Ricardo Flores Magón
Ricardo Flores Magón | |
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Rotonda de las Personas Ilustres, Panteón de Dolores | |
Nationality | Mexican |
Occupations |
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Known for | Involvement in the Mexican Revolution and promoting anarchism in Mexico |
Part of a series on |
Libertarianism |
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Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (Spanish pronunciation:
Biography
Ricardo was born on 16 September 1874, in
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.[5]
He was one of the major thinkers of the
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
Flight to the United States
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
In 1907, an American detective by the name of Thomas Furlong[Note 1] 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.[9] 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.[9]
Magón and other PLM members had organized a brigade of revolutionaries in
By May 1911, Diaz was defeated. Madero organized an election, which he won by deceiving the Mexican electorate into believing that he had joined forces with the PLM.
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.[12] 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. Magón died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.[2] He had been suffering from diabetes for many years and was losing his eyesight by the time of his death.[13]
The cause of Flores Magón's death has been disputed. Some believe that 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
The Mexican Chamber of Deputies adopted a resolution requesting the repatriation of Magón's body. It stated,
The undersigned Deputies, animated by the desire of rendering posthumous homage to the grand Mexican revolutionary, Ricardo Flores Magón, martyr and apostle of libertarian ideas, who has just died poor and blind in the cell of a Yankee prison, propose that this honorable Assembly pass the following resolution: That there be brought to rest in the soil of his native land, at the expense of the Mexican Government, the mortal remains of Ricardo Flores Magón. We request that this be acted upon immediately without reference to committee. (Signed) Julian S. Gonzalez, Antonio G. Rivera, E. Baron Obregon, J. M. Alvarez Del Castillo, A. Diaz So'ro Y Gama, and others
— Hall of the Mexican Congress, Mexico, D.F., November 22, 1922[15]
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
Legacy
Flores Magón's movement fired the imagination of both
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.[16]
In 1997, an organization of
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.[18]
See also
- Magonism
- Magonista rebellion of 1911
- Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón"
- Liberalism in Mexico
- Anarchism in Mexico
- William C. Owen, an anarchist editor who worked with Magón
Notes
- ^ "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"
References
- ^
INAFED. "Teotitlán de Flores Magón". Enciclopedia de los Municipios de México. Archived from the originalon 2007-05-29. Retrieved 2008-10-24.. However, he is invariably known to posterity as "Ricardo".
- ^ ISBN 978-0761474029
- ISBN 978-0-919618-30-5.
- ISBN 978-1-904859-24-6.
- ISBN 978-9056995898
- ISBN 978-0-520-07117-9.
- Hart, John M. (1987). Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931. ISBN 978-0-292-70400-8.
- Hart, John M. (1987). Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931.
- ^ John Mason Hart (1987) Revolutionary Mexico: The Coming and Process of the Mexican Revolution, University of California Press ISBN 0-520-05995--6
- ^ a b c d e "Ricardo Flores Magón", Dictionary of Hispanic Biography (1996), Gale, Detroit
- ^ a b Thomas Furlong (1912) Fifty Years a Detective, C.E. Barnett, St. Louis, Missouri
- ISBN 0-534-62158-9
- ^ "Ricardo Flores Magón and the Anarchist Movement in Southern California". KCET. 2014-05-29. Retrieved 2022-10-09.
- ^ "Son of Anarchy" (Dec 2013) Los Angeles magazine
- ^ "Death of Ricardo Flores Magón" (December 1922) Freedom Vol.XXXVI No.402 p.82
- ^ Rivera, Librado (1922-11-25). "Letter to Raúl Palma". Retrieved 2007-11-30.
- ^ "Mexico's Martyr" (December 18, 1922) The Nation Vol.CV No.2998 p 702
- ISBN 978-0151745982
- Z Magazine Online. ZNET. Archived from the originalon 2007-11-09.
- ISSN 1499-7185.
Further reading
- Albro, Ward S. (1992). Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magón and the Mexican Revolution. OCLC 48138594.
- OCLC 17727270.
- Bufe, Chaz; Verter, Mitchell (2005). Dreams of Freedom: A Ricardo Flores Magon Reader. OCLC 255684821.
- Caballero, Raymond (2015). Lynching Pascual Orozco, Mexican Revolutionary Hero and Paradox. OCLC 923831765.
- Lomnitz, Claudio (2014). The Return of Comrade Flores Magon. OCLC 944069920.
- Lucas, Jeffrey Kent (2010). The Rightward Drift of Mexico's Former Revolutionaries: The Case of Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama. OCLC 705889311.
- MacLachlan, Colin (1991). Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magón in the United States. OCLC 489907141.
- Nunes, Américo (2019). Ricardo Flores Magón, une utopie libertaire dans les révolutions du Mexique (in French). OCLC 1193256577.
- Raat, W. Dirk (1981). Revoltosos: Mexico's Rebels in the United States, 1903-1923. OCLC 254394992.
- Sherman, John W. (Summer 1991). "Revolution on Trial: The 1909 Tombstone Proceedings Against Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio Villarreal, and Librado Rivera". Journal of Arizona History. 32 (2). OCLC 5543478852.
External links
- Ricardo Flores Magón entry at the Anarchy Archives
- Complete Works (mostly in Spanish)
- Dreams of Freedom A Ricardo Flores Magón Reader
- Ricardo Flores Magón in English and Spanish
- Death of a Political Prisoner: Revisiting the Case of Ricardo Flores Magón
- Historic Sites of Magón's travels in exile, including addresses in Laredo, San Antonio, Saint Louis, El Paso, Los Angeles, Tucson, Tombstone, and prisons in Yuma, Florence (AZ), McNeil Island (WA), and Leavenworth (KS) (site in progress) Archived 2016-09-10 at the Wayback Machine
- Ricardo Flores Magon at Find a Grave
- Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores de Mexico. Ricardo Flores Magón Documents MSS 582. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego Library.