#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #MEXICO #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Mexico, FAM-IFA - Regeneración #8: Centenary of the murder of Ricardo Flores Magón (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The history of anarchism abounds with people who devoted themselves to ideas

until the last minute of their lives and whose ethics towards anarchism were
implacable at all times, even on the verge of death. ---- Next to the heroic acts
of a Bakunin chained to the wall for ten years, of a Kropotkin, Malatesta,
Salvochea abandoning their fortunes, of a Durruti dying on the Madrid front, of a
Radowitzky giving up his youth to avenge to the working class, there is a
pedestal that is rarely seen, but whose location is next to those mentioned
above. Among the greats of world anarchism. ---- That pedestal belongs to a
Mexican anarchist, Ricardo Flores Magón. ---- Of the Mexican anarchism of the
years from 1900 to 1922, the year of Ricardo's assassination, no one is more
active, more energetic, more risky and with firmer ideas than Ricardo. It is true
that at that time there were the Librado Riveras, who would live a few years
longer than Ricardo, the Práxedis, who died so prematurely in 1910, but Ricardo
deserves the credit for taking his convictions to the final consequences.

Arrested for the first time in 1892 in a student demonstration, he gave life to
the legendary Regeneración newspaper in 1900, and in 1901 he participated in the
San Luis Potosí Congress, where Camilo Arriaga brought him closer to the
anarchist ideas of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin. , Malatesta, Mella, Lorenzo,
etc., Kropotkin's ideas being the ones that most penetrate Ricardo's thought,
pure passion and conviction.

By 1902 Ricardo was already having serious discussions within the Mexican Liberal
Party for his anarchist convictions that contrasted with the liberal ideas of
some components of the PLM. Those who have read the first PLM Manifesto of 1906
will wonder how could Ricardo be an anarchist and at the same time subscribe to
the 1906 Manifesto of purely liberal and non-anarchist extraction?

This issue, which the enemies of anarchism like to use as a weapon, ready to take
Ricardo's image to legitimize their governmental institutions, can be easily
clarified if the letters written in June 1908 to his brother Enrique and to
Práxedis are consulted, where he indicates that we must continue calling
ourselves liberals and not anarchists, since declaring such advanced ideas could
alienate them from the Mexican people. Strategy, nothing more than that. Strategy
to gradually introduce anarchist ideas.

"Magonism", if such a thing is assimilable since Ricardo denied it, can not be
anything other than anarchism sui generis. Pretending that magonismo is a
separate idea from anarchism is either ignoring the history of whom they claim,
or blatantly distorting the history of PLM. People who intend to vindicate
Ricardo's memory by appealing to the recognition of the Mexican government,
considering it a tribute that his name is in gold letters in the Legislative
Palace (1), or the ultimate shame of being proud that AMLO declares the "2022
Year of Ricardo Flores Magón" (2), is not in any way to vindicate Ricardo, but to
throw shovelfuls of mud to the memory of who all his life spat on governments and
refused all ties with them.

The governments that Ricardo fought all his life, the political class that he
always detested above all things, can raise their arms to pay tribute to those
who considered them their enemies, because with this, far from vindicating
Ricardo's anarchism, it does not become more to stain his memory of a
governmentism that he always denied.

1906 (3) and 1907 (4), whose movements marked the clearest antecedents of the
Mexican revolution, are of anarchist inspiration and organization (already in
forced exile of these before the persecution of the Mexican government). Official
history has tried to make the bourgeois landowner Francisco I. Madero the
architect of a peasant and proletarian revolution, when he was neither a peasant
nor a proletarian.

This site corresponds to the anarchists, true architects of the Mexican
revolution. Those who, persecuted, harassed and imprisoned, knew how to raise the
flag of the social revolution in times when the bourgeoisie like Madero sought
the presidency through bourgeois legal channels.

When the revolution broke out in 1910, Ricardo had just been released from jail a
few days. He calls Regeneration readers to take up arms taking advantage of
Madero's uprising, without joining him.

Madero, an opportunist like all politicians, deceived the popular masses by
saying that Ricardo agreed with him. Many comrades, in the whirlwind of the
revolution, did not know how to see Madero's trap and joined him. Ricardo had to
come forward writing in Regeneration the physiognomy of Francisco I. Madero (5),
warning the PLM militants not to be fooled.

Northern Mexico will witness quite strong anarchist movements and even carrying
out anarchist communes about which unfortunately very little is known beyond
general details.

In 1911 the PLM, already openly anarchist, launched the second PLM Manifesto,
where they openly proclaimed their anarchist affiliation. This manifesto is the
one that the Mexican bourgeois democ-rats do not even dare to pronounce, since
here the PLM is already openly anarchist.

