "very thin and emaciated". She had lost 34 pounds since arriving four years earlier. In this regard, Gorkin, in his book on the assassination of Trotsky, reproduced the above-mentioned confessions that Caridad Mercader is said to have made before she left the country of Castro Delgado : “You have deceived us, Enrique. [...] This is the worst hell that has ever existed. I'll never get used to it. I have only one wish, I only think of one thing: to flee, far from here. [...] They destroy your will, they force you to kill and then let you die, with a blow or a shot, or very slowly, as they are making me die now. Now they don't need me anymore, do you understand? ”Then she confessed to him that she and her son participated in the murder of Trotsky:“ I made a murderer of Ramón […] of my poor Luis, a hostage, and of my others two children each a wreck. And what was my reward for that? Four pieces of dirt! [alluding to the Order of Lenin and the Medal of a Hero of the Soviet Union awarded to Ramón] ”. According to Castro Delgado, shortly before his mother left the country, Luis Mercader expressed his displeasure in this regard: “My mother is going to Cuba and then she will undoubtedly go to Mexico, but she sacrifices me by leaving me here. But she knows that I hate all of this and that I would give half of my life to go. I have no illusions: I will never be able to leave the Soviet Union ”. On the contrary, Luis denied his role as a hostage in his work, claiming that his situation in the Soviet Union had always been advantageous, which allowed him to pursue his calling as an engineer, which would have given him much more satisfaction than the tasks to which his mother and brother would have dedicated themselves. "Luis was indeed happy about his mother's departure - when I got news that my mother was going to leave, I was very happy: for me it was something of a liberation". According to Gorkin, it was Beria himself, the head of the NKVD, who gave her permission to leave on condition that she should settle in Cuba. Caridad ignored this requirement and, as soon as she was outside the USSR, she traveled to Mexico via Turkey.

Return to Mexico - Operation Gnome

From the rezidentūra the NKVD in Mexico on May 31, received message 1945th It says that Jorge Mercader, son of Caridad, had been released from a German prisoner-of-war camp.

Stalin had decided that Ramón Mercader had to be freed and ordered an operation to be prepared for this purpose. The first references to this plan are dated May 30, 1943. Towards the end of 1943, the Soviet Union opened an embassy in Mexico, which provided the legal cover for setting up an NKVD station in Mexico - a Rezidentura , in Soviet terminology. Its main objectives were two-fold: to cover the espionage operations undertaken by the Soviets to learn the secrets of the North American atomic bomb and to free Mercader from prison. The operation, code-named "Gnome" - that was the name assigned to Mercader - examined various strategies to get Mercader to escape prison, in which Soviet operatives, as well as Mexican communists and Spaniards living in the country, took part should. In the summer of 1943, Jesús Hernández was sent to Mexico with Francisco Antón . In addition to reorganizing the PCE in that American country - also part of his attempt to take control of the party to succeed the recently deceased José Díaz as general secretary - Hernández also worked for the NKVD and his aim was to cooperate with the Reinforce Rezidentura in Mexico and its operations.

In late 1943, the Soviet resident devised a plan that would allow Mercader to flee on one of the occasions he was taken to court for questioning. Taking advantage of the fact that his guard had been reduced, Mercader was to be put in a car and taken out of the country. Eitingon , alias Tom, was supposed to coordinate the plan. The operation turned into a fiasco. In addition to the incompetence, the distrust and the quarrel between the Soviet, Spanish and Mexican operatives, there was the unexpected presence of Caridad Mercader in the country. Apparently, she personally initiated all kinds of contacts with Mexican authorities in order to obtain the release of her son. In fact, according to Ceniceros, mother and son were able to meet in person outside of the detention center. From the beginning, the NKVD made its dissatisfaction with the presence of Caridad in the country clear - the first exchange of messages between Mexico and the Soviet Union, in which the code name Klava is used for them, dates back to March 1945: “Furthermore, take into account that the presence of KLAVA [Caridad Mercader] on the LANDE [México] severely affected the [sic] GNOM project ”. Gorkin goes further by claiming that the NKVD site team made two attempts to murder her, although it is not known whether they were real or bogus attempts at murder, with the aim of deterring her and persuading her to leave.

The appearance of Caridad Mercader on the scene and her initiatives alarmed the Mexican authorities, who then tightened Ramón's detention conditions, so that attempts to make his escape possible were unsuccessful. As Luis later said, “[Caridad] knew a lot of important people there [...] and she probably went from one to the next as a supplicant. But in doing so she made the rabbit shy and as a result everything that had been organized collapsed ”. The Soviets therefore ordered Caridad to leave Mexico immediately and refrained from further attempts to get Ramón out of prison, who then served his entire sentence of twenty years. Almost all of the authors who have dealt with the subject, as well as Ramón himself, attributed this failure in whole or in part to Caridad's presence on site. Indeed, Ramón never forgave his mother's interference in the operation and held her responsible for the extra time he spent in detention: "I spent 16 years in prison because of you". However, he never blamed her directly for this.

