The task of uniting relations between the peasant movement in Mexico and
the labor movement in the United States with a revolutionary perspectiveat the beginning of the 20th century was very effectively addressed by
the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM) of the Flores Magón brothers. ---- And
haven't anarchists always rejected parties? No, we anarchists have
always fought against the dominating power of the system that subjugates
us, but we have never rejected organizing around a platform, alliance,
junta, party... or whatever name you want to give to an entity that
brings us anarchists together to better consider our strategies in the
mass revolutionary struggle.
As a historical example of our organizational tradition in the
libertarian left, this path was spearheaded by the Flores Magón
brothers, along with hundreds of men and women from Mexico and numerous
networks in the U.S. who would write the most interesting revolutionary
notes on the American continent, preceding revolutions such as the
Soviet, Spartacist, and Spanish Social Revolutions.
Ideological background and the creation of a unitary and strategic
program of the PLM
On September 28, 1905, in St. Louis, Missouri, the Organizing Board of
the Mexican Liberal Party was founded with the goal of uniting the
opposition forces against the Porfirian dictatorship in Mexico. Its
roots date back to the late 19th century in the Mexican liberal
tradition, which had been involved in student and social struggles
against the reelection of dictator Porfirio Díaz. The brothers Ricardo
and Enrique Flores Magón, in this liberal tradition, had already come
into contact with the anarchist communist ideas of Piotr Kropotkin and
Errico Malatesta, and had founded the newspaper Regeneración in 1900,
which led to their temporary imprisonment.
In 1901, the First Congress of Liberal Clubs took place in the Mexican
city of San Luis de Potosí, from which a primitive confederation was
born. It was harshly repressed by the dictatorial government of Porfirio
Díaz, and many of its members were imprisoned. In addition, the
newspaper Regeneración was suppressed. These radicalized liberal
circles, with postulates by the Magón brothers close to organized
communist anarchism, continued to be repressed the following year,
forcing their exile to Laredo, Texas, on the other side of the Mexican
border. Meanwhile, a group of liberals led by Camilo Arriaga went into
exile in San Antonio, also in Texas. During the last decade of the 19th
century, he had led social and anti-clerical mobilizations and had
spread European socialist and anarchist ideas among the Mexican working
class, but he ended up disagreeing with the Flores Magón brothers when
they proposed putting those ideas into practice. The Arriaga group was
repressed in Texas by the Porfirian police, along with US repressive
forces, while the Magón brothers' group marched further north to the
city of St. Louis, Missouri, where the Mexican Liberal Party was finally
founded.
For almost a year, throughout 1905, they held in-depth discussions about
the Mexican political, economic, and social situation, which was equally
connected to the working-class reality in the United States, as class
oppression was common on both sides of the border, although the main
objective was to overthrow the Porfirian dictatorship. The program was
drawn up at the call of the PLM Organizing Board through Regeneración.
Militants submitted their proposals by mail, and in April 1906, a draft
program was submitted for evaluation. Finally, on July 1, 1906, a
political program was presented with revolutionary proposals for that
time period, particularly such as the abolition of reelection and the
death penalty for all prisoners, free and secular education, the
establishment of a minimum wage, the prohibition of child labor, the
expropriation of large estates, and the reduction of working hours.
It was presented through the newspaper Regeneración, which had a
circulation of 250,000 copies, and was also reproduced in half a million
leaflets distributed in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and some
Latin American countries. This program brought together hundreds of
liberal organizations and, primarily, workers against the dictatorship
of Porfirio Díaz. This PLM program included political, social, labor,
and economic objectives, with a revolutionary strategic purpose, linking
minimal agreements with a complete subversion of the system of
domination. Likewise, years later, Flores Magón himself recognized that
this program included clearly reformist points to attract the
organization and the struggle to the mass movement. Considered a first
step toward social revolution, it was expressed much more clearly in the
Manifesto of September 23, 1911, with an openly anti-capitalist and
anarchist socialist stance that would bring forth the slogan "Land and
Liberty."
Miners' strike and uprising in Cananea and textile workers' struggle in
Río Blanco
Before the Mexican Revolution of 1910, this program was practically
reflected in the strikes and insurrections of the preceding years.
Without this accumulation of social strength and experiences of revolt,
the initiation of the subsequent revolutionary process and its
realization in the Zapatista-Magonist alliance with a transformative
plan from the ground up would not have been possible. Due to the
clandestine organization of the Mexican Liberal Party, it was present in
numerous cities and strategic points in the struggle against the
Porfiriato, having to defend itself from brutal persecution. Several
uprisings against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, in power since
1876, were intensified. He had implemented the economic policies of
capitalism in late 19th-century Mexico, deepening social inequalities.
