14ymedio, Yunior García, Madrid, 23 March 2024 — On the night of Thursday, January 10, 1929, two scandalously beautiful young people walk down a Mexican street. In a room nearby are photos that some might consider indecent. Not only have they made love until dehydration in every corner of that space for the last four months, but she has wanted to immortalize the glory of their naked bodies. He is not yet 26 and she is about to reach the age of Christ. He has left a wife and a small child in Cuba. She has other lovers.
Two shots ring out at the corner of Abraham González and Morelos. A bullet from a 38 caliber revolver enters Julio Antonio Mella through his left elbow and passes through his intestine, the second one tears his lung. He falls to the ground, bleeding out. She screams for help and kneels next to him. An ambulance takes the body to the Red Cross hospital. When he inevitably dies, Tina closes his eyes and does what she does best in this world: flash on the corpse’s face, which is still strangely beautiful.
Officialdom blames Machado, without questioning any other possibility
From there, all kinds of theories have been launched about who was the intellectual author of Mella’s death. The complex thing is that almost all the hypotheses are too sprinkled with ideology. The ruling party blames Machado, without questioning any other possibility. The opposition insists on pointing out the communists themselves, whether they are Cubans, Mexicans or hitmen sent directly by Stalin. Agatha Christie devotees swear by the love triangle and the crime of passion. There is so much material on the networks claiming to be “the definitive truth” about this case, that any reader will find some “conclusive” version that satisfies their own ideological prejudices.
It is a fascinating story, on that we all agree. Starting with the fact that neither Tina nor Julio Antonio were their real nam