Caridad's relationship with her son Ramón

Caridad Mercader has been portrayed by numerous historians and publicists as a fanatical person who drove her son to murder. Leonardo Padura described Caridad as follows: “Caridad del Río was not only the person who raised her son in hatred and contacted him with the officers of the sinister Soviet NKVD charged with planning and carrying out the murder, but encouraging him him and drove him until the evening of August 20th, when, from a carriage and accompanied by the creator of that plan, Ramón Mercader, she saw Trotsky's house and with it the sewers of the history of that century ”. A similar analysis was made by Gorkin, who first claimed that "a sinister police machine turned Caridad into a terrorist, the mother of a murderer" and added that Ramón had been sacrificed to "the blind fanaticism she represented". This description should be confirmed by the confidential confessions that, according to Castro Delgado, Caridad made to him during their stay in the Soviet Union: "I made Ramón a murderer".

Luis Mercader, on the other hand, puts forward a completely different account. According to the youngest of the Mercarders, Caridad did not have much influence on Ramón or her other children because she only lived with them for short periods of time. He also owns the quote according to which his brother told him that it was himself who volunteered to commit the murder, simply to help Eitingon carry out his assignment.

Gregorio Luri, for his part, brings an original thesis into play to justify the fact that Caridad recruited her son and thus set him on the way to commit an assassination attempt against a leading figure. According to Luri, Caridad had recruited her son to keep him away from the front lines and to reach out so that he would not suffer the fate of his brother Pablo, who had died in battle weeks earlier.

Last years - Paris

Paris Pantin Cemetery where Caridad Mercader was buried in 1975.

Caridad left Mexico in November 1945 and was allowed to settle in Paris, where she stayed with a Cuban passport until her death. She lived in an apartment at 25 Rennequin Street, near the Triumphal Arch , and received a pension from the Soviet government for the rest of her life. Her children Jorge and Montserrat, whom she met regularly, also lived in the French capital. There are photos of Caridad giving the bottle to Jean, son of Montserrat, in 1963.

After the Cuban Revolution , the musician Harold Gramatges was appointed Cuba's ambassador to France, who signed Caridad Mercader to direct the public relations work of the Cuban embassy in Paris. She worked there between 1960 and 1967. According to her son Luis, "she organized receptions, the protocol, and she received personalities from France and other countries", as Gramatges himself reported to him in 1978. In his memoir Vidas para leerlas (Life to Read), however, the Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante , who was sent to Brussels in 1962 as a cultural advisor for the Cuban embassy , speaks of her as “a dry, unpleasant old woman” who is the “beautiful Havana woman “Replaced as the embassy receptionist who had previously played that role. According to Cabrera Infante, Gramatges used to tell him that “Cachita” (as a reference to her birthplace Santiago de Cuba) was “more Stalinist than Stalin”. Luis Goytisolo , who was cooperating with the Cuban Revolution at the time, met Caridad Mercader at the Paris embassy before traveling to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis . According to Goytisolo, it was Martha Frayde , Cuba's representative at UNESCO between 1962 and 1965, who revealed the identity of the lady at the embassy reception and asked him to inform the Cuban Foreign Minister, Raúl Roa . Goytisolo added that when Roa became aware of the matter, he arranged for Caridad to return to Cuba. Although there is a 1962 photo of Caridad Mercader in Cuba, Luis Mercader's testimony says nothing that his mother stayed in Cuba for an extended period or that her position at the Cuban embassy was terminated.

On May 6, 1960, Ramón Mercader had served his prison sentence, which enabled him to travel to the USSR on a Czechoslovak passport. He and his wife Roquelia settled where his brother Luis still lived. From then on, Caridad would occasionally travel to the USSR to visit her children and grandchildren. According to her son Luis, she never succeeded in adapting to life in the Soviet Union and he speaks to her with the phrase "I'm only good at destroying capitalism, but not for building communism". Despite all the efforts her children made to make Caridad's visits more comfortable, this was never crowned with success. According to Luis, she never admitted the failure of communism or the fact that she had fought “for a utopia”. He also added that she “returned to Paris sick, utterly discouraged and disaffected. But she remained a stubborn communist, believing in his teachings and adoring Stalin ”.

In the last years of her life she was cared for by her son Jorge and daughter-in-law Germaine. She died in Spain in 1975, at the age of 82, a few months before the death of the dictator Francisco Franco . She was buried in the Pantin cemetery in Paris , in a grave that she shares with her son-in-law, the husband of her daughter Montserrat. The Soviet embassy in Paris took over the funeral service and burial.

