The fate of a few artworks by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco has Mexico on edge, to the point of practically becoming a matter of state. Ever since the announcement early this year of a long-term agreement to transfer the Gelman collection to the Spanish banking giant Banco Santander, which will be responsible for the management (including conservation, research and exhibition) of part of one of the most significant collections of 20th-century Mexican art, a formidable controversy has erupted, forcing Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to step in and try to clarify the situation.

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It wasn’t the first time he’d stayed in a hotel near the ruins and spent the day planning something big and sinister at the pyramids, something that in his mind resembled those school or church shootings so common in the United States. Last Sunday he did it again. He arrived by bus from the north of Mexico City, rented a room in a nearby hotel, and on Monday morning entered the Teotihuacán archaeological site in the State of Mexico. For his big day, he chose to wear black pants and a plaid shirt. In his backpack, he put some sheets of paper on which he had handwritten what he was about to do with an old revolver and 42 rounds of .38 caliber ammunition.

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