Expatriate writers who vanished or died in Mexico, that Bermuda Triangle of the pen

Expatriate writers who vanished or died in Mexico, that Bermuda Triangle of the pen

1.  Ambrose Bierce 1842 1914
Journalist and author of "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Devil's Dictionary."  In late 1913, Bierce accompanied Pancho Villa's army in Chihuahua, then disappeared.  He may have been shot by a firing squad in the town of Sierra Mojada, Coahuila.

2. Arthur Cravan 1887 1918  Pseudonym of Fabian Avernus Lloyd.  Poet, art provocateur, boxer (he fought Jack Johnson), proto-Dadaist, nephew of Oscar Wilde and husband of the sublime modern poet Mina Loy.  He vanished in 1918, probably when his sailboat was swept away by a storm near Salina Cruz, a port city in steamy southern Oaxaca. 

3. Leon Trotsky 1879 1940  The Russian revolutionary leader, historian and political theorist was stabbed in the back of the head with an icepick by a Stalinist agent who had ingratiated himself with Trotsky's daughter and gained entrance to their refuge in the leafy Coyoacan neighborhood of Mexico City.  An assassination attempt by the mural painter David Siquieros and others had failed a few months earlier.

4. W. J. Cash 1900 1941  Author of the classic cultural study The Mind Of The South.  He had gone to Mexico to write a novel after getting a Guggenheim grant.  He had a  paranoid breakdown, became convinced that he was being pursued by Nazi spies, and hanged himself in a room at the fancy Reforma Hotel in Mexico City (or was murdered by Nazis, if you please).

5. Neal Cassady 1926 1968  The "greater driver" of the Beat Generation OD'd on Seconal and alcohol after a wedding party in San Miguel de Allende.  Characteristically, he had been walking along railroad tracks to reach the next town when he collapsed.  If he was headed north, his destination would have been lovely Dolores Hidalgo, perhaps a better place to die.

6. B. Traven 1882 1969  Pseudonym of Otto Feige, Ret Marut, Traven Torsvan, Hal Croves, or possibly all four of them.  The proletarian adventure novelist, author of The Death Ship and The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, remained untraceable throughout his long life in northern Mexico, and thrived.