The exiled Soviet communist Leon Trotsky found political asylum in Mexico

Trotsky was forced into exile in 1929 because of his criticism of Joseph Stalin’s government. For the next eight years, Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, wandered among several countries under a death sentence and pursued by Stalinist agents. In 1937, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo persuaded the Lázaro Cárdenas government to give the Trotskys political asylum in Mexico.

On 20 August  1940 a Spanish Stalin supporter by the name of Ramón Mercader, under the name of Jacson Mornard and with a Canadian passport, had become the lover of Trotsky’s personal secretary. As such, he gained the household’s trust and was permitted on the premises.

On that day, Mercader asked Trotsky to look over something he had written, and as Trotsky read the work, Mercader removed an alpine climbing axe from his coat and struck Trotsky in the back of the skull.