literature

Books

Primary literature

• Guillermo Cabrera Infante: Vidas para empty las . Santillana, Madrid 1998, ISBN 84-204-8369-9 .
• Cámara de Diputados del Congreso de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos: Diario de los debates de la Cámara de Diputados del Congreso de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Legislatura XXXVI - Año III - Período Ordinario . In: Diario de los debates . No. 15, November 17, 1936.
• Jaume Cañameras: Conversa amb Bartolí (=  Biblioteca Serra d'Or ). Publicacions de l'Abadia de Montserrat, 1990, ISBN 84-7826-182-6 ( books.google.es - Limited preview).
• Lázaro Cárdenas: Apuntes: una selección . Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México (UNAM), 2003, ISBN 970-32-0783-9 ( books.google.es ).
• Georgi Dimitrov: The diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949 . Ed .: Ivo Banac. Yale University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-300-13385-5 ( books.google.es ).
• André Jacquelin: Espagne et liberté: le second Munich . Editions de Kérénac, 1945 ( books.google.es ).
• Luis Mercader, Germán Sánchez, Rafael Llanos: Ramón y Mercader: mi hermano: cincuenta años después . Espasa Calpe, SA, 1990, ISBN 84-239-2228-6 ( books.google.es ).
• Teresa Pàmies: Cuando éramos capitanes: Memorias de aquella guerra. Trad .: Ramón Bech Taberner. 2nd Edition. Dopesa, Madrid / Barcelona 1975, ISBN 84-7235-195-5 .
• Concepción Ruiz-Funes Montesinos, Enriqueta Tuñón: Palabras del exilio 2. Final y comienzo: el Sinaia . Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1982.
• Pawel Anatoljewitsch Sudoplatow, Anatoly Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - A Soviet Spymaster . Little, Brown and Company, 1994, ISBN 0-316-77352-2 .
• Manuel Tagüeña: Testimonio de dos guerras . Oasis, México DF 1973.

Secondary literature

• Jean-René Aymes: Francia en España, España en Francia: la historia en la relación cultural hispano-francesa (siglos XIX-XX) . Universidad de Salamanca, 2003, ISBN 978-84-7800-678-6 .
• Pierre Broué, Emile Témime: The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain ( English ). Haymarket Books, Chicago 2008, ISBN 978-1-931859-51-6 .
• Juan Alberto Cedillo: Los nazis en México ( Spanish ). Random House Mondadori, 2013, ISBN 978-607311955-9 .
• Consejo Insular de Ibiza y Formentera: El diputat Josep Ribas Ribas (1763-1831) . In: Enciclopèdia d'Eivissa i Formentera . tape IX . Consell Insular d'Eivissa i Formentera, Conselleria de Cultura, Educació i Patrimoni, Eivissa 2006, ISBN 84-88018-16-9 , Palerm Vich, Joan Antoni (Catalan, eeif.es ).
• Ángel Luis Encinas Moral: Fuentes históricas para el estudio de la emigración española a la URSS (1937–2007) ( Spanish ). Exterior XXI, Madrid 2008, ISBN 978-84-612-6429-2 .
• José Ramón Garmabella: El grito de Trotsky ( Spanish ). Debate, Barcelona 2007, ISBN 978-84-8306-696-6 .
• Julián Gorkin: Los asesinos de Trotsky . In: Contra el estalinismo ( Spanish ). Laertes, 2001, ISBN 84-7584-468-5 .
• Javier Juárez: Patria: una española en el KGB . Random House Mondadori, Barcelona 2008, ISBN 978-84-8306-763-5 .
• Jacques Kergoat: Marceau Pivert: socialiste de gauche ( French ). Editions de l'Atelier, 1994, ISBN 2-7082-3096-4 .
• Lisa Margaret Lines: Milicianas: Women in Combat in the Spanish Civil War ( English ). Lexington Books, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7391-6494-5 .
• José Luís Martín Ramos: Pere Ardiaca, 1936–1949 . In: Pere Ardiaca. Materials per a una biografia ( Catalan ). Debarris, 2010, ISBN 978-84-937314-4-1 .
• William Harrison Richardson: Mexico Through Russian Eyes, 1806-1940 ( English ). University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988, ISBN 0-8229-7712-5 .
• Albert Royo Campo: L'espionatge soviètic (1917–1945): una forma de control social ( Catalan ), Trabajo fin de grado, Universidad de Lérida, January 14, 2013.
• Mary-Kay Wilmers: The Eitingons: A Twentieth Century Story ( English ). Verso Books, 2012, ISBN 1-84467-900-4 .
• Olivia Gall: Trotsky en México ( Spanish ). Era, 1991, ISBN 968-411-335-8 .

