Panteón de Dolores

Mexico City’s large civil cemetery, in the second section of Chapultepec. In Hayden Herrera’s Frida its small crematorium is where Frida’s body is burned on 14 July 1954, to political songs and farewell ballads.

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Frida	Hayden Herrera	turning point	Frida’s cremation: orations, sonnets and the Internationale in a tiny hot room while hundreds wait in the rain.

Frida — Hayden Herrera (1983)

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

The crematorium at the Panteón Civil de Dolores (the civil cemetery) was small and extremely primitive.

• Role: turning point
• In the book: After lying in state at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Frida’s coffin reaches the crematorium, where friends, family and party officials crowd the tiny hot room while hundreds stand among the tombstones in the rain. Andrés Iduarte gives the funeral oration, Carlos Pellicer reads his sonnets, and Adelina Zendejas recalls Frida at the Preparatoria. At a quarter past one Rivera and family lift her onto the cart to the oven, and he bends to kiss her forehead; the mourners sing the Internationale and then farewell ballads as the oven door opens at one-fifty.
• Why it matters: It is where the life the biography follows ends, and the political songs make her funeral the last act of her public persona.