Gustavo Rojo Dot Com

During the decades between 1910 and 1930, Mexico was swept into the maelstrom of revolution. Throughout this period, the ideology of Anarchism was a very strong force internationally. In fact, before the 1917 Russian Revolution, Anarchism was arguably a more significant radical force than Communism and the followers of Karl Marx. Anarchism literally means “no rulers”. The origins of Anarchism date back at least to the French Revolution and the Enrages. At the time, aristocrats labeled these libertarian radicals as “anarchists”. The first person to proclaim himself as such was French Socialist, Pierre Joseph Proudhon. At this time, Socialism was a term that encompassed a wide variety of anti-capitalist views. Anarchism gained recognition as distinct from Socialism, and later Communism, when Mikhail Bakunin openly broke with Karl Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association.
The task of completing a coherent body of thought was left to the Russian Anarchist Peter Kropotkin, who envisioned a world of “anarchist-communism”. This idea was similar to Communism in that it was interested in evolving beyond private ownership of the means of production, but they disagreed over the idea of what that kind of society might look like and how they should get there. While the followers of Karl Marx, especially Lenin, argued for a strong state and a revolutionary vanguard which would crush the capitalists, the Anarchists wanted something much more libertarian.
Anarchism is an ideology that fights for a world without the need for a state. Anarchists foresee a society where workers would manage themselves and the means of production is controlled by those who produced — directly, as opposed to capitalist or Communist Party managers. Politically, Anarchists strive for a decentralized system where power rests on the smallest possible unit, either with the individual or the community. From there, coordination on a larger scale is accomplished with confederation and the use of a delegate system. Nowhere in such a system would one person govern another — hence the name: Anarchism.
During the period of the Mexican Revolution, Anarchism was a significant force in other parts of the world, such as in the Russian Revolution and later in Spain, 1936. Not surprisingly, Anarchism was a significant force in the Mexican Revolution as well. These ideas infiltrated the turbulent events in Mexico, through a variety of individuals, groups and organizations
The Mexican Revolution of 1910 was developed and fueled with Anarchist ideals.
Ricardo Flores Magon, the ultimate precursor to the Revolution planted the seed of rebellion, against the longstanding government of the tyrant Porfirio Diaz. What as seen as a liberal revolution in actuality had a deeper, more radical side. Anarchism was evident throughout the goals of Ricardo Flores Magon and his Partido Liberal Mexicano. Flores Magon began as a strong supporter of Benito Juarez Liberalism, but soon through his experiences developed a stronger sense of justice, and will to free the lower class from beorgoise servitude. Along the way Flores Magon was able to influence and develop the Revolution. His political organization with the confusing name, the Mexican Liberal Party, was able to influence a large portion of the Mexican revolutionaries. In 1905 Magon founded the Mexican Liberal Party, a reformist organisation opposed to the excesses of the regime, which organised two unsuccessful uprisings against Diaz in 1906 and 1908. During his early years of exile he became acquainted with the legendary anarchist Emma Goldman, and it was partly through her that he moved from reformism to become an anarchist
In the urban centers, the Anarcho-syndicalist union, the Casa del Obrero Mundial, was a very important player during the period of 1912-1916. In the south, while not openly Anarchist, the Zapatistas held views that echoed, to a large extent, the ideals of Anarchism. The Mexican Revolution would not have been the same without these influences.
As an aspiring student of law, Flores Magon participated in the student-led demonstrations against Porfiros Diaz’s reelection in May of 1892. Soon after Flores Magon became editor of El Democrata. Flores Magon’s frustration with the government was evident with the founding of Regeneracion, a newspaper in which became an avenue to attack the Porfirian regime.
Many of prominent Liberals, such as Ricardo, his brother Jesus and Antonio Diaz Soto y Gama were repeatedly arrested for their anti-Diaz stance. It was at this time that his brother Jesus left the movement disillusioned. Because of this repression Regeneracion temporarily ceased publication and Ricardo, with his other brother, Enrique, left Mexico for the United States on January 3, 1904. While Ricardo never returned to Mexico alive his career significantly influenced the Mexican Revolution, even in exile.
Within a year of the founding of the PLM, the organization issued a formal platform, the Programa y Manifesto. The manifesto was “one of the most important documents in modern Mexican history.”3 The Program had 52 specific proposals and ended with the influential slogan, “Reform, Liberty, and Justice
Among the proposals, the Program including: a four year term for the President and no immediate reelection; the replacement of the army with a national guard; the lifting of restrictions on free speech; the death penalty would only be used in cases of treason; the creation of a government sponsored compulsory education program for children under the age of 14; foreigners that owned land would have to become Mexican citizens or renounce their title to the land; Church business and any money received would be subject to taxes, plus all Church property would be nationalized; Landowners would have to reimburse renters for improvements made to the property; any landowner that held land that was unproductive would forfeit it to the state, who would make it available to landless Mexicans or Mexicans residing in another country; the state would create a bank to provide capital to poor farmers to purchase land; and communal and individual lands taken from indigenous tribes would be returned.
