Gloriosa Victoria

Diego Rivera painted the truth about Guatemala in 1954. The CIA didn't confirm it for another forty-three years.

The Artist Diego Rivera finished Gloriosa Victoria in 1954 — the same year as the CIA-backed coup that removed Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz.

Rivera already understood the dynamics clearly: who ordered it, who paid for it, and who the victims were. Mainstream historians would take decades to catch up. The CIA didn’t formally acknowledge the character and scale of its activities until 1997.

The sky in the painting is blue. The trees are attractive shades of green. But the ground is soaked blood-red. Rivera connects the handshake to the body count, the boardroom to the bomb, the bishop’s blessing to the unmarked grave.

We would like to think we live in more civilised times. We know that we do not.

The film is a three-minute tour of Rivera’s devastating canvas. Join me.