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Title: Magonismo: An Overview Author: Chuck Morse Date: 2004 Language: en Topics: magonismo, book review Source: Retrieved on September 15, 2015 from https://web.archive.org/web/20150915062338/http://www.newformulation.org/4Morse.htm Notes: Published in New Formulation, Vol. 2, No. 2.
Ricardo Flores MagĂłn is one of the most important anarchists in the
history of the Americas. The movement he led and inspired shook the
Mexican state in the early 20^(th) century and helped lay the
foundations for the Mexican revolution of 1910. He was also a
participant in radical movements in the United States and a security
concern that reached the highest levels of the U.S. government.
The literature on MagĂłn and the Magonists (as his comrades were known)
has expanded considerably in recent decades and it is now possible to
develop a fuller appreciation of the movement than at any previous time.
One can explore the personal dilemmas of MagĂłn and his co-conspirators
through various scholarly biographies, read about the Magonists’ impact
on specific regions of the United States and Mexico, or study Magonist
contributions to Mexican radicalism generally.[1]
Anarchists should welcome this not only because our predecessors are
finally receiving the historical recognition that they deserve but also
because we now have the resources necessary to undertake a deep
confrontation with the Magonist legacy. It is now possible to develop a
very clear idea of how the Magonists tried to create an anarchist
revolution, the consequences their activity yielded, as well as
determine whether there are aspects of their activity that we should
emulate today.
The books reviewed here are particularly useful. El magonismo: historia
de una pasión libertaria, 1900–1922 (Magonism: History of a Libertarian
Passion, 1900–1922) by Salvador Hernández Padilla studies the entire
history of Magonism from its emergence at the turn of the century to its
disappearance from the political scene in the 1920s. El fenĂłmeno
magonista en México y en Estados Unidos 1905–1908 (The Magonist
Phenomenon in Mexico and the United Status, 1905–1908) by Ricardo
Cuauhtémoc Esparza Valdivia examines Magonist activity in Mexico and the
United States in the years indicated by the title.
Together these works offer a comprehensive picture of the Magonist
experience. They reveal a deeply radical social movement that nearly
toppled the regime of Porifirio DĂaz, the dictator who governed Mexico
from 1884 until the 1910 Mexican Revolution. But they also reveal a
movement that was beset by intractable problems in both conception and
organization.
The Magonist revolutionary challenge can be divided into three
categories: the years prior to 1906 (when the movement was taking
shape), the uprisings of 1906 and 1908 (the movement’s highpoint), and
the period from 1911 to Magón’s death in 1922 (the years of decline).
In the years prior to 1906, which are treated by both Esparza Valdivia
and Hernández Padilla, the Magonists were little more than a minor
irritant for the Mexican government and did not yet possess a coherent
revolutionary strategy. However, three transformations occurred that
would later have great significance. First, MagĂłn grew from a reformist
radical into a revolutionary, thanks to his exposure to anarchist ideas
(and the political persecution he suffered).[2] Second, MagĂłn left
Mexico for the United States and established himself in the country that
would be the Magonist movement’s base and his home for the remainder of
his life. And, finally, the Magonists’ central organizational vehicle,
the Partido Liberal de Mexico (Liberal Party of Mexico, PLM) was founded
in September 5^(th), 1905 in St. Louis, Missouri.
It is from 1906 to 1908 that the Magonists acquired their fullest
expression as a revolutionary movement. The Magonists, who were the most
active opposition to the DĂaz regime at the time, participated in
strikes, launched militant uprisings, and tirelessly propagated their
views. These years are the central concern of Hernández Padilla’s
Magonismo and essentially the sole focus of Esparza Valdivia’s Fenómeno
Magonista: the main difference between the two being that Hernández
Padilla’s broader perspective allows him to place this period in the
context of Magonism’s development as a whole whereas Esparza Valdivia
compensates for his more limited purview with greater detail and more
nuanced political commentary.