The Platform also included a number of reforms for Mexican labor, including: an 8-hour work day and a minimum wage of a peso per day would be established; children under the age of 14 would not be permitted to work; employers were to be responsible for paying the cost of on the job injuries to their workers and Sunday was a “obligatory day of rest”. The PLM Program was to be very influential in the preceding years of revolution and the platform’s section on labor “would be adopted in great part by the major labor movement of the Mexican Revolution.”4
The document’s influence went well beyond merely the urban laboring classes of Mexico. Of the 52 individual proposals contained in the PLM platform of 1906, 23 were eventually adopted in the Constitution of 1917, while 26 were adopted in a more mild form, not going as far as the original PLM platform — while only three were entirely neglected.5
The most dramatic” instances of increasing opposition to the Diaz regime were the strikes of 1906 — one at the Cananea Copper Company in Sonora and the other at Rio Blanco.6
The Cananea strike began suddenly on June 1. The workers demanded “an eight-hour work day and a higher minimum wage” and were “protesting racial discrimination against Mexicans.”7 The workers rioted for two days and put up fierce resistance for another two days with firearms in hand. Interestingly, the first forces on the side of the Cooper Company to arrive were Arizona Rangers, because the nearest Mexican army troops were a day’s journey away. But by the 6th of June the strike ended when the Governor of Sonora, backed by 2,000 Federal troops threatened the strikers with conscription into the Yaqui Indian war in the southern part of the state.
In the end, between 30 and 100 Mexicans were killed. The results were severe and immediate. On the one hand, “the government suffered a severe setback in national popularity”; plus, with an obvious contingent of PLM supporters who helped to agitate the striking workers, the governments of Mexico and United States “began a concerted drive to break the PLM.”8
The second major strike occurred at the Rio Blanco factory in Orizaba in central Mexico. In April of that year, a number of Rio Blanco workers formed the Gran Circulo de Obreros Libres (GCOL) which immediately affiliated with the PLM. The GCOL helped to stir up unrest there, and on December 7, a large meeting was held by the GCOL which numbered about 3,000 workers. They drew up a series of demands that included the prohibition of company stores, shorter working hours and overtime pay among others. A strike ensued and within a few days, the number of strikers number nearly 7,000.
The one-sided agreement caused an immediate reaction against the government in Rio Blanco. Protesters shouted slogans like “Death to Diaz!” and “Down with the dictatorship!”10 Then, on January 7, a group of dissidents met workers arriving for work outside the factory. As the crowd enlarged, they then attacked and burned the company store. From there, they moved into the city, attacked the jail and released all the prisoners — all the while chanting: “Death to Porfirio Diaz!”.
Cananea and Rio Blanco was important because the events “revealed the growing working-class unrest that fueled the PLM [and] the coming revolution.”12 Of course, these events did not go unnoticed by the government either. “After the stormy summer of 1906, the Mexican government feared a projected general uprising on September 16, Mexican Independence Day. Trying not to alarm the populace, the government quietly canceled many of the traditional celebrations.”13 In fact, the PLM was planning an uprising.
the armed revolt of 1906 was purposely done in the shadow of the strike at Cananea.14 Nevertheless, the revolt was a “great milestone on the road to the Revolution of 1910. Not only would this revolt help to undermine the Porfiriato but it would give greater credibility to the Liberal Party program.”18 Unfortunately from Ricardo’s standpoint, this recognition also had very disastrous consequences. It helped to foster a situation of constant imprisonment and harassment, both in Mexico and the United States, that lasted for the duration of the Revolution.
Before this uprising, the PLM was, at least on the surface, a fairly unified group with a unified plan of action — oust Diaz and restore civil rights to Mexico. In 1905, Francisco Madero gave $2,000 (U.S.) to the Liberals to help finance Regeneracion. In fact, he wrote to Ricardo, stating that he found “all your ideas congenial.”19 But this unified view was soon to become very complex and increasingly divergent, especially on what would replace the dictatorship and how that replacement would occur. Moderate collaboration quickly dissipated as Ricardo’s cryptic-radicalism transformed into his overt anarchism.
As early as 1900, Ricardo had been familiar with the works of Kropotkin, Bakunin, Jean Grave, Enrrico Malatesta and Maxim Gorki. Ironically, it was Camilo Arriaga who was responsible for exposing many of the leaders of the PLM to the political ideology of Anarchism. It is ironic because Arriaga never could embrace the full extent of Ricardo’s radicalism — he always remained more conservative. According to Cockcroft, even Madero was familiar with the Russian Anarchist Kropotkin.20 Familiarity is one thing, while advocation is quite another. According to Albro, the exact time of Ricardo’s conversion to Anarchism is controversial, but it is clear that Ricardo didn’t publicly admit his true beliefs until 1907.21
Madero disagreed with the PLM’s proclamation in September, 1906, that all peaceful methods for achieving civil rights under Diaz were exhausted. So when the PLM uprising occurred in 1906, the split became obvious. Between 1906 and 1910, a complete break between Madero and the majority of the PLM became a reality. This was inevitable because of the combined effect of the 1906 uprising, Ricardo’s open embrace of anarchism and the subsequent support and solidarity that the PLM lent to the emerging labor movement.
