A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion: The Mexican Liberal Party and Revolutionary Magonism By LIZA (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The task of uniting relations between the peasant movement in Mexico and 
the labor movement in the United States with a revolutionary perspective 
at 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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