The Magonists were unambiguously revolutionary during these years,
although the nature of their revolution was unclear and shaped by deeply
contradictory aspirations. On the one hand, their goals were defined in
the PLM’s famous 1906 Program, which was essentially a social democratic
document. The Program, which is reprinted in Hernández’s Magonismo,
called for constitutional reforms, such as the reduction of the
president’s term to four years and the elimination of military tribunals
during peace time, and made various demands relating to the relationship
between capital and labor, such as the eight hour day and the minimum
wage, etc. This was certainly not an anarchist program. As Esparza
Valdivia states, “one of the most important aspects of this program lay
in the creation of a state with a social consciousness, that would
intervene to improve the conditions of the worker…so that workers and
peasants can enjoy their constitutional rights.”[3]
The Magonist movement’s social democratic aims were further articulated
in a letter sent to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt by MagĂłn and his
comrade Antonio Villarreal. “At the triumph of the revolution,” they
wrote, “the Junta [of the Liberal Party] will provisionally take over
the government, and call the people to elections. The people will elect
new leaders, and the citizens favored by the public vote will of course
take possession of their charges, while the Junta will dissolve itself.
The new government will have the obligation to carry out the program of
the Liberal Party, which is precisely the object of the revolution.”[4]
On the other hand, Magón’s anarchism was maturing during this period and
became an increasingly significant influence on PLM activity (although
he did not publicly state his anarchist convictions until years later).
He explained the rationale behind such concealment in a 1908 letter to
his brother Enrique and Práxedis Guerrero (both of whom were active
Magonists). He wrote:
“In order to obtain great benefits for the people, effective benefits,
to work as anarchists would easily crush us...all is reduced to a
conception of mere tactics. If from the first we had called ourselves
anarchists no one, or not but a few, would have listened to us. Without
calling ourselves anarchists we have gone on planting in mind ideas of
hatred against the possessing class and against the governmental
caste…this has been achieved without saying that we are anarchists…all,
then, is a question of tactics.
We must give land to the people in the course of the revolution; so that
the poor will not be deceived…in order not to turn the entire nation
against us, we must follow the same tactics that we have practiced with
such success: we will continue calling ourselves liberals in the course
of the revolution but in reality we will be propagating anarchy and
executing anarchistic acts.
Only the anarchists will know that we are anarchists. And we will advise
them not to call us anarchists in order not to scare such imbeciles that
in the depths of their consciousness harbor ideas like ours, but without
knowing that they are anarchist ideals, therefore they are accustomed to
hear talk about the anarchists in unfavorable terms.”[5]
Esparza Valdivia explains this contradictory approach by stating simply
that “the Magonists took their public discourse from liberalism and
their strategy from anarchism.”[6]
In practice, the PLM tried to link itself to the incipient industrial
workers’ movement by radicalizing and supporting the miners’ strike in
Canenea and also the workers’ rebellion among textile workers in Rio
Blanco (at the beginning and end of 1906, respectively). PLM
participation in both events lacked strongly articulated objectives and
served primarily to make the Mexican government aware that they intended
to become a genuine threat. This was the extent of Magonist engagement
in the labor movement.
It was through the PLM’s military activity that the organization mounted
the most serious challenge and achieved its greatest notoriety. The
Magonists initiated uprising after uprising in a (vain) attempt to spark
a generalized insurgency against the DĂaz regime.
The flurry of uprisings began in the later months of 1906, shortly after
the release of the PLM’s Program. The PLM had divided the Republic into
five zones and structured its army hierarchically around the Junta of
the PLM: in each zone a trusted Magonist served as a delegate to the
Junta, which communicated orders through him to the leaders of regional
guerilla groups who, in turn, commanded various sub leaders. As is
typical of such cellular structures, only MagĂłn and other members of the
Junta knew the names of all combatants and the full scope of the
organization’s activities.
Poor planning, inadequate communication, and the combined efforts of
Mexican and American security forces doomed many of these uprisings to
failure. For example, on September 6^(th) a rebellion was thwarted in
Douglas, Arizona when the Magonists were arrested by the police in the
United States. Another attempted uprising in Cananea was foiled on
September 15^(th) as well as one planned in San Luis PotosĂ. An attempt
to take the city of Juárez on October 21^(st) was also destroyed by
arrests as was another potential uprising in La Perla de la Laguna.
