Ricardo Flores Magón

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Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (Template:IPA; known as Ricardo Flores Magón; September 16, 1874 – November 21, 1922) was a Mexican anarchist and social reform activist.<ref> Template:Cite web</ref> His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Flores Magón brothers were known as Magonistas. He has been considered an important participant in the social movement that sparked the Mexican Revolution.<ref name="Stacy"/>

Biography

Ricardo was born on 16 September 1874, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, an Indigenous Mazatec community. His father, Teodoro Flores, was Zapotec and his mother, Margarita Magón was a Mestiza.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The couple met each other in 1863 during the Siege of Puebla when both were carrying munitions to the Mexican troops.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Magón explored the writings and ideas of many early anarchists, such as Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, but was also influenced by anarchist contemporaries Élisée Reclus, Charles Malato, Errico Malatesta, Anselmo Lorenzo, Emma Goldman, and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol. He was most influenced by Peter Kropotkin. He also read from the works of Karl Marx and Henrik Ibsen.<ref>Stephen P. Reyna, R. E. Downs. (1999) Deadly Developments: Capitalism, States and War p. 101, Taylor & Francis Group, Template:ISBN</ref>

He was one of the major thinkers of the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican revolutionary movement in the Partido Liberal Mexicano. Flores Magón organised with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and edited the Mexican anarchist newspaper Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.<ref>Template:Cite book

Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, which Flores Magón considered a kind of anarchist bible, served as basis for the short-lived revolutionary communes in Baja California during the "Magonista" Revolt of 1911.

The Magón brothers were from a family of modest means in Oaxaca and all three studied law at the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia (today Faculty of Law of the UNAM).<ref name=hart>John Mason Hart (1987) Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution, University of California Press ISBN 0-520-05995--6</ref> Ricardo initially attended the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. During this time, he participated in student opposition to President Porfirio Diaz and was jailed for five months. Nevertheless, he graduated and then transferred to the National School of Law. While there, he worked as a proofreader for the student newspaper El Demócrata and narrowly escaped arrest when the entire staff was apprehended by the police. He was in hiding for three months but continued his studies and received his law degree in 1895. He passed the examination of the Barra Mexicana-Colegio de Abogados (Mexican Bar and Advocate's College),<ref name=gale/> and practiced law for a short time. He continued to study for a higher degree but was expelled from the school in 1898 because of his political activities. In 1900, he and his brother Jesús founded the newspaper Regeneración in which Ricardo wrote numerous articles attacking Diaz.<ref name=Cantú_article/> He also wrote articles for the opposition periodicals Excelsior, La República Mexicana, and El Hijo del Ahuizote. He joined the PLM in 1900.<ref name=gale>"Ricardo Flores Magón", Dictionary of Hispanic Biography (1996), Gale, Detroit</ref> In February of 1901, Magon would attend the first congress of Liberal Clubs<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, where he would meet another Mexican revolutionary Librado Rivera, someone who would later become another  one of the leading figures of the Mexican Liberal Party and the anarchist movement in Mexico as a whole. The congress focused primarily on anti-clericalism and the criticism of the Diaz Dictatorship. Open criticisms of the government by Magon, such as calling the government a “den of thieves” soon led to his arrest for “insulting the president.”<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was sentenced to twelve months in prison, released in April 1901. Once released, Magon would quickly resume his activism by working in the anti-government/anti-diaz movement, as well as through the satirical weekly paper, El Hijo Del Ahui. His writings were critical of the government and pushed for rebellion of Diaz’s administration , leading to Magon’s arrests and his facing 5 more months of imprisonment.

Protest at the offices of the anti-Porfirista newspaper El hijo de El Ahuizote, in 1903.

Flight to the United States

Brothers Ricardo (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right) at the Los Angeles County Jail, 1917

In 1904, Magón fled Mexico when the courts banned the printing of his writings and he remained in the United States for the remainder of his life. Half this period was spent in prison. He resumed publication of Regeneración and led the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) (Mexican Liberal Party) from abroad. In 1906, he went to California. Around this time PLM uprisings occurred in Mexico which were crushed by the Mexican government. The US sympathized with the Mexican government and started taking PLM leaders in the US into custody. Magón was fearful that he would be caught and be returned to Mexico, where he faced the possibility of execution.

