Ramón Mercader
| Ramón Mercader | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río 7 February 1913 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain |
| Died | 18 October 1978 (aged 65) Havana, Cuba |
| Resting place | Kuntsevo Cemetery, Moscow, Russia |
| Other names | Jacques Mornard; Frank Jacson |
| Occupation | NKVD agent |
| Criminal penalty | 20 years imprisonment |
| Spouse(s) | Roguelia Mendoza |
| Parent(s) | Pau Mercader i Marina (father) Eustaquia María Caridad del Río Hernández (mother) |
| Conviction(s) | Murder |
Jaime Ramón Mercader del Río (7 February 1913 – 18 October 1978), more commonly known as Ramón Mercader, was a Spanish communist and NKVD agent who assassinated the Russian Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in August 1940. He served 20 years in Mexican prison for the murder. Joseph Stalin presented him with an Order of Lenin in absentia. Mercader was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union after his release in 1961.
Mercader was born in 1913 in Barcelona to Eustaquia María Caridad del Río Hernández (b. 1892), the daughter of a Cantabrian merchant who had become affluent in Spanish Cuba, and Pau Mercader i Marina (b. 1885), the son of a Catalan textiles industrialist from Badalona. Mercader grew up in France with his mother after their divorce. Caridad was an ardent Communist who fought in the Spanish Civil War and served in the Soviet international underground. As a young man, Ramón embraced Communism, working for leftist organizations in Spain during the mid-1930s. He was briefly imprisoned for his activities, but was released in 1936 when the left-wing coalition Popular Front won in the elections of that year. During the Spanish Civil War, Mercader was recruited by Nahum Eitingon, an officer of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, a preceding agency to the KGB), and trained in Moscow as a Soviet agent.
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