Gone were the years of prudence, of the tactic chosen to introduce anarchist
ideas little by little. The Manifesto of September 23, 1911 constitutes a
complete declaration of anarchist principles and tactics.

In 1912, the Casa del Obrero Mundial was established in Mexico City, which
despite being recognized by Ricardo by its members, did not fully vindicate it to
take care of its integrity, which was just being forged. The thing is not
understood from the anarchist point of view, but if we understand that the COM
was neither an anarchist nor an anarcho-syndicalist, then it will be clear that
their actions were logical, when they did not claim to be anarchists.

Ricardo, for his part, did take the COM into account and during 1915, during the
pacts with Carranza, he called on the COM union base not to be led into pacts
with the Carrancistas.

The firm ideological lack of the COM, added to certain deceptions to not consult
the entire base to sign the pact, make the COM a reformist union in these years.
Certainly, when the Red Battalions returned to Mexico City, the COM militants
began to take, now, some anarcho-syndicalist actions and demands that would make
them raise a strong fight against the Mexican government from the beginning of
1916 until the strike movement of July 1916, to go through stages of harsh
repression and raise their heads little by little, more and more red and black,
until the constitution of the Mexican CGT, of extraction, now yes, fully
anarcho-syndicalist (6).

During 1918 Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado Rivera launch a Manifesto to the
anarchists of the world, for which they will be locked up again in the United
States, a prison from which Ricardo will no longer leave alive.

On November 21, 1922, at dawn, Ricardo is assassinated. It must be said clearly,
because a hundred years later it is still insinuated that Ricardo died of a
cardiac arrest or at most saying that his death "is not entirely clear."

The medical report indicates that Ricardo died of a heart attack, but the truth
must make its way definitively and avoid washing the face of American democracy.
Richard was killed. Here are the facts.

The last weeks of October and part of November Ricardo is offered his freedom on
the condition that he asks the government for forgiveness. Ricardo, our dear
companion Ricardo, categorically refused to ask for forgiveness, because that
meant abdicating his anarchist ideas. He was practically blind, with lung and
heart problems, without a good diet, living in infected prisons where his health
was even more broken... but he did not ask for forgiveness. Faced with the
dilemma, he preferred death rather than abdicating his anarchist ideas.

On November 21, a notorious support jailer John Bull, known for his mistreatment
of prisoners, entered his cell. This jailer will become famous because he
murdered Ricardo by hanging him. Librado Rivera, despite statements that forced
him to sign, would declare to colleagues that Ricardo had prints on his neck.

John Bull had murdered him.

During his stay in prison Ricardo had become friends with a prisoner named José
Martínez. When Ricardo is assassinated, José Martínez sharpens the edge of a
tambo, which he shapes into a razor.

He looks for John Bull and buries the weapon he had prepared for him. John Bull,
hated by the prisoners, falls to the ground as his intestines spill out and the
prisoners scream, spit on the jailer and dance around him.

The other jailers soon appear and beat José Martínez to death.

Ricardo was murdered, and he had an avenger. José Martínez, Ricardo's friend in
prison, did the justice that Ricardo needed.

When the bourgeois democrats come to mention Ricardo's death, they only say the
official version of his death from cardiac arrest. He left here consigned for
present generations the version that governments have hidden up to this day.

Journalist by profession, persecuted, exiled, harassed, convicted several times,
imprisoned in filthy places, assassinated by the US government, his memory
distorted; all passion, all dedication, anarchist clinging to the prison gates
and before the scythe of death, author of plays, countless theoretical articles,
denunciations and stories, his memory does not belong to the official history of
Mexico, but rather to the anarchists of Mexico and the world. His tomb is
currently located in the so-called Rotunda of illustrious men, in Mexico City.
Illustrious, perhaps, but not in the vulgar and bourgeois sense of the word.

Illustrious, yes, for devoting his entire life not to the cause of the country,
the nation or any government, but to the cause of anarchism.

In the memorial of anarchism, and not of the Legislative Palace of Mexico, there
is a name written, not with gold letters, but with flaming letters, full of
passion and a lifetime dedicated to anarchism: Ricardo Flores Magón.

Erick Benitez Martinez. October 2022, a rebel and anarchist year dedicated to
Ricardo Flores Magón throughout Mexico.

Notes:

1.- DOF of April 27, 2000.

2.- DOF of March 18, 2022.

3.- Cananea strike.

4.- Río Blanco strike.

5.- Francisco I. Madero is a traitor to the cause of freedom. Ricardo Flores
Magón, Regeneration, February 25, 1911.

6.- The length of this article prevents me from going further on this period. The
reader will be able to excuse me for this.

  http://www.federacionanarquistademexico.org
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