The political positions of the PLM directly influenced the outbreak of
the Cananea miners' strike in June 1906, a multi-day labor uprising
against the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company, owned by businessman
and American colonel William C. Greene. This strike was organized by
Mexican workers fighting against labor exploitation and the misery to
which they were subjected. The Porfirian rural police repressed the
miners with the support of Arizona State Rangers sent at the request of
the American consul to defend their capitalist interests. Thousands of
workers rose up in insurrection, while twenty-three workers were killed
and another twenty-two wounded. Despite the repression, this Cananea
Strike demonstrated that the Mexican working class was accumulating a
capacity for self-organization in defense of its interests. Dozens of
workers were arrested, including three workers who had led the strike,
who were sent to the San Juan de Ulúa political prison. These workers
had been in contact for months with PLM militants who, together with the
workers, had founded a weekly newspaper called "Centenario." As soon as
the Magonistas were detected by mine guards, they had to disappear.
However, a secret liberal club had already been established that would
fuel the strike and the subsequent unrest.
That summer, the PLM organized a widespread rebellion in Mexico
scheduled for September 1906, coinciding with Independence Day
(September 16). It would involve some fifty well-armed guerrilla groups.
They would take up arms in various parts of Mexico's interior, including
Yaqui rebels, an indigenous community in Sonora, while other groups
supported by the United States would take over the main customs cities
and consolidate arms supplies. However, in the first week of September,
many Magonistas were arrested by the US police, their weapons
confiscated, and documents crucial to the rebellion were discovered.
The planned rebellion had been dismantled, but an uprising still
occurred on September 26, primarily in various municipalities in the
state of Coahuila, but was suppressed by federal forces. On September
30, 1906, the rebellion broke out in Acayucan, Minatitlán, and Puerto
México, all in the state of Veracruz. The rebellion was led by Hilario
C. Salas and Cándido Donato Padua, with a total of 1,000 Magonista
rebels supported by Indigenous and peasant groups. The clashes with the
federal army lasted four full days. Many rebels died, others were
imprisoned in political prisons, and others fled to the mountainous area
to reorganize guerrilla groups that fought until 1911. Many of the
Indigenous people captured by federal forces were deported to Valle
Nacional, a tobacco-growing region in the mountains of northwestern
Oaxaca, where they were enslaved by landowners.
In mid-October 1906, a third insurrection attempt was defeated in
Camargo, Tamaulipas. Just three days later, a group in El Paso, led by
Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio Villarreal, and Juan Sarabia, staged an
incursion into Ciudad Juárez. They were detained by federal soldiers
upon crossing the border, as the infiltrated Porfirian police already
knew about the plan. The remaining rebels were detained in the US border
city by immigration agents and Pinkerton detectives, with only Ricardo
Flores and Modesto Díaz managing to escape.
However, these insurrectionary attempts were not disconnected from the
social and political reality and the increasingly growing climate of
opposition to the Porfiriato. And in January 1907, a new strike by the
Mexican labor movement broke out at the huarache (a Mexican sandal
linguistically derived from the Purépecha language) factory in Río
Blanco, Veracruz. This was one of the largest factories and a flagship
of the Porfiriato, although it also spread to factories in the
municipalities of Nogales and Santa Rosa. In 1905, the Mutual Savings
Society had been founded, with many workers enrolled and organized
around mutual aid and the demand for better working conditions. But in
April 1906, the Great Circle of Free Workers had been formed, promoted
by two militant workers of the Magonista PLM. Its statutes were kept
clandestine due to Porfirian repression, and it had direct relations
with the Revolutionary Board, which by then had already been established
in St. Louis, Missouri.
Following a December strike in response to an increase in labor unrest,
the return to work after the New Year came amid Porfirian repression of
freedom of association and the press. Thousands of workers and their
families gathered in Río Blanco and demanded from the company's grocery
store that they be given enough corn and beans until they received their
wages. When the storekeeper, who was protected by the factory owners,
refused, it was a woman named Margarita Martínez who encouraged the
townspeople to seize the denied supplies by force. After looting the
store, the factory was set on fire, but the strikers were unaware that
battalions of soldiers were stationed outside the town. Commanded by
General Rosalio Martínez, the Undersecretary of War, these soldiers
entered the town, firing at point-blank range into the crowd without any
resistance, leaving hundreds dead, including women, children, and men.
Networks and resistance in the growth of PLM. Women's struggle within
the organization
We are exclusively reviewing the relevance of the Mexican Liberal Party
prior to the Mexican Revolution, because that episode merits a separate
analysis due to the radicalization of events, the anarchist communes
that were declared, and the intertwined political relations with
Zapatismo in southern Mexico. All of these previous insurrections are
connected to the PLM program published in 1906. That is, the numerous
liberal clubs that emerged in many Mexican cities conveyed the political
principles of this program, and coordinated worker and peasant
self-organization.
