Flores Magón, Ricardo

FLORES MAGÓN, RICARDO (1874–1922). The political career and ideological evolution of Ricardo Flores Magón began in the context of the regime of Porfirio Díaz, dictator of Mexico from 1876 to 1911. Like a number of young Mexican intellectuals, he perceived the problems of Mexico associated with the dictator as deriving from the corruption of classical liberalism by this regime, which favored English and American corporations and which crushed any expressions of dissent. In 1903 Flores Magón was expelled from Mexico and in early 1904 he and his brother Enrique crossed the border into Texas and the country he and his compatriots regarded as the model of liberalism. Organizing for the Mexican Revolution from their exile in San Antonio, the Magón brothers, Juan Sarabia, Antonio Villareal, Librado Rivera, Manuel Sarabia, and Rosalio Bustamante reestablished the newspaper Regeneración in 1904 and the following year founded the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) in Saint Louis. At this time these “Liberales” espoused a vague socialism upholding the sovereignty of the people above all else, though asserting the harmony of classes.

Experiencing the work life of a Mexican immigrant and the repressive nature of the American government and law, the PLM junta and Ricardo Flores Magón, its leader, moved away from their earlier political views and explicitly embraced anarchism in 1908. In this same year they unsuccessfully attempted to spark a revolution in Mexico with a series of border raids around the El Paso area. For this they were convicted of violating neutrality laws and jailed for eighteen months. They had been helped along in their journey to radicalism and in their court trials by the likes of Emma Goldman and other anarchists, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the Western Federation of Miners, all of which contributed to their legal defense.

In 1910 the organization and newspaper moved to Los Angeles, where it continued to propagandize against “clergy, law, and capital.” The clarity of their anarchist principles and their advocacy of direct action to secure the means of production for those who worked and to ignite the Mexican Revolution put the PLM outside the mainstream of anti-Díaz activity, which remained concerned primarily with electoral and land reform. In January 1911 approximately five hundred Liberales, including nearly a hundred Wobbly-affiliated Anglos, attacked Baja California. Briefly successful, the effort soon fell prey to factionalism and desertion. This Baja episode well exemplified the PLM’s pattern of inspiring and engineering an effort and then lacking the discipline and organization to carry it through. Their efforts also sparked the vehement opposition of Southwestern newspapers, Mexican consuls, and American law. In June 1911 their efforts in Baja earned them twenty-three months in jail. Thousands of pro-Magónistas rioted in Los Angeles upon hearing the verdict.

The PLM leaders’ theory was as visionary and compelling as their actions. They claimed that their anarchist Utopia—in which no bourgeois law ruled people, nor churches fooled them, nor capital oppressed them—was rooted in the traditional Indian communal organization of land tenure. If only the interloper of capitalism could be swept away, human goodness could flourish and produce “a new society of justice and love.” This was not mere romanticism to many Mexicans on both sides of the border who had seen the new industrial system erode their independence as artisans, miners, and farmers. While their railings against religion did not resonate with much of the Mexican populace, the PLM’s attack on the monopolization of land, of which the church was a part, did. Propaganda and direct action, not political maneuvering or strategy, would destroy the rule of capital. Then the people, uncorrupted by clergy, law, or capital, would rule themselves with self-governing and autonomous local institutions where cooperation would reign.

Toward this end of cleansing revolution, PLM activists assisted in the organization of Mexican workers into unions, either all-Mexican or in league with the IWW. The IWW’s famous Fresno Local 66 included many Mexican agricultural workers thanks to the organizational efforts of the Liberales in 1909 and 1910.

For much of this time the Magón brothers and the rest of the junta were in and out of jail. Thus Regeneración, the primary propaganda instrument, languished. In 1918 Ricardo Flores Magón called upon the workers of the world to reject nationalism and use the world cataclysm to revolt against the bourgeoisie and establish “la fraternidad universal.” Convicted under the Espionage Act for hindering the war effort, Magon received twenty years in the Leavenworth Penitentiary, where he died or was murdered, in November 1922. All the while honoring his martyred name, the generals who eventually controlled the Mexican Revolution cast out the Liberales from Mexico. Magónistas then made Los Angeles their permanent home, where they continued to denounce “clergy, law, and capital.” As late as the 1930s, striking Mexican American farm workers hailed their Magonista inspiration.

Albro, Ward S. Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican Revolution. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1992.

Blaisdell, Lowell. The Desert Revolution: Baja California, 1911. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962.

Bufe, Chaz and Mitchell Verter, eds., Dreams of Freedom: a Ricardo Flores Reader. Oakland: AK Press, 2005.

Gómez-Quiñones, Juan. Sembradores, Ricardo Flores Magón y el Partido Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique. Los Angeles: Chicano Studies Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 1973. The appendix contains the most important PLM documents, Regeneración articles, and some letters of Ricardo Flores Magón.

Hart, John M. Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860–1931. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978.

MacLachlan, Colin. Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magon in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

Monroy, Douglas. “Fence Cutters, Sediciosos, and First-Class Citizens: Mexican Radicalism in America.” In The Immigrant Left in the United States, edited by Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Raat, W. Dirk. Revoltosos: Mexico’s Rebels in the United States, 1903–1923. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1981.

Sandos, James A. Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904–1923. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.