Ricardo Flores Magón

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Brothers Ricardo (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right) at the Los Angeles County Jail, 1917.
Brothers Ricardo (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right) at the Los Angeles County Jail, 1917.
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Ricardo Flores Magón (September 16, 1874 – November 21, 1922) a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist, was born on Mexican Independence Day, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca. He died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, USA. His brother Enrique Flores Magón was also active in politics.

Flores Magón explored the writings and ideas of many anarchists; he examined the works of early anarchists Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon but was also influenced by anarchist contemporaries: Élisée Reclus, Charles Malato, Errico Malatesta, Anselmo Lorenzo, Emma Goldman, Fernando Tarrida del Mármol and Max Stirner. Magón was most influenced by Peter Kropotkin. Flores Magón also read from the works of Karl Marx and Henrik Ibsen.

He was one of the major thinkers of the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican revolutionary movement in the Partido Liberal Mexicano. Magón organised with the Wobblies (IWW) and edited Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, which Magón considered a kind of anarchist bible, served as basis for the short-lived revolutionary communes in Baja California during the "Magonista" Revolt of 1911. From 1904, Magón remained in the USA. Half this period he was in prison. His last arrest was in 1918, when he received a twenty-year sentence for "obstructing the war effort", a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. He was arrested soon after the rise of Bolshevism in Russia and the Russian Revolution, whose excesses created a fever pitch of fear of anarchists and bolshevists in the United States. The Wilson administration's conducted what were called the Palmer Raids, a wholesale crackdown on war dissidents and leftists that also swept up notable socialists such as Eugene V. Debs.

The cause of Flores Magón's death has been disputed. Some believe that he was deliberately murdered by prison guards. Others contend that he died as a result of deteriorating health caused by his long imprisonment, possibly exacerbated by medical neglect by Leavenworth Penitentiary officials and staff. Flores Magón wrote several letters to friends complaining of debilitating health problems and of what he perceived to be purposeful neglect by the prison staff.[1] Yet others have contended that he likely died while in prison due to natural causes.[2]

Magón's movement fired the imagination of both American and Mexican anarchists. In 1945 his remains were repatriated to Mexico and were interred in the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres in Mexico City. In Mexico, the Flores Magón brothers are considered left-wing political icons nearly as notable as Emiliano Zapata; numerous streets, towns and neighborhoods are named for them.

In 1997 an organization of indigenous peoples of Mexico in the state of Oaxacaformed the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón" (Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón", or CIPO-RFM), based on the philosophy of Magón.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Rivera, Librado (1922-11-25). Letter to Raúl Palma (HTML). Retrieved on 2007-11-30.
  2. ^ "FLORES MAGÓN, RICARDO". Handbook of Texas Online. (2001-06-06). Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved on 2007-11-30. 
  3. ^ Kolhatkar, Sonali (2005-12-02). An Interview with Raúl Gatica (HTML). Z Magazine Online. ZNET.

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