Other PLM campaigns were more successful. For example, on September
26^(th) a group of guerillas successfully seized Jiménez, Coahuila,
although they were scattered quickly due to a surprise attack by 80
Mexican soldiers. Numerous Magonists died in the conflict and others
fled to the U.S. border, where they were apprehended by police from the
United States. On September 30^(th) three hundred Magonists attacked the
town of Acayucan in the southern state of Veracruz. The group’s leader,
Hilario Salas, was injured and his forces dispersed. Two days later the
Magonists repeated the attack and were dispersed once again. On October
4^(th), in the mountain range of Soteapan, approximately 350 largely
indigenous Magonists from the region waged a fierce battle against
federal troops, upon whom they inflicted great losses. They fled into
the forest after the attack and were pursued by troops under the direct
orders of Porfirio DĂaz.
Thus, writes Esparza Valdivia, ended the “first wave of Magonist
attempts to build an insurrection in the country,” which unfolded “while
the Mexican and American government acted more and more jointly to
extinguish a conflict that involved both countries in its connections
and consequences.”[7]
In 1908, after a short period of reflection and reorganization, the
Magonists launched a new insurrectionary wave from the cities of Los
Angeles, El Paso, and Austin.
Although an attack planned for June 23^(rd) in the city of Juárez was
foiled by arrests and three more were thwarted in the state of Sonora,
others were more successful. On June 24^(th) an uprising occurred in
Viesca, Coahuila. Twenty rebels killed the police commander and three of
his staff, attacked the house of the municipal president, took money
found in public offices as well as arms and other items from stores.
After a battle, the guerrillas cut the telegraph line and tore up
railroad tracks while fleeing and, two days later, killed a member of an
advance team sent to search for them. The rebels were defeated only when
confronted by a force of approximately 500 men. Four days later, on June
28^(th), fifty Magonists attacked the town of Las Vacas and a customs
building on the border of Texas and Mexico. The offices of the Mexican
officials and a troop barracks were both set on fire. The Magonists
suffered losses during the ensuing battle. On June 30^(th) Magonists
threw two bombs at an empty customs office in Palomas and, before
fleeing, lost one comrade in the ensuing combat.[8]
In 1911 the Magonists entered a decline that would continue until the
movement was fully extinguished with Magón’s death in 1922. Although
this was a period of eclipse, the Magonists did carry out some important
interventions in the final months of 1910 and the beginning of 1911.
At the end of 1910 a group of Magonists rebelled with Francisco Madero’s
forces, while remaining organizationally separate, in Bachiniva,
Chihuahua. Madero, who assumed the Mexican presidency after the collapse
of the DĂaz regime, was the leader of the moderate, overtly reformist
tendency within the Mexican revolutionary movement. This collaboration
with Madero was soon followed by the crippling defection of numerous
Magonists to Madero’s camp.
However, “in the months of December 1910 and January of 1911, small
nuclei of Magonists continued fighting in an independent form,” notes
Hernández Padilla.”[9] For example, Práxedis Guerrero, one of the most
active and talented Magonists, led an attack upon and captured the town
of Janos, Chihuahua on December 30^(th). He died in this assault (at the
age of 28) and became one of the movement’s martyrs.
The Magonists biggest military campaign unfolded in the first half of
1911. On January 29^(th) a handful of Magonists seized Mexicali in the
state of Baja, California and on May 8^(th) and 9^(th) seized Tijuana.
Magonist forces also occupied San QuintĂn, Santo Tomás, San Elmo and
Santa Catarina in the eastern part of the peninsula. The occupation of
Baja, California descended into a comedy of errors and, in mid June, the
Magonists were defeated by Mexican government troops (now under Madero’s
control). Numerous Magonist soldiers were apprehended and savagely
executed at a “rate of six per day.”[10]
In 1911 the PLM also released its Manifesto, which contained an
explicitly anarchist content and superseded the reformist 1906 Program
as the organization’s main statement of principal. Although this ended
the ideological ambiguity that had haunted the movement for years, its
release coincided with the decline of the Magonist presence in national
affairs and thus produced no great effect. Indeed, while MagĂłn
“continued telling of the existence of groups of PLM guerillas that were
acting in some regions of northern Mexico, concretely in the Sierra de
Burro…. everything seems to indicate…that the guerilla groups had no
real influence.”[11]
Ricardo Flores MagĂłn died in Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1922, at the
age of forty nine, while serving a twenty year sentence for violating
the Espionage Act and various postal regulations. Although some claim
that he was assassinated, evidence seems to suggest that prison
authorities murdered him indirectly by denying him needed medical care
for his diabetes.