MacLachlan agrees, stating that the “most important mistake remains the PLM’s failure to publicly convey its anarchistic program prior to 1911.”22 Consequently, the PLM experienced widespread defections from the party in the subsequent years after the 1906 uprising, an increasingly after Madero’s triumph over the Porfiriato.
Ricardo continued to become increasingly radical. By November 1914, after Madero’s downfall, Ricardo was still attacking the Mexican State and all who tried to reestablish it. In his declaration entitled, “To the workers of the United States”, he stated:

according to MacLachlan, “such propaganda efforts probably had little impact.”27 The reason for this was Ricardo’s political and physical isolation. Since he remained in the United States, mainly in Los Angeles or in jail, he was perceived by many as being removed from the struggle.
Dating back at least to the Haymarket affair in 1886, the U.S government had been extremely antagonistic to the ideology of Anarchism and leftist radicalism in general. In the aftermath of the assassination of president McKinley in 1901, the government basically declared war on all Anarchists. This often took the form of severe repression. At its height in 1919, the government even resorted to mass deportations to rid the country of Anarchism. This all-out assault didn’t end until Anarchism largely disappeared from the United States in the late-1920s and early 1930s.
“the United States government initially viewed [Ricardo] as a Mexican problem, but in the end, it considered him a danger to internal security and responded accordingly.”28 During Ricardo’s years in U.S. prison, often in the company of other fellow PLM leaders, the Mexican political landscape changed dramatically. When opposition to Madero took the form of three main groups, headed by Zapata, Villa and Carranza, it had the effect of splintering the remaining followers of the PLM. As a result of Ricardo’s physical absence from the center of the events, most of the PLM membership, including much of the PLM leadership, gradually aligned themselves with one of the three major forces.
The combined efforts of Mexican laborers, a hand full of exiles from the radical and powerful Spanish Anarcho-syndicalist union, the Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), making the Casa del Obrero Mundial the premier labor union by the end of 1912. The Casa was opened in July 1912 and was founded on the ideals of Anarcho-syndicalism. As such, their goals included creating a society based on workers’ self-management and coordination of production based on a syndicate system of federated unions of producers. Like other Anarchists, they saw the state as nothing more than a mechanism of repression, and therefore worked, not to transform it, but to abolish it. Primarily, the preferred weapon of the Anarcho-syndicalists was the General Strike to destroy capitalism, which they saw as the their main goal.
But in 1921, after Carranza was out, radical elements which included communists, members of the IWW. and the old Casa, formed the Confederacion General de Trabajadores (CGT). This independent labor, like the Casa, did not carry government sanction so the movement was forbidden even to use the mails to distribute its newspaper, Via Libre.
Influence of the CGT and any other independent union had competition after 1920, when the government recognized the national Confederacion Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM), which claimed a membership of 350,000. The CROM was essentially gained this government recognition because it was now tied to the wishes of government. Carranza, unlike Porfirio Diaz and Madero, understood the inevitability of labor unions and sought to control it, rather than constantly working to destroy it. the Anarcho-syndicalists were never to regain the power they had during the While many, historians and politicians alike, have proclaimed Ricardo Flores Magon to be a “precursor” to the Mexican Revolution, to state it this way, “is to define him by what followed. And Flores Magon completely rejected what followed, whether headed by Madero, Huerta, Carranza, or Obregon. From 1910 onward he loudly proclaimed the anarchism that he had hidden in the origins of the movement against Porfirio Diaz.”101 Ricardo’s quest for Anarchism ended without success, but without his efforts the Revolution would have unfolded in a much different way. Ricardo helped to built the struggle against the Diaz dictatorship. While the Revolution took a direction that Ricardo had not encouraged, it nonetheless, it was forged in the work he did.
Albro asserts that “Even in death, Ricardo Flores Magon worried the government of the United States, just as he had worried them most of the last eighteen years of his life.”103 If this is taken along with MacLachlan’s statement that “one must evaluate Flores Magon’s importance not by his failures, but by the recognition accorded him by the Left and government of the United States” — 104
Like the PLM, the Casa and the Anarcho-syndicalists also ended their struggle in apparent failure. Capitalism and the state, the two eternal nemeses of Anarcho-syndicalism, had survived and their union had not. But looking broadly, from before to after the Revolution, labor did make significant, albeit small gains. While the Constitution was written in the wake of the demise of the Casa’s General Strike, “Article 123 of the constitution granted every major petition voiced by the strikers at Cananea, Rio Blanco.”106
In the end, and to this day, the state remains alive in Mexico, and for that, Anarchism did not achieve its goal. Interestingly, the Mexican government, Ricardo Flores Magon’s sworn enemy, offered his widow funds to have his remains returned to Mexico. She refused, choosing instead to “accept money from the railway workers for that purpose.”109 It seems that to the end, even in defeat, the ideals of Anarchism still remained alive.