Trade journals - press articles

• Arbal: Caridad Mercader, mujer ejemplar y heroína auténtica . In: Crónica . , Madrid21 de marzo de 1937, p. 5.
• Claudio Albertani: Socialismo y Libertad. El exilio antiautoritario de Europa en México y la lucha contra el estalinismo. 1940-1950 . In: Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas en la Argentina (CeDInCI) (ed.): Políticas de la Memoria . No. 8/9, ISSN  1668-4885 , pp. 131-139.
• Matías Barchino: Mujer de terciopelos y armaduras: la mujer nueva y La Pasionaria en la literatura chilena sobre la guerra civil española . In: Universidad de Granada (ed.): Revista Letral - Revista Electrónica de Estudios Transatlánticos de Literatura . No. 10, 2013, ISSN  1989-3302 .
• Lluís Bonet Mogica: El asesino de Trotski . In: La Vanguardia . 4th December 1996.
• Fabienne Bradu: Bartolomeu Costa-Amic . In: Vuelta . 21, No. 253, México, DF, 1997, ISSN  0185-1586 , pp. 41-45.
• Gustavo Cangiano: Revelaciones exclusivas acerca de cómo la Unión Soviética y los Partidos Comunistas organizaron el asesinato de León Trotsky . In: Izquierda Nacional . April 7, 2010.
• Jorge Domingo Cuadriello: Reseñas de libros: El hombre que amaba a los perros . In: Espacio Laical . No. 20, 2009.
• Rodrigo Fernández: Dos españoles quisieron acabar con Trotski antes que Mercader . In: El País . November 16, 1997.
• David García Colín: Un mal libro de memorias y el asilo de Trotsky en México . In: Corriente Marxista Internacional (ed.): La Izquierda Socialista . 2012.
• Luis Goytisolo: La Habana de un Infante en nada difunto . In: El País . April 25, 2010.
• Fernando Hernández Sánchez: Jesús Hernández, pistolero, ministro, espía y renegado . In: Historia 16 . No. 368, 2006, ISSN  0210-6353 , pp. 78-89.
• Fernando Hernández Sánchez: Las siete pruebas de Enrique Lister (1907-1994) . In: Historia 16 . No. 388, 2008, ISSN  0210-6353 , pp. 84-101.
• Fernando Hernández Sánchez: El Exilio y México-España, siglo XX . In: Centro de Investigaciones Históricas de la Democracia Española (CIHDE) (ed.): Seminario . January 15, 2008.
• Joaquim Ibartz: Diez años para averiguar una identidad . In: La Vanguardia . July 28, 1990.
• Isaac Don Levine: Secrets of an Assassin . In: Life . September 28, 1959, pp. 104-122.
• Gregorio Luri: La infiltrada . In: El Café de Ocata . January 3, 2013.
• Gregorio Luri: L'amor perdut de Caritat Mercader . In: Ara . 3rd February 2013.
• Gregorio Luri: Caritat Mercader, una revolucionària amb sabates de pell de serp . In: Ara . April 7, 2013.
• Gregorio Luri: Caridad, con otra mirada . In: Ara . January 24, 2014.
• Miguel Marco Igual: Los médicos republicanos españoles exiliados en la Unión Soviética . In: Medicina & historia: Revista de estudios históricos de las ciencias médicas . No. 1, 2009, ISSN  0300-8169 , pp. 1-15.
• Caridad Massón Sena: Marinello y la República Española . In: Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí . No. 1-2, 2007, ISSN  0006-1727 , pp. 131-143.
• Angela Mendes de Almeida: O homem incapaz de matar cachorros . In: Passa Palavra . March 13, 2014.
• Luis Mercader: Puntualizaciones al asesinato de Trotski . In: El País . May 8, 1994.
• Jean-Dominique Merchet: Paris en guerre froide . In: Liberation . November 9, 2009.
• Leonardo Padura: La última hora de Caridad Mercader . In: Espacio Laical . No. 15, 2008.
• Luis Reyes: El más secreto herroe de la Unión Soviética . In: Tiempo de hoy . No. 1637, February 7, 2014, ISSN  0213-1951 , pp. 66-69.
• Javier Rubio Navarro: Caridad Mercader . In: Muy (interesting) Historia . No. 24, 2009.
• Guillermo Sheridan: Rescatando a Mercader (un episodio del espionaje soviético en México) . In: Letras Libres . 2006.
• Francesc Valls: "Me ha hecho sufrir más la desconfianza que la tortura" . In: El País . October 13, 1998.
• Francesc Valls: Sebastià Piera, histórico del PSUC y soldado de élite . In: El País . March 12, 2014.
• Lev Voroviev: L'assassinat de Trotsky décrit par ses assassins . In: Critique communiste . 1998. Translated from Russian by Jean-Michel Krivine

Documentaries

• López-Linares, José Luis, Rioyo, Javier (dir.). (1996). Asaltar los cielos .

Web links

Commons : Caridad Mercader  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Caridad Mercader in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Leonardo Padura : The last hour of Caridad Mercader. In: Inter Press Service of June 26, 2007, accessed September 30, 2013
• Alexander Ratsimor: La vida y muerte de León Trotski fue como una novela política. In: RIA Novosti of September 12, 2012, accessed September 30, 2013 (Spanish)
• DER SPIEGEL 21/1960
• Caridad Mercader in 1944, before leaving the USSR for Mexico to try to free Ramón from prison. (from: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. Cincuenta años después , p. 117).