The Magonists mounted a formidable challenge to the Mexican state and it
is hard not to be impressed by the quantity and geographic spread of the
uprisings that they launched, the material damage they inflicted upon
the Mexican state, and the sheer numbers of people that they mobilized.
This is especially remarkable when one considers that most of this
unfolded over the course of five short years and was organized from
various cities in the United States. However, MagĂłn clearly failed to
reach his genuine objective (social revolution), his stated objective
(seizure of state power by the Liberal Party), or to build a radical
movement that could survive beyond his death.
Why? In El fenĂłmeno magonista Esparza Valdivia argues the Magonists were
doomed by their inability to appeal to the truly disenfranchised
classes. He notes that while the Magonists tried to agitate and lead the
workers in the principal industries, Magonism only resonated with the
middle classes who were, he asserts, “the principle support of the
Magonist ideal.”[12] Hernández Padilla makes a more specific claim in
Magonismo. He points out that the Liberal Party’s social base was
“comprised of small groups of workers, sectors of the urban middle
class, and some landowners—principally from the northern states—[who
were] discontented with the central government.”[13] And, while the
“program of the Liberal Party included the defense of peasant interests
among its principal demands, in practice the Junta gave priority to the
task of linking itself to, influencing, and organizing the industrial
proletariat” and thus did not make significant gains among peasants
(among whom the Zapatistas, for example, had great support).[14] He
claims that the failure to make the peasantry an organizational focus
became “one of the principle weaknesses of the PLM as an oppositional
organization of the Left…. Without this support, it was less than
impossible to successfully carry out a social revolution in Mexico.”[15]
Both authors also assert that the PLM was debilitated by unresolved
ideological contradictions between the party’s more moderate, reformist
wing and the anarchist wing led by MagĂłn.
Esparza Valdivia and Hernández Padilla’s comments help explain why the
Magonists did not build a more broad-based revolutionary movement.
However, neither author asks what would have happened had the Magonists
actually ignited the generalized uprising that they hoped to set off.
Would they have seized power and called elections, as demanded by their
Program, or would they have abolished the state as demanded by Magón’s
anarchist convictions? The failure to entertain this question suggests
that the authors do not take the PLM’s most ambitious objectives very
seriously. And perhaps rightly so: everything seems to indicate that the
PLM would have been immobilized by the irreconcilable contradictions in
its aims had it genuinely confronted the question of power.
Despite the movement’s failure to reach its most far reaching goals, it
did produce several important secondary consequences. In El fenĂłmeno
magonista, Esparza Valdivia argues that the Magonists bear significant
responsibility for prompting Porfirio DĂaz to give an interview that is
widely seen as a key factor in the eruption of the Mexican revolution.
In this interview, which he conducted with American journalist James
Creelman, DĂaz stated that he supported the emergence of opposition
parties and would not seek reelection. This encouraged the development
of opposition forces that, in the end, he could not contain. Esparza
Valdivia asserts that DĂaz made these statements in an effort to assure
American readers of his democratic credentials and needed to do so
because his repressive campaigns against the Magonists had severely
compromised his image in the United States. If this were the case, one
could justly claim that the Magonists were responsible for the final
collapse of the DĂaz regime, but the argument is not compelling because
it depends upon an assertion about DĂaz’s motives, which are impossible
to ascertain.