Flores Magón, in 1906.

In 1907, an American detective by the name of Thomas Furlong<ref group=Note>"Late Chief of the Secret Service of the Missouri Pacific Railway, known as the Gould System; The Allegheny Valley Railway of Pennsylvania and first Chief of Police of Oil City, PA"</ref> was employed by Enrique Creel, at that time governor of Chihuahua, to locate Mexican dissidents in the U.S. The American headquarters of the PLM was in St. Louis at that time. There were a large number of expatriates who knew of its whereabouts and as a result, Furlong had no difficulty locating the dissidents in the city. Magón, however, was living in great secrecy in Los Angeles. He used a pseudonym, and only two other persons in the city knew his real identity. If they needed to see him, they did so between midnight and dawn.<ref name=furlong>Thomas Furlong (1912) Fifty Years a Detective, C.E. Barnett, St. Louis, Missouri</ref> The dissidents in St. Louis soon became aware that they were being sought by agents working for the Mexican government. Librado Rivera left the city in order to evade capture and although he was constantly on alert for agents who might be shadowing him, he failed to elude them. He was followed to Los Angeles and to Magón's place of residence. Furlong kept the house under surveillance for some time. Finally, on August 23, 1907, Magón, Rivera and Antonio Villarreal were taken into custody by Furlong, two of his assistants and some officers from the Los Angeles police department.<ref name=furlong/> Continuing his work, after being arrested in Los Angeles and imprisoned in Arizona,Magon was able to smuggle out “Manifesto to the American People”<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>, a list of the goals of the PLM movement as well as the explanations as to why he and others were improvised by U.S. authority, as well as what were  “plans for a second uprising and in June 1908 insurrections by PLM groups occurred in the states of Baja California, Coahuila and Chihuahua."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> While in prison, Magon would write to his brother as well as Praxedis Guerrero, a fellow anarchist, poet and journalist, about his own views on anarchism and liberalism. This detailed his original intent for calling himself a liberal, stemming from the belief that he and others wouldn't have been listened to if they called themselves anarchists due to the larger public beliefs of anarchists. In practice the actions of the PLM should remain anarchist in theme and practice even if members continue to call themselves liberal, “We should continue to call ourselves liberals during the course of the revolution, and will in reality continue propagating anarchy and executing anarchist acts."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Magón and other PLM members had organized a brigade of revolutionaries in Douglas, Arizona in the years preceding his move to Los Angeles. An expedition was sent to the Cananea copper mines about thirty miles from the southern border of Arizona with the alleged intention of exterminating all Americans employed in and about the mines. The brigade had been pursued by the Arizona Rangers who put them to flight, capturing a few of them. Magón and his companions were extradited to Tombstone, Arizona where they were charged with violating U.S. neutrality laws. Although the American and Mexican left rallied to their defense, they were convicted and sentenced to eighteen months in Yuma Territorial Prison, later being transferred to Arizona State Prison Complex – Florence.<ref name=gale/> They were released in 1910 and again resumed publishing Regeneración from an office in downtown Los Angeles. The Mexican Civil War began that same year, and the Magonistas, as the PLM forces were known, were involved in combat throughout Mexico, along with the forces of Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and Venustiano Carranza and Francisco I. Madero.<ref>Clayton, Lawrence A.; Conniff, Michael L. (2005) A History of Modern Latin America pp. 285–286, Wadsworth Publishing Template:ISBN</ref> In late 1910, the Mexican Revolution began to take off with the leadership of Francisco Madero, a landowner whom Magon disagreed with. Even with the revolution against the dictator whom Magon wanted out of government, he continually spoke out against Madero and his beliefs: “Do not expect then, that Madero will attack the right of property in favor of the proletariat. Open your eyes. Remember a phrase, simple and true and as truth indestructible, the emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves.”<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Overall, Magón rejected the notion of a purely political revolution, believing in having a full “social revolution"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> in order to return freedom and power to the working citizen.

Organizing Board of the Mexican Liberal Party in 1910.Anselmo L. Figueroa, Práxedis G. Guerrero, Ricardo Flores Magón, Enrique Flores Magón and Librado Rivera.

