Mexican Liberal Party
Mexican Liberal Party Partido Liberal Mexicano | |
---|---|
Political position | Far-left |
Colours | Red Black |
Party flag | |
Part of Radicalism |
The Mexican Liberal Party (
The first Mexican Liberal Party Convention was held in
Ricardo Flores Magón attended the first Convention as a reporter for his newspaper Regeneración ("Regeneration"). He afterwards published an editorial in favorable support of the aims and aspirations. In April 1901, the new Mexican Liberal Party opened a branch in Mexico City, and Ricardo Flores Magón and his brothers joined and became active members. Always a bit more radical than most members, Flores Magón was forced into exile in January 1904. Finally settling in San Antonio, Texas, Flores Magón called for radical members of the Liberal Party to follow him in a new organization. In September 1905, the radical liberals, led by Flores Magón, formed a new organization called Junta Organizadora del Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM). This organization would be separate from the Liberal Party, and it would seek to coordinate the violent overthrow of the Díaz government.[12] The PLM was involved in strikes and uprisings in Mexico from 1906 to 1911.
Overview
The party controlled the northern part of Baja California in 1911, including Tijuana, Mexicali, and Tecate. In August 1911 part of the PLM militants, including Juan Sarabia, Jesús Flores Magón and Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama split from the organization and transformed into the "Liberal Party" (Spanish: Partido Liberal).[13]
The PLM was supported from exile in Texas by the feminist writer Andrea Villarreal.
Background
In February 1901, the Liberal Congress was founded in
By 1904 the police persecution of the Diaz government, its political opponents were forced to seek refuge abroad, coupled with the growing political differences between the liberals, a group headed by Camilo Arriaga, went into exile in San Antonio, Texas, and another, headed by Ricardo Flores Magón, in the border city of Laredo.
Diaz agents backed by US authorities chased liberals in Texas, so they continued to move further and further north. On 28 September 1905, in Saint Louis, Missouri, United States, the Magón Flores group drafted the manifesto with which the Organizing Board of the Mexican Liberal Party was constituted. The tasks of the Organizing Board were to summon and articulate all the opposing forces to prepare the fight against the dictator.
On 1 July 1906, after almost a year of discussion on the political, economic and social situation of the country, the Manifesto and Program of the Mexican Liberal Party was published. Among the main policies of the program were the eight-hour day, prohibition of child labor, minimum wage, compensation for accidents at work, compulsory and free secular education. Years later, these policies presented by the PLM in this program formed the basis of the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, which officially ended the Mexican Revolution.
Strikes and insurrections
The PLM organized several uprisings against the Porfirio Díaz regime, all of which were violently repressed. The PLM Program influenced the Cananea strike, and Río Blanco strike, as well as the Acayucan rebellion.
On
On 30 September, the Acayucan rebellion began, led by Hilario C. Salas and Cándido Donato Padua, PLM delegates from Veracruz and Tabasco. In Acayucan the clashes against the army lasted 4 days. Most of the rebels died, some fled to the Soteapan mountain range where they reorganized the guerrilla war, continuing the fight until 1911.
On 16 October, a third insurrectional attempt was made in
On 24 June 1908 the PLM attacked
A Pinkerton agent in
The Mexican Libertarian Army
For the Mexican Liberal Party, simply overthrowing dictator Porfirio Díaz wasn't enough if it did not guarantee communal freedom. They understood that the struggle for political freedom was useless if economic freedom didn't come with it, so in order to guarantee that freedom it would be necessary to take and defend the land in an armed rebellion. The armed groups of the PLM were organized into the Liberal Army Confederation, also known as the Mexican Libertarian Army.
On 23 September 1910, the PLM Organizing Board in Los Angeles published, in Regeneration, a libertarian manifesto that called on Mexicans to fight against the State, the Clergy and Capital, under the slogan "Land and Freedom", an ideal that a month later was taken up by Emiliano Zapata.