The Magonists also constructed a radical legacy that has not only
enriched anarchism but also Mexican national consciousness. Esparza
Valdivia points out that the Magonists radicalized the discourse of the
Mexican Revolution by showing “that it was not enough to conserve the
Constitution of 1857 and the ideas of the Reform, [but] that it was
necessary to take up the social question…This demand, the points that
they stressed to resolve [this question] and the actions that they
carried out in accordance with the anarchist project to make it a
reality, were [their] most important contribution to national
history.”[16] This legacy, Esparza Valdivia continues, was embodied in
the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which was considered the full
realization of the aims of the Mexican Revolution and which took its
most original features and orientation toward the social from the
Program of the Mexican Liberal Party.[17]
I think it is easy to see why the Magonist movement would be attractive
to historians, but what aspects of their activity would contemporary
anarchists want to emulate?
Clearly the movement’s courage, militancy, and insistence upon raising
“the social question” are commendable and should be taken to heart by
activists today. Although such an observation may seem platitudinal, the
importance of such qualities for dissidents cannot be overstated.
However, beyond that, I think there is little in Magon’s politics that
one would want to replicate today. Magón’s ideological duplicity—the
fact that he concealed his anarchism beneath the Liberal banner—was a
form of realpolitik that must be held in contempt by anyone who values
the frank discussion of ideals and convictions. Likewise, the
organizational structure of the Liberal Party was hierarchical and did
not permit internal democracy. Indeed, organizationally, the PLM has
more in common with a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party than the
decentralized forms commonly associated with anarchism. Finally, the
Magonists, like so many anarchists, held the naĂŻve belief that social
discontent merely needed to be sparked in order to erupt into a
revolutionary explosion, and this short-cut to the creation of a
genuinely informed and empowered revolutionary movement is deeply
untenable. Social change is far more complex than that and such a
perspective accords far too much importance to the acts of small groups
and individuals.
Although anarchists should welcome the growing literature on Magonism
and avail ourselves of the opportunity to study the movement deeply, no
towering heroes emerge from the legacy that the Magonists have
bequeathed to us. It is imperative that we explore the contributions of
our predecessors and also imperative that we remember that the
foundations of a truly revolutionary politics for the Americas have yet
to be fashioned.
[1] For example, see Ward S. Albro, To Die on Your Feet: The Life,
Times, and Writings of Praxedis G. Guerrero (Fort Worth, TX: Texas
Christian University Press, 1996), Ward S. Albro, Always a Rebel:
Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican Revolution (Fort Worth, TX: Texas
Christian University Press, 1992), and James A. Sandos, Rebellion in the
Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San Diego, 1904–1923 (Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).
[2] Esparza Valdivia asserts that MagĂłn became an anarchist due to
encounters with anarchists in St. Louis, although he does not
substantiate this claim and it is not supported by other authors. It
appears that Magón’s anarchism developed from his exposure to anarchist
literature that was circulating at the time. Ricardo Cuauhtémoc Esparza
Valdivia, El fenómeno magonista en México y en Estados Unidos 1905–1908
(Zacatecas: Universidad AutĂłnoma de Zacatecas, 2000), 44.
[3] Ibid., 65.
[4] Cited in Salvador Hernández Padilla, El Magonismo: historia de una
pasión libertaria, 1900–1922 (México, DF: Ediciones Era, 1984), 89.
[5] The first two paragraphs are from Ward S. Albro, Always a Rebel:
Ricardo Flores MagĂłn and the Mexican Revolution (Fort Worth, Texas:
Christian University Press, 1992). The final paragraph is from Jacinto
Barrera Basols, Correspondencia 2: 1919–1922 (México, DF: Fondo
Editorial Tierra Adentro, 2000), 468.
[6] Esparza Valdivia, El fenĂłmeno magonista en MĂ©xico y en Estados
Unidos 1905–1908, 182.
[7] Ibid., 75.
[8] Ibid., 158.
[9] Hernández Padilla, El magonismo: historia de una pasión libertaria,
1900–1922, 137.
[10] Ibid., 163.
[11] Ibid., 195.
[12] Esparza Valdivia, El fenĂłmeno magonista en MĂ©xico y en Estados
Unidos 1905–1908, 180.
[13] Hernández Padilla, El magonismo: historia de una pasión libertaria,
1900–1922, 167.
[14] Ibid., 167.
[15] Ibid., 168.
[16] Esparza Valdivia, El fenĂłmeno magonista en MĂ©xico y en Estados
Unidos 1905–1908, 184–185.
[17] Op cit.