#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #MEXICO #ANARCHISM #LIBRARY #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Mexico, FAM-IFA - Regeneración #8: A LIFETIME OF STRUGGLE - TO THE MEMORY OF LIBRADO RIVERA (1864 - 1932) (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 There are characters in the history of humanity who live their lives with such

consistency with their ideas, that their passage through existence is written
with letters indestructible by time, based on an indelible ink, proof of
historical oblivion. One of these characters is our dear companion Librado
Rivera. Born in Rayón, San Luis Potosí on August 17, 1864, he graduated from the
Normal School for teachers of San Luis Potosí; he is a teacher by profession,
anarchist and revolutionary by conviction. ---- In 1901, as a member of the
"Benito Juárez" liberal club of San Luis Potosí, of which he has been a member
since the previous year, he attended the first liberal congress, organized by the
"Ponciano Arriaga" liberal club in the same city of San Luis Potosí. In this
congress he will meet Ricardo Flores Magón, beginning a friendship that, fueled
by ideological affinity and the fight against tyranny, will last until Ricardo's
death, assassinated at the hands of the United States government in 1921.

On the eve of the second liberal congress, in 1902, Librado was arrested and
imprisoned for the first time along with thirteen more liberals, including Juan
Sarabia and Camilo Arriaga, in the middle of a session of the liberal club to
which they belonged. Librado will spend about twelve months in jail, upon being
released he will move to Mexico City, where he becomes part of the editorial
staff of the newspaper "El hijo del Ahuizote", in the company of Ricardo and
Jesús Flores Magón. The Porfirian repression against the Liberals and their
newspapers is so great that Librado and his companions from the "Hijo del
Ahuizote" end up in prison; This being the first of many more stays in prison
that Librado Rivera and Ricardo Flores Magón spent together.

By 1904, given the circumstances of total censorship and repression of the
regime, the liberals of the group of the Flores Magón brothers, including
Librado, found it necessary, in order to continue the fight against the
dictatorship, to emigrate to the United States, but as the money the group has is
not enough for everyone to go to the United States at once, Librado tells
Ricardo, referring to Santiago de la Hoz (who was only 21 years old at the time).
"This is an enthusiastic young man, I give him my place, after all I'll leave
later", showing the great character he had. A year later, in 1905, he joined them
in Saint Louis Missouri; where the creation of the Organizing Board of the
Mexican Liberal Party (JOPLM) takes place,

It was the Organizing Board of the Mexican Liberal Party, of which Librado was a
part, that gave direction and theoretically nurtured the armed uprisings of 1906
and 1908, as a prelude to the 1910 revolution and led the workers' struggles in
Cananea, Rio Blanco, Orizaba and Puebla. The JOPLM did not stop with the
propaganda and the revolutionary organization through liberal clubs, many times
organized in a secret way and through newspapers; not only feedbackIn 1910,
before and at the time of the revolutionary uprising, the JOPLM had at least
seven newspapers, in several of which Librado's pen contributed. Released from
the Arizona prison in August 1910, Librado Rivera, along with Ricardo Flores
Mangón and Antonio I. Villarreal traveled to Los Angeles, California, to
republish Regeneración . By the end of September 1910 in the pages of
Regeneration you can read: "Earth, Bakunin shouted; Earth, shouted Ferrer; Earth,
shout the Mexican revolution... Land and freedom! Librado and his companions are
bringing the people closer to the anarchist aspirations that they professed.
Unfortunately, by December 1910, JOPLM and Mexican anarchism suffered the loss of
Práxedis G. Guerrero, killed in combat in Janos, Chihuahua. On September 23,
1911, a manifesto signed by Librado Rivera, Anselmo L. Figueroa and the brothers
Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón was launched, where they made their
anarcho-communist aspirations clear to the people. The period between 1911-1916
was an arduous pilgrimage from prison to the streets, to release new issues of
Regeneration, and back to prison. But without giving up for a single moment.

