The Mexican Revolution: The Anarchism of Ricardo Flores Magón

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Ricardo Flores Magón lived during a time after the implementation of the Monroe Doctrine and the Mexican American War, which established the dominance of the United States as a world power in the Americas and over Mexico, the southern neighbor of the United States. Although the United States had established itself as a world power in the nineteenth century, the United States was still expanding within its borders using what Kelly Lytle Hernandez called "settler/colonization."[1] Settler/colonization represented land ownership, one of the pillars of the free enterprise or capitalist system. Because the United States Constitution is an amendable document with no expressed or implied hierarchy of citizenry, "all men are created equal." Therefore, settler/colonization was an acceptable way to promote westward expansion in the United States and free enterprise in the nineteenth century. Whereas Mexico already had established rules of citizenry hierarchy that had been established by the Spanish monarch and enforced by the Viceroy before Mexican independence. In the Mexican society and economy, everyone knew their place, and it took a revolution to change the social and economic order somewhat.

This paper will answer several research questions. First, why were there so many different revolutionary groups? Second, why could the revolutionary groups not unite to form a government that represented all the ethnic and labor groups in Mexico? Third, what factors influence Mexican revolutionaries to follow Ricardo Flores Magón?

Cumberland posited that of all "the most outstanding men among the group of leaders, and around whom revolved most of the movement, was Ricardo Flores Magón, idealist and anarchist, who fought for the welfare of the proletariat until he died in Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1922."[2] Magón was unique because he recognized the difference between the goals of the PLM and the other revolutionary factions, which exemplified their various ethnic groups. Montelongo revealed that "Magónistas were campesinos, peons, industrial workers, railroad employees, miners, and middle-class intellectuals."[3]

Cumberland posited that of all "the most outstanding men among the group of leaders, and around whom revolved most of the movement, was Ricardo Flores Magón, idealist and anarchist, who fought for the welfare of the proletariat until he died in Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1922."[4] Magón was unique because he recognized the difference between the goals of the PLM and the other revolutionary factions, which exemplified their various ethnic groups. Montelongo revealed that "Magónistas were campesinos, peons, industrial workers, railroad employees, miners, and middle-class intellectuals."[5]

The reason for the Mexican Revolution is that dictator, President Porfirio Diaz, who had been the president of Mexico from 1876 to 1911, allowed capital investments, especially in the borderlands, by U. S. and European investors, which denied Mexican citizens to develop their own economy.[6] The Mexican rebels saw this control of Mexican lands as U.S. imperialism which created a situation for the indigenous peoples of Mexico that was similar to Jim Crow in the U.S.[7] However, Jim Crow was a horrible institution for African Americans, which included the enactment of Black Codes that restricted the inclusion and upward mobility of African Americans socially, but most importantly, economically. These constitutional rights allowed African Americans in the U.S. to eventually change their circumstances through political and social means and by intermingling with other cultures in the United States. In contrast, Mexico's Peninsulares, White Mexicans, Criollos, Mestizos, Amerindians, Afro – Mexicans, and Asian Mexicans were restricted by their cultural and ethnic heritages with no constitutional guarantees.

One major effect of the Mexican Revolution in 1910 was that it spilled over into the U.S.-Mexico borderlands by activists such as Ricardo Flores Magón and his brothers Enrique and Jesus. The Magón brothers were intellectuals, journalists, and legal scholars, who conveyed the rationale for the Mexican Revolution to the working class, common laborers, cowboys, minors, and lower-class Mexican citizens. The working class, common laborers, cowboys, minors, and lower-class Mexican citizens were the liberal faction, and the elite Mexican citizens were the conservative faction. The main issues that Magón and the Magónistas addressed included the distribution of land to wealthy Mexican landholders by the Mexican government controlled by Porfirio Diaz, capital investment by the U.S., foreign investors that lessened the economic control of the Mexican government and the Mexican people, and the exploitation of Mexican laborers within Mexico along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and the interior United States. According to Dantán, early as 1906, Magón recommended that Mexico be governed by a revolutionary government "made up of the middle class with close ties to the industrial and middle classes with agrarian reform and labor rights. [8] However, George Woodcock surmised that Magón felt that people should be free to govern themselves cooperatively without government.

Beezley posited that by 1900, Ricardo Flores Magón found himself actively embracing two major political movements—liberal reformists and popular social movements—that ultimately became the vehicles for revolution. Maldonado stated that Teodoro Flores taught his sons, Ricardo, Jesus, and Enrique, to "fight for justice in rural communities."[9] Maldonado revealed that Ricardo was a "radical rural leader, who was from the same Mexican state as Porfirio Diaz, a state with a long history of rural uprisings that continue to this day."[10] Maldonado discovered that the Magón brothers began actively challenging Diaz after he regained power in 1884 after his handpicked president of 1880, Manuel Gonzales, changed the Mexican constitution.[11] Maldonado found that "in May 1892, the Magón brothers participated in a student-led demonstration against Díaz's second election."[12]

Magón continued to protest and speak out against Diaz, and in 1901 Diaz put Magón in prison several times.[13] In 1901, the Magónistas first published Regeneración. Ricardo Magón edited the Spanish version of Regeneración, and W.C. Owen and Alfred G. Santleben edited the English version. After Magón's release in 1903, he and Enrique migrated to Los Angeles, California. Maldonado cited that Magón was suspect of any authority because he felt that organized government favored the elite and persecuted the poor.[14] According to Maldonado, in 1906, Magón published a list of demands for Porfirio Diaz to consider entitled "Programa Del Partido Liberal."[15] In 1916, Magón was arrested for sending "indecent materials" through the U.S. Mail. Magón was again arrested in 1918 under the Espionage Act of 1917 in the United States and sentenced to twenty years in Leavenworth, Kansas, for sedition.