War by Other Means, Part Three

    At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Corridor, Chacoans were developing their great house culture and they had also begun inter-pueblo integration between their outlying communities.  By 1150, the increased complexity of society on both ends of the Chihuahua Corridor created new markets and new production centres.  

Tri-walled Kiva at Pueblo del Arroyo, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. (Author's collection copyright 2019)

    Of course, the increased trade could have had a synergistic effect on social development - especially within the elite classes.  Because of this situation, Casas Grandes, previously an outpost along the Chihuahua Corridor, grew in size and came into direct competition with the Hohokam society’s shell trade.  This shorter and more direct trade route, coupled with new Mesoamerican metallurgical techniques in copper and advances in aviculture practices seem to have sounded the death knell for Hohokam hegemony.  The Chalchihuites provided luxury goods in quantities and at delivery speeds that the Hohokam could not match.  By this time evidence shows Hohokam culture had retreated from its advance posts like Winona and Stony Canyon to their strongholds of Papaguería, the Gila-Salt and Tucson Basins while evidence of Mesoamerica culture amongst the Hohokam diminished.

Homol'ovi Ruins, Winslow, Arizona. (Author's collection. Copyright 2019)

    So it is evident through our discussion here that, prior to 1150 AD, the majority of Chacoan/Mogollon trade conducted with Mesoamerica passed through a Hohokam middleman who absorbed most of the Mesoamerica culture while passing along only the deliverables which is in-line with today’s concept of a middleman marking up any re-sell goods.  Additionally, timelines corroborate the theory that the rise of the Chalchihuites in Zape broke the Hohokam trade monopoly  and forced their retreat from Chacoan western borderlands.  Simultaneously, the timeline reveals that this more direct contact with Mesoamerica culture brought about a rapid decline in Chacoan/Mogollon culture between 950 and 1250 AD.  

Original Ceiling at Aztec Ruins, Aztec, New Mexico. (Author's collection. Copyright 2019)

Loose Ends, Part Two

    During the Republic's early days, Trotsky served as the People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs then the Founder and Commander of the Red Army by serving as the People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs.  As such, he was a major figure in the civil war victory.  

Trotsky office where he was mudered. (Author's collection. copyright 2019)

    After Lenin’s death, Trotsky led the failed struggle of opposition against the rise of Joseph Stalin and his ever increasing bureaucracy.  He was removed from the Politburo and the Central Committee, expelled from the Communist Party and finally, exiled.  Despite this he continued to oppose Stalin's bureaucracy at the fourth Communist International (COMINTERN).  Trotsky's actions put him on Stalin's bad side and set him on a global odyssey seeking political asylum, being repeatedly turned away by western government’s.  Eventually, he ended up in Mexico City and agreed to acceptable terms with the government there about the scope of his political activities.  Trotsky was a theorist and prolific writer, his ideas were the basis for a Marxist school of thought called Trotskyism and he was writing a "tell all" on Stalin.   To say the least, this was not to Stalin's liking and he decided to act. 

    In 1940, Stalin sent a mole to assassinate Trotsky.  By Stalin’s thinking, the world could never know the truth about him and the party’s activities - the only version of the truth was his and there could be no dissent.  So, on the afternoon of August 20, 1940 in the Mexico City neighbourhood of Coyoacán, a trusted member of Trotsky’s inner-circle entered his house under the pretence of giving him a pen.  Once alone with Trotsky in his office, Ramón Mercador hit Trotsky in the head with an ice axe.  Trotsky died later in hospital and Mercador, the assassin, would spend 20 years in prison.  Stalin went on to exterminate Trotsky's family left in Russia, including his children, and re-write Soviet history without a mention of one of its greatest architects.

Mexican authorities with ice axe (Author's collection)

    It would be decades before the world began to see the evil Stalin represented and even more decades before the world understood that communism was a failed experiment.  Yet today, in the United States, the greatest democratic nation in the world,  Politicians are openly calling for the violation of that nation's constitution in order to place their constituents in mortal danger, while they try to re-create this experiment.  Lev Trotsky's story should prove as a cautionary tale to these would-be courtiers to the ruinous and rapacious exercise that is communism.

Leon Trotsky's internment, Mexico City. (Author's Collection, copyright 2019)