In August 1918 Librado Rivera and Ricardo Flores Magón were sentenced, Librado to
fifteen years and Ricardo to twenty years in prison for the publication, in the
latest issue of Regeneración , of their manifesto to anarchists and workers of
the world , where you can read: "That every man and every woman who loves the
anarchist ideal, propagate it tenaciously, stubbornly, without appreciation for
mockery, without measuring dangers, without paying attention to the consequences
." This will be the last sentence that Librado will spend with his dear friend
and partner Ricardo Flores Magón, since Ricardo will not leave the Leavenworth,
Arkansas jail alive. Murdered at the hands of a prison jailer.

After 18 years of exile, 11 and a half years of them spent in US prisons. At the
end of October 1923, Librado returned to Mexico. Without money, with his health
ruined by so many years in prison, without his PLM companions; many dead, others
imprisoned and some other traitors to the cause of freedom for the Mexican
people. But with the same desire and the same ideas about a just and egalitarian
society. He expresses: "It would be unfortunate to spend the little life that I
have left in contemplations and lamentations." In his head there is only room for
one thing: to continue the social war. For consistency with his anarchist ideals,
he rejects the attempts of the Mexican government, first to give him a pension of
5 pesos a day, then to pay for the transportation expenses from the prison to the
part of Mexico that he decides. and in the end a seat as a senator or a chair in
the Normal School for teachers, to these proposals he responded firmly: "I don't
want anything from the State... The idea of abandoning the fight undertaken for
so many years in favor of the poor is far from my mind ". Reaffirming his beloved
anarchist ideals.

After a few months at his elderly mother's house, where he recovered a bit of his
health, full of enthusiasm for the talks he had with Jose C. Valadés, a CGT union
leader, he left for the port of Tampico. That at that time he is a point of force
for anarcho-syndicalism, with an oil union that has close to twelve thousand
adherents, with a strong and courageous anarchist element. Immediately after his
arrival at the port of Tampico, he joined the anarchist group " Los hermanos
rojos" , and began to write in their newspaper " Sagitario", wrote the book "Los
martires de Texas",where he advocates for the freedom of the Magonista compañeros
still imprisoned in the United States, he campaigns enormously for the freedom of
Sacco and Vanzetti, at the same time that he tirelessly spreads the thought of
his beloved compañeros Ricardo Flores Mangón and Práxedes G: Guerrero. After the
censorship of " Sagitario ", he collaborates in " Cultura proletaria " in New
York, from jail, if he goes to jail again!, now in Mexico, in that Mexico that
boasted of being the new country thanks to the revolution , accused of insulting
the president!, making a public apology for anarchism and inciting the people to
anarchy. In November 1927 Librado founded a new newspaper, baptized " Avante",
continuing with his propagandist work for anarchism and denouncing the abuses and
injustices, Librado is arrested again, the printing press where he makes " Avante
" is confiscated and he is taken to Mexico City against his will. Once he is
released from jail, continues the fight creating a new newspaper, called " Paso!" .

This stubbornness, this tireless activity, is understood and justified, I
believe, in the words of Ethel Duffy Turner that: "When men express the
aspirations of their people, they arise and rise to great heights."

During the last two years of his life, Librado lives in a small room that Nicolás
T. Bernal has in his house. In February 1932, Librado is run over, and due to the
negligence of his doctors, he contracted tetanus in the hospital. He refuses to
make charges against the driver who ran over him since he "did not want to harm a
worker who is the head of the family". In his last days of semi-consciousness, in
his hospital room, he made weak movements with his hand when he covered his face
with a sheet to prevent flies from bothering him. The nurse who was near his
bedside told him "how rebellious you still are, comrade!" to which Librado
responded by stammering: "I always fought and still fight against the social
injustices of the strong." Shortly after he died. The members of the Federation
of Workers (the last redoubt of Mexican anarcho-syndicalism) took his body to a
municipal cemetery where not even a tombstone was placed to mark his grave (James
D. Cockcroft).

Librado Rivera left us alive, but like Ricardo Flores Magón, he has left us his
thought and his example of life committed to the fight for the freedom of the
people. Let us recover his tomb, may it be filled with red roses and black flags,
may his long struggle for the emancipation of the working people serve to widen
the path of freedom where we will continue his path in building a new world. For
Librado Rivera, for Librado the anarchist, for our partner and our beloved ideas,
not a minute of silence. A lifetime of struggle for anarchy!

Francisco Castañeda Mtz.

Melchor Ocampo, State of Mexico.

October 2022.

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