The most important military campaign of the Mexican Liberal Army was the
The military campaigns of the PLM, failed again and again due to the lack of resources, police infiltration and confusion caused by counterproductive tactics. Although for some, Maderism represented the most viable political alternative; for others, supporting Madero was simply the only way to escape alive from Mexican prisons. However, there were others who preferred jail or death to betraying their ideals.[16]
Final years
After the raid on Baja California, and with
In 1915, after the death of Anselmo L. Figueroa and the lack of resources to continue Regeneration, a small group of the PLM moved to a farm located in Edendale, Los Angeles. There they lived and worked communally, raised chickens and grew vegetables that they sold for support, while carrying out the political work of the PLM, now renamed the Revolutionary Workers Union (UOR).[19]
In February 1916, Enrique and Ricardo Flores Magón were arrested at their home in Edendale, accused of defaming Venustiano Carranza. They were released months later, when a committee promoted by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman collected the bail money demanded by the Los Angeles court. Shortly after leaving prison, Enrique Flores Magón left the UOR, along with most others. Librado Rivera and Ricardo Flores Magón remained, and together they published a manifesto in Regeneration addressed to anarchists of the world. In 1918, they were arrested, accused of conspiracy by the United States government, and sentenced to 15 and 20 years in prison respectively.
Flores Magón died in prison in 1922. Rivera was released and deported to Mexico where he continued denouncing the governments emanating from the revolution, he was imprisoned during the mandate of Plutarco Elías Calles and died in 1932.
Legacy
The PLM slogan "Tierra y Libertad" (Land and Liberty) also appeared in the group's Regeneración newspaper illustrations. Ricardo Flores Magón used it as the title of a play and William C. Owen used it as the title of an American anarchist newspaper.[20]
See also
References
- Government of Mexico(in Spanish)
- ^ Ricardo Flores Magón – El Apóstol cautivo, tomo I, cap. 9, pg. 166 – El Partido Liberal Mexicano Library of the Department of Historic Investigations (in Spanish)
- ^ Bosque Lastra, Margarita (1997). La constitución de hoy y su protección hacia el siglo XXI. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. p. 132.
- ^ Suárez Cortina, Manuel (2013). Cuestión religiosa España y México en la época liberal. Ediciones Universidad Cantabria. pp. 218–219.
- ^ Córdova, Arnaldo (1973). La ideología de la Revolución Mexicana la formación del nuevo régimen. Ediciones Era. p. 122.
- ISBN 978-0-19-936643-9.
- ^ Ward Albro, "Always a Rebel" 1992, p8
- ^ Ward Albro, "Always a Rebel" 1992, p10
- ^ Ward Albro, "Always a Rebel" 1992, p10
- ^ Ward Albro, "Always a Rebel" 1992, p8
- ^ Ward Albro, "Always a Rebel" 1992, p13
- ^ Ward Albro, "Always a Rebel" 1992, p30
- ^ John Lear – Workers, Neighbors, and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City. Political cultures and movilization – Maderista politics
- ^ Ricardo Flores Magón: una vida en rebeldía, Salvador Hernández Padilla, September 2003
- ISBN 968-23-1631-6. p. 146.
- ISBN 968-411-199-1. p. 193-194.
- ^ Regeneración Tomo IV, No. 77. Los Ángeles, California.17 de febrero de 1912. Archivo Electrónico Ricardo Flores Magón.
- ^ This group of condemned PLM members were known as "The Martyrs of Texas." Notes on a letter from Flores Magón to lawyer Harry Weinberger, defender of Flores Magón and the Martyrs of Texas. Kansas, 1920. Upon his return to Mexico, Librado Rivera wrote the book "Los Martires de Texas", in favor of the freedom of his fellow prisoners.
- ^ Hernández Padilla, Salvador. op. cit., p. 197.
- ISBN 978-0-8223-9554-6.
Further reading
- Ricardo Flores Magón: Dreams of Freedom : A Ricardo Flores Magón Reader, Ak Press, 2005, ISBN 1-904859-24-0
- Javier Torres Pares: La revolucion sin frontera: El Partido Liberal Mexicano y las relaciones entre el movimiento obrero de Mexico y el de Estados Unidos, 1900–1923, Ediciones y Distribuciones Hispanicas, 1990, ISBN 968-36-1099-4
- Juan Gomez-Quiñones: Sembradores: Ricardo Flores Magón y el Partido Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique, 1973, Chicano Studies Center Publications, ISBN 0-89551-010-3
- Jeffrey Kent Lucas, The Rightward Drift of Mexico's Former Revolutionaries: The Case of Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7734-3665-7.