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DIEGO RIVERA -- MY ART, MY LIFE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (WITH GLADYS MARCH) |
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MY FIRST GRANT In 1902, at the age of sixteen, I was receiving thirty pesos a month as a scholarship from Teodoro A. Dehesa, Governor of the State of Veracruz. It was my father who got me this stipend. He had first tried to secure a grant from the Governor of Guanajuato, a dull man who had no interest in art and who promptly refused. But Dehesa was of a different sort. Cultured and liberal-thinking, he was the leader of what might be called the progressive wing of the Diaz government. He survived in Diaz's reactionary administration only because he had once dramatically earned the dictator's lasting gratitude. When the latter was a revolutionary himself and only an insignificant army colonel, he had been sentenced to death, and Dehesa had saved him from the firing squad. Dehesa's qualities were well known throughout Mexico, and my father had for some time resolved to speak to him about me when his affairs took him to Veracruz.
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