Remarks

1. ↑ This was her full name given in 1959 by Isaac Don Levine, as a result of the investigation after the real identity of Trotsky's murderer, Ramón Mercader , her son, became known. In his testimony published in book form in 1990, Luis Mercader, a son of Caridad and brother of Ramón, simply mentions the name María de la Caridad del Río Hernández .
2. ↑ Asaltar los cielos is a 1996 documentary by José Luis López-Linares and Javier Rioyo about the murder of Trotsky
3. ↑ Isaac Don Levine was an American journalist and writer of Russian origin, 1960 The Mind of an Assassin ( The mind of a murderer released) over the murder of Trotsky. A translation into Spanish under the title “La mente de un asesino” was published in Mexico that same year
4. ↑ As Luis described it in the testimony book that he wrote in collaboration with Germán Sánchez in 1990, after his return from exile, about his brother Ramón, Ramón Mercader, my brother. Fifty years later
5. ↑ Javier Juárez is the author of a biography of África de las Heras , also a communist and NKVD agent: Patria: Eine Spanierin im KGB (2008).
6. ↑ Gregorio Luri suggests this dating.
7. ↑ We know that Eitingon was an illegal operator of the NKVD (until 1934, OGPU) between 1927 and 1936, with numerous missions outside of the Soviet Union. According to Lev Voroviev (or Vorobiov), a Russian spy who had access to the archives of the Russian FSB (a successor organization to the KGB ) in the 1990s and who wrote a description of the operation that ended with Trotsky's death, Eitingon was according to the documentation available been to China, France and Germany before serving in Spain.
8. ↑ According to Levine, citing information he had received from a former high-ranking officer of the PCE whom Caridad had met in the Soviet Union.
9. ↑ Wilmers defines Levine as "the most sensationalist among the historians of the Cold War".
10. ^ André Jacquelin was the correspondent of L'Indépendant from Perpignan , who had arrived in Barcelona on the same 19 July.
11. ↑ The painter Josep Bartolí , who was a member of the column led by Caridad Mercader, claimed that it led an independent column that was not integrated into the column led by the anarchist leader. He also claimed that their son Ramón was part of the same column. In this sense, Luis Mercader asserted that his brother, since leaving for the front, had been a member of the Trueba-Del Barrio column, which would later become the Carlos Marx column, the nucleus of the 27th Division of the Republican Army . On the other hand, however, it is also true that there were communists in the Durruti column. Luis also reported that the place where his mother was wounded did not belong to the sector of Tardienta , the area where the Carlos Marx column fought and where Ramón was wounded.
12. ↑ As noted in the previous note, Bartolí made no statement about where Caridad Mercader was wounded, but described it as an incident in the same section as Bartolí himself, embedded in the Trueba-Del Barrio column. Teresa Pàmies , a member of the JSUC ( Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas de Cataluña ), who later became a friend of Ramón Mercader, also claimed that Caridad was wounded in Tardienta, although she cites an artillery attack as the cause. Luis, for his part, specifically denied that this incident took place in Tardienta. Bujaraloz, where she was wounded, according to Gorkin, belonged to the sector of the front in which the Durruti column was operating.
13. ↑ As reported by the painter Josep Bartolí , who was part of the column. Other versions claim that it was an artillery attack.
14. ↑ The speakers before the MPs were Caridad Mercader, Bartolomé Costa and Lena Imbert. The signatures of the following members of the mission are also recorded: Bartolomé Costa, R. Martínez, Daniel Rebull, Rafael Sánchez, Antonio Roselló, Caridad Mercader, Enrique Pérez C., Edmundo García, Pedro Viñes, T. Detrell, Evelia Larrainagas, Lena Imbert, Juan Ruiz, A. Detrell, Serafín Pérez, as well as others who have not yet been identified. Nothing is known about the signature of other communists who took part in the expedition, such as Nito Palerm Vich.
15. ↑ Bartolomeu Costa-Amic: Leon Trotsky y Andreu Nin: Dos asesinatos del stalinismo (aclarando la historia) (Leon Trotsky and Andreu Nin: two murders of Stalinism (to clarify the story)) . Altres-Costa-Amic, San Pedro Cholula, México 1994, ISBN 978-968-6977-05-9 , p. 158.
16. ↑ The literature on this subject has unanimously assigned Diego Rivera the responsibility of establishing contact with President Cárdenas on behalf of the Fourth International and obtaining his consent to grant Trotsky asylum. The petition was served on Rivera on November 21. Two days later he arrived in Torreón , where Cárdenas was staying, and after presenting the petition to him, he had obtained asylum for the Russian politician. But the differences of opinion in the government on the issue of asylum meant that this was not overtaken until several weeks later. As a result, asylum was granted not only after Caridad Mercader left Spain, but even after her arrival in Mexico. Costa-Amic claims that it was he who, as the bearer of a letter from Andreu Nin , then conseller for justice at the Generalitat de Catalunya, managed to get a meeting with President Cárdenas, who accepted the petition after a few minutes of discussion . Asylum was granted before Mercader arrived in Mexico, albeit after Mercader left Barcelona.
17. ↑ Gorkin, who accuses Caridad of being a ruthless and callous mother, claims that Pablo was sent to a punishment battalion on the Madrid Front as punishment for insubordination, which Caridad approved; According to his brother Luis, Pablos's alleged insubordination and his transfer to a punitive battalion on the dangerous Madrid front lack any evidence.