By May 1911, Diaz was defeated. Magón continued to oppose the vast American economic presence in Mexico, and Madero's continuing expropriation of peasant lands. He was arrested again. After two years in prison in Washington state, he was released and settled with brother Enrique in Edendale, just north of the Silver Lake Reservoir. The PLM had no funds by this time, and the brothers and their friends farmed and raised chickens on the rented plot of land.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He continued publishing Regeneración and making speeches in the region. One of the places Magon stayed was in the city of El Monte, part of the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County. During his time in El Monte, Magon wrote letters to comrades in Mexico, as well was involved in local anarchist activities while supporting himself and family picking up work in local ranches in the area.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was again arrested in 1916, accused of sending "indecent materials" through the U.S. Mail. With the help of Emma Goldman, he made bail. Following his potential imprisonment, a new leader had come to power in Mexico by the name of Venustiano Carranza, a powerful land owner and revolutionary<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> who had come to power after Madero has been assassinated. Having the funds, Regeneracion would be able to be published again. In the following publications, Magon would write “scathing articles criticizing the Carranza regime.” Specifically, Magon would criticize Carranza’s use of the “Red Battalions," urban workers who were set out to fight the "Zapatistas" specifically.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Tomb of Ricardo Flores Magón in the Rotonda of Illustrious Persons (Mexico).

In 1918, he published an anti-war manifesto. In this he wrote, "The death of the old order is at hand. It is being whispered in the bars, theatres, streetcars and homes, especially in our homes, the homes of those at the bottom." For these writings, he was charged with sedition under the Espionage Act of 1917, convicted and sentenced to twenty years for "obstructing the war effort", a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.<ref name="la">"Son of Anarchy" (Dec 2013) Los Angeles magazine</ref> The Wilson administration conducted what were called the Palmer Raids, a wholesale crackdown on war dissidents and leftists that also swept up notable socialists such as Eugene V. Debs. In November 1922, Magón died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.<ref name="Stacy">Lee Stacy (2002) Mexico And The United States pp. 329-30, Marshall Cavendish, Template:ISBN</ref> He had been suffering from diabetes for many years and was losing his eyesight by the time of his death.<ref>"Death of Ricardo Flores Magón" (December 1922) Freedom Vol.XXXVI No.402 p.82</ref> He had earlier predicted his impending demise in a letter to a friend:Template:Blockquote

The exact cause of Flores Magón's death has been disputed. Some believe he was deliberately murdered by prison guards. Others contend that he died as a result of deteriorating health caused by his long imprisonment, possibly exacerbated by medical neglect by Leavenworth Penitentiary officials and staff.Template:Sfn Magón wrote several letters to friends complaining of debilitating health problems and of what he perceived to be purposeful neglect by the prison staff.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The Mexican Chamber of Deputies adopted a resolution requesting the repatriation of Magón's body. It stated,

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The U.S. authorities denied the request and Magón was buried in Los Angeles. His remains were finally repatriated in 1945 and interred at the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City.<ref name=gale/>

Legacy

Flores Magón's movement fired the imagination of both American and Mexican anarchists. In 1945, his remains were repatriated to Mexico and were interred in the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres in Mexico City.<ref name="Stacy"/> In Mexico, the Flores Magón brothers are considered left-wing political icons nearly as notable as Emiliano Zapata; numerous streets, public schools, towns and neighborhoods are named after them. This includes Ricardo Flores Magón metro station in Mexico City, and the municipalities of Teotitlán de Flores Magón and Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón in Oaxaca. His ideas have also inspired indigenous leaders from Oaxaca, Mexico including the Chatino leader Tomas Cruz Lorenzo.

In 1991, Douglas Day published The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magón, a fictional diary covering Flores Magon's life from his birth in Oaxaca until his mysterious death in his cell at Leavenworth.<ref>Douglas Day (1991) The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magón, Harcourt, Template:ISBN</ref>

In 1997, an organization of indigenous peoples of Mexico in the state of Oaxaca formed the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón" (Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón", or CIPO-RFM), based on the philosophy of Magón.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

"A world without borders", displayed in New York in 2006

Playwright

In his work of popular education, Ricardo Flores Magón also used the theater to denounce the faults of society and outline the main lines of the libertarian "program". He is the author of two plays: Verdugos et victimas and Tierra y Libertad. He is also the author of numerous tales, published in the newspaper Regeneración.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

See also

Notes

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References

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Further reading

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