However, they faced an implacable dictatorship like the Porfiriato,
allied with the bourgeoisie and international capitalist clientelism,
but above all, with the insertion of the incipient US imperialism, which
had been practicing this exploitation in Mexico with an expansive and
neocolonial character. That is why the insurrectionary attempts and
strikes in the first decade of the 20th century, behind which the PLM
was always present, were completely connected to mass movements. They
were not individualized attempts, nor devoid of a social and political
organization behind them that connected with the demands of workers and
peasants, and this is one of the main keys to understanding why they
occurred and how they combined to make a Revolution possible a few years
later. Insurrectionary strikes are necessary in the libertarian
socialist struggle, but they must be part of a strategic whole and must
not turn their backs on the working class, of which the Magonistas, as
workers and militants, were completely integrated.
This anarchist movement in Mexico, led by the PLM to fight against the
Porfiriato and capitalism, was not possible without first achieving a
high degree of transnational networking-that is, an anarchism without
borders. The press, the propaganda, the international solidarity
sustained by hundreds of men and women. The fact is that official
history, but also the lack of memorializing will among our ranks of the
libertarian left, has not sufficiently valued and analyzed the political
impact of the networks of women involved in this PLM network.
Clandestinity also does not help to uncover facts or information.
Unfortunately, our red and black threads in history become invisible due
to the sheer survival of the movement, but they are woven by women and
dissidents. Their work was particularly notable in keeping the
revolutionary project alive, even in times of greatest repression.
The women of the PLM played key roles in the organization and
dissemination of anarchist ideology. María Talavera Broussé, for
example, acted as a liaison between political prisoners and freed
militants, conveying messages that helped coordinate rebellions such as
those in Cananea and Río Blanco. Furthermore, this work was not limited
to Mexico, as she established links with American labor organizations
such as the IWW. Likewise, and in particular, María Talavera
collaborated with Emma Goldman and Voltairine de Cleyre, who supported
the Mexican struggle through the political magazine "Mother Earth."
Other women, such as Francisca J. Mendoza and Lucía Norman, were
responsible for the writing and distribution of Regeneración. The former
came from a working-class family and brought a militant perspective that
connected the anti-capitalist struggle and women's emancipation. Indeed,
her editorial work allowed the anarchist message to reach peasant and
working-class communities on both sides of the border. Collaborations
with American magazines such as "The Border," financed by socialist
Elizabeth Trowbridge, allowed the Mexican movement to receive financial
and logistical support from other anarchist networks in the United
States and even Europe. Emma Goldman called for solidarity with the
Magónists and succeeded in getting anarchists from New York to Barcelona
to support the legal defense of Ricardo Flores Magón and other prisoners.
Beyond the press, Magonista women spread the anarchist ideal by
organizing literary evenings, plays, and rallies, where they welcomed
new sympathizers and future militants into the organizational network.
Others, such as Dolores Jiménez Muro, participated in drafting the PLM's
program and was a supporter of Magonista, later appearing in the famous
photograph of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa in the presidential
chair. Women were involved in a cultural and ideological struggle
without which the growth of the PLM could not have occurred. These
networks, led by these women, were essential in maintaining the cohesion
of the anarchist movement in exile and under repression, participating,
of course, in the arms smuggling necessary for the struggle. Similarly,
explicit mention should be made of the indigenous communities that
allied themselves with Magonista, such as the Yaquis, or Magonista
militants who were from indigenous Mexican communities. And the
political program of 1906 in its point 50 included the following mention:
"Upon the victory of the Liberal Party, the assets of officials enriched
by the current dictatorship will be confiscated, and the proceeds will
be used to fulfill the land chapter, especially to restore the Yaquis,
Mayas, and other tribes, communities, or individuals to the lands they
were dispossessed of, and to pay off the national debt."
All these hundreds of networks and thousands of members of the dominated
class united in the struggle for total emancipation. That was their
goal, and that's why they organized around the Mexican Liberal Party,
one of the most interesting precursors to the platform. It's a valuable
example in our anarchist history of the need for a strong organization
with well-established networks and a clear program integrated into the
demands of the working class and with a clear revolutionary intention.
While anarchism was born in 19th-century Europe from class struggle
movements, its development, revisions, and improvements in other
latitudes have only served to magnify its past and provide us with new
tools for combat.
Forever land and freedom, may it not be diluted in the night of dark times.
Ángel Malatesta, member of Liza, Anarchist Platform.
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2025/10/17/el-partido-liberal-mexicano-y-el-magonismo-revolucionario/
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