18. ↑ According to his brother Luis.
19. ↑ In his biography of África de las Heras, Juárez, who does not cite any Soviet documents, gives the first few weeks of 1937 as the most likely time to start working for the Soviet secret service, shortly after her return to Spain.
20. ↑ For Juárez, Gerö belonged “necessarily” to Caridad Mercader in view of his position with the PSUC (and before with the PCC) and his active role in Barcelona.
21. ↑ In his Biography of Several Members of the Eitingon Family, published in 2012, The Eitingons .
22. ^ Clemence was the wife or sister of Daniel Béranger, a French agent of the NKVD, who was under Eitingon's command in Paris in 1939. He lived in the French capital and was engaged to Montserrat Mercader.
23. ↑ Luis believed this was due to some kind of misunderstanding with Marty
24. ↑ Luis, however, gave the date given by his mother in May 1940 without the latter ever making it clear whether she was traveling with someone or not; According to Sudoplatov, Eitingon was traveling in October when he managed to obtain the documents necessary to leave France.
25. ↑ The Mexican journalist Juan Alberto Cedillo states in his work Los nazis en México (2007), September 1939 and claims that Caridad Mercader and Eitingon traveled to Mexico at that time to monitor the Siqueiros group . However, this date contradicts both Sudoplatov's testimony and the documents in the FSB's possession, both of which refer to the difficulties Eitingon faced in leaving France as a result of the outbreak of World War II.
26. ↑ Posted by Lev Voroviev.
27. ↑ Luis Mercader also supported Sudoplatov's version by reporting that his brother had confided in him that he had offered to carry out the murder.
28. ↑ Ceniceros, an adjutant of Ostos, who would take over the defense of Mercader after his death, met her for a conversation; he had met Caridad Mercader, at the endeavors of the communist leadership in Mexico, during their first stay in Mexico in 1936.
29. ↑ Luis Mercader spoke out in the same way when he said that Caridad, according to her statement, had not traveled with Eitingon.
30. ^ According to Luis, Caridad crossed the Pacific by ship from San Francisco to Vladivostok and from there traveled to Moscow with the Trans-Siberian . According to Wilmers, who also insists that Caridad and Eitingon traveled together, both went to New York after a stay in Cuba. After crossing the country, they took a ship to Shanghai and by train , via Harbin , they came to Moscow in the Trans-Siberian. There are less credible versions, such as that of Eduardo Ceniceros, an attorney for Ramón Mercader, who claimed that Caridad left Mexico for Japan immediately after the murder. She was arrested in Yokohama and deported to Hong Kong , from where she was brought to the USSR.
31. ↑ On the advice of Caridad Mercader, he was recruited by Sudoplatow towards the end of the summer of 1943 to lead Operation Guadalajara. Their aim was to infiltrate the German leg, kill the German military governor of Vilna and kidnap Esteban Infantes , the commander of the Blue Division . The advance of Soviet troops, however, forced the Germans to withdraw from the area and thus to call off the operation.
32. ↑ The participant in the operation in Turkey and others named by Castro Delgado was Julia Rodríguez Danilewskaja , a young Spanish-Russian woman, granddaughter of the writer Grigori Petrovich Danilewski and daughter of a republican Spanish colonel who was an NKVD employee.
33. ↑ In his memoir entitled Witness to Two Wars , published in Mexico in 1973
34. ↑ According to Luis, who allegedly acted as the courier to transport the letters that Caridad wrote to Stalin himself, it took a great deal of effort to obtain the permit, but in the end “she instigated so many riots that they got them allowed ".
35. ↑ All of this information that Castro Delgado allegedly received from Caridad Mercader was not reproduced by him in his book about his stay in the Soviet Union - Mi fe se perdió en Moscú (I lost my faith in Moscow), published in 1951. It was not until 1960, after Ramón Mercader had already left prison, that he announced that he had changed his mind: “My wife and I had made a commitment to Caridad Mercader out of gratitude. In a time of great poverty in Moscow, she helped us survive. She had also worked very hard to ensure that we could leave the USSR when we were facing extremely great danger and really were between the Lubianka and the border. Did I have a right to misbehave? Now I can talk, everything has changed ”.
36. ↑ At a time when, as a result of the need to strengthen relations between the Soviet Union and the Allies , Stalin had dissolved the Comintern , it was natural that the long-time members of the apparatus of the Communist International should join the NKVD.
37. ↑ The supportive work on the part of Hernández was disrupted by the internal disputes in the PCE, from which Hernández emerged as a loser. In the spring of 1944 the conflict between Hernández and the supporters of Dolores Ibárruri broke out in Mexico. Although the NKVD tried to mediate so as not to endanger Gnom, Hernández was finally expelled from the PCE in July. Nevertheless, Hernández continued to cooperate with the NKVD, without the failure of the operation could be avoided.
38. ^ Author of El grito de Trotski (Trotsky's Scream) (2013), a novel about his assassination.
