Cuernavaca

Capital of the Mexican state of Morelos, south of Mexico City. In Hayden Herrera’s Frida it is where Frida and Diego Rivera spend their honeymoon while he paints the Cortés Palace murals.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Frida	Hayden Herrera	setting	Honeymoon town: Frida roams the Morrows’ gardens and critiques Rivera’s Cortés Palace mural, down to Zapata’s white horse.

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Frida — Hayden Herrera (1983)

Source: Frida - A Biography of Frida Kahlo · Original · Readwise highlight

There, in the more element weather and gentler atmosphere of the beautiful town on the low slope of a mountain some fifty miles from Mexico City, Frida and Diego had their honeymoon.

• Role: setting
• In the book: In December 1929 the American ambassador Dwight W. Morrow commissions Rivera to paint a mural in the Cortés Palace, and the Morrows leave the couple their Cuernavaca house. While Rivera works, Frida wanders the terraced gardens and looks out from a small tower toward Tres Marías and the volcanoes Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. When she is not at home she is at the Cortés Palace watching him paint; Rivera liked to tell how she shrieked at his white horse for Zapata.
• Why it matters: The honeymoon is where Herrera first shows Frida as Rivera’s critic, the judgment he came to depend on. Its calm is the contrast to the political trouble in Mexico City that the couple has just left.