39. ↑ Strangely enough, the French historian Roger Faligot says in his book Paris, nid d'espions ("Paris, Spion's Nest") that Montserrat Mercader worked at the reception of the embassy in 1960 and that it was with the Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST) , the French counterintelligence, cooperated to install microphones in the ambassador's residence with the participation of the CIA .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Levine: Secrets of an Assassin. 1959, p. 104.
2. ^ ^{A b} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 29.
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 35.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 102.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 33.
6. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, pp. 102-103.
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Reyes: El más secreto herroe de la Unión Soviética. 2014, p. 67.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 103.
9. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 179.
10. ↑ Bonet Mógica: El asesino de Trotsky. 1996.
11. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Luri: Caritat Mercader, una revolucionària amb sabates de pell de serp. 2013.
12. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 57-59.
13. ↑ ^{a b c} Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 105.
14. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 30.
15. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 29-30.
16. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, pp. 103-104.
17. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 104.
18. ^ ^{A b} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 196.
19. ↑ Luri: L'amor de Caritat perdut Mercader. 2013.
20. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Gorkin: Los asesinos de Trotsky. 2001.
21. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 37-38.
22. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 37.
23. ^ Luri: La infiltrada. 2013.
24. ^ Kergoat: Marceau Pivert. 1994, p. 60.
25. ↑ Fernández: Dos españoles quisieron acabar con Trotski antes que Mercader. 1997.
26. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p} Voroviev: L'assassinat de Trotsky décrit par ses assassins. 1998.
27. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, pp. 149-161, 265-288.
28. ↑ Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, pp. 83-84.
29. ^ ^{A b} Levine: Secrets of an Assassin. 1959, p. 110.
30. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 273.
31. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 180.
32. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 38.
33. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 190.
34. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 41.
35. ↑ ^{a b} Dimitrov: The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. 2003, p. 238.
36. ↑ Martín Ramos: Pere Ardiaca, 1936–1949. 2010, p. 34.
37. ↑ Barchino: Mujer de Terciopelos y armaduras. 2013, p. 1.
38. ^ Aymes: Francia en España, España en Francia. 2003, p. 242.
39. ^ Jacquelin: Espagne et liberté. 1945, p. 92.
40. ^ Broué, Témime: The Revolution and the Civil War in Spain. 2008, p. 120.
41. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 108.
42. ↑ Cañameras: Conversa amb Bartolí. 1990, pp. 42-43.
43. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 42.
44. ↑ Cañameras: Conversa amb Bartolí. 1990, p. 42.
45. ↑ ^{a b} Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 109.
46. ↑ Pàmies: Cuando éramos Capitanes. 1975, p. 43.
47. ↑ ^{a b c d} Arbal: Caridad Mercader, mujer ejemplar y heroína auténtica. 1937, p. 5.
48. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, pp. 108, 158.
49. ↑ Lines Milicianas. 2011, pp. 63-64.
50. ↑ Masson Sena: Marinello y la República Española. 2007, p. 136.
51. ↑ ^{a b} Masson Sena: Marinello y la República Española. 2007, p. 139.
52. ^ Rubio Navarro: Muy (interesting) Historia. 2009.
53. ↑ Ruiz-Funes Montesinos, Tuñón: Palabras del exilio 2. 1982, p. 132.
54. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 111.
55. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 53.
56. ↑ Ruiz-Funes Montesinos, Tuñón: Palabras del exilio 2. 1982, pp. 132-133.
57. Jump up ↑ Cámara de Diputados del Congreso de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos: Diario de los debates de la Cámara de Diputados del Congreso de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Legislatura XXXVI - Año III - Período Ordinario. 1936.
58. ↑ Consejo Insular de Ibiza y Formentera: Enciclopèdia d'Eivissa i Formentera. Volume 9. 2006.
59. ^ López-Linares, Rioyo: Asaltar los cielos. 1996, 33:33.
60. ↑ Cardenas: Apuntes. 2003, p. 305.
61. ^ Gall: Trotsky en México. 1991, pp. 21-26.
62. ↑ ^{a b} Richardson: Mexico Through Russian Eyes, 1806-1940. 1988, p. 198.
63. ↑ Bradu: Bartolomeu Costa-Amic. 1997, p. 42.
64. ^ López-Linares, Rioyo: Asaltar los cielos. 1996, 33:38.
65. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 49.
66. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, pp. 111-112.
67. ^ Albertani: Socialismo y Libertad. 2008/2009, p. 138.
68. ^ López-Linares, Rioyo: Asaltar los cielos. 1996, 34:08.
69. ↑ García Colín: Un mal libro de memorias y el asilo de Trotsky en México. 2012.
70. ↑ ^{a b c} Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 112.
71. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 45.
72. ↑ ^{a b c d} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 46.
73. ↑ Pàmies: Cuando éramos Capitanes. 1975, p. 109.
74. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 51.
75. ↑ Octavi Centelles: Barcelona, ​​mayo de 1937, María Caridad Mercader y otras voluntarias retiran las barricadas [Barcelona, ​​May 1937, María Caridad Mercader and other volunteers clear the barricades] ( Spanish ) May 5, 2013. Accessed May 23, 2015.
76. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 51, 60-63.
77. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 118.
78. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 117.
79. ↑ ^{a b} Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 113.
80. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 59.
81. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 115.
82. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 114.
83. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 273.
84. ↑ Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, p. 70.
85. ^ ^{A b} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 56.
86. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 359.
87. ^ López-Linares, Rioyo: Asaltar los cielos. 1996, 27:40.
88. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 275.
89. ^ Levine: Secrets of an Assassin. 1959, p. 112.
90. ↑ Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, pp. 30, 70.
91. ^ López-Linares, Rioyo: Asaltar los cielos. 1996, 28:39.
92. ↑ Padura: La última hora de Caridad Mercader. 2008, p. 244.
93. ^ ^{A b} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 124.
94. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 130.
95. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 71.
96. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, p. 148.
97. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, pp. 296-297.
98. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 298.
99. ↑ Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, p. 72.
100. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 73.
101. ↑ ^{a b} Cangiano: Revelaciones exclusivas acerca de cómo la Unión Soviética y los Partidos Comunistas organizaron el asesinato de León Trotsky. 2010.
102. ↑ Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, p. 73.
103. ↑ Cedillo: Los Nazis en México. 2013: "Eitingon y Caridad viajaron a México ...".
104. ↑ Cedillo: Los Nazis en México. 2013: "Leonidas Eitingon sent the report ...".
105. ↑ Mendes de Almeida: O homem incapaz de matar cachorros. 2014.
106. ↑ Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, p. 78.
107. ^ ^{A b} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 77-81.
108. ^ Levine: Secrets of an Assassin. 1959, p. 120.
109. ^ López-Linares, Rioyo: Asaltar los cielos. 1996, 34:02.
110. ↑ ^{a b} Ibartz: Diez años para averiguar una identidad. 1990.
111. ↑ Garmabella: El grito de Trotsky. 2007, pp. 226-227.
112. ↑ ^{a b} Sudoplatov, Sudoplatov: Special Tasks. 1994, p. 79.
113. ↑ Cuadriello: Reseñas de libros. 2009, p. 82.
114. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 85.
115. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 102-103, 215.
116. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, pp. 328–329.
117. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 329.
118. ^ ^{A b} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 136.
119. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 215.
120. ↑ Wilmers: The Eitingons. 2012, p. 333.
121. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 218-219.
122. ↑ Juarez: Patria. 2008, pp. 183-188.
123. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 222-224.
124. ↑ Tagüeña: Testimonio de dos guerras. 1973, p. 470.
125. ↑ Encinas Moral: Fuentes históricas para el estudio de la emigración española a la URSS (1937–2007). 2008, p. 369.
126. ↑ ^{a b c} Marco Igual: Los médicos republicanos españoles exiliados en la Unión Soviética. 2009, p. 7.
127. ↑ ^{a b c d} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 105.
128. ↑ Hernández Sánchez: Las siete pruebas de Enrique Lister (1907-1994). 2008.
129. ↑ Royo Campo: L'espionatge sovietic (1917-1945). 2013, p. 48.
130. ^ Valls: Sebastià Piera, histórico del PSUC y soldado de élite. 2014.
131. ^ Valls: Me ha hecho sufrir más la desconfianza que la tortura. 1998.
132. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 135.
133. ↑ Mercader: Puntualizaciones al asesinato de Trotsky. 1994.
134. ↑ Tagüeña: Testimonio de dos guerras. 1973, p. 506.
135. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 105-106.
136. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 109.
137. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 190-195.
138. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 106.
139. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 105, 136.
140. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 106-110.
141. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 110.
142. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Hernández Sánchez: El Exilio y México-España, siglo XX. 2008.
143. ↑ Cedillo: Los Nazis en México. 2013: “De hecho, la Unión Soviética abrió su embajada…”.
144. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hernández Sánchez: Jesús Hernández, pistolero, ministro, espía y renegado. 2006.
145. ↑ Garmabella: El grito de Trotsky. 2007, p. 270.
146. ↑ Sheridan: Rescatando a Mercader (un episodio del espionaje soviético de México). 2006, p. 69.
147. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 101-102.
148. ↑ ^{a b} Padura: La última hora de Caridad Mercader. 2008, p. 91.
149. ↑ Luri: Caridad, con otra mirada. 2014.
150. ↑ ^{a b c d} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 140.
151. ↑ ^{a b c} Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 141.
152. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 145.
153. ^ Cabrera Infante: Vidas para contarlas. 1998, pp. 144-145.
154. ^ Goytisolo: La Habana de un Infante en nada difunto. 2010.
155. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 151.
156. ↑ Merchet: Paris en guerre froide. 2009.
157. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, p. 139.
158. ^ Mercader, Sánchez: Ramón Mercader, mi hermano. 1990, pp. 139-140.
159. ↑ Padura: La última hora de Caridad Mercader. 2008, p. 90.