Flores Magon Brothers
The Flores Magón brothers, born in Oaxaca (Mexico) during the 1870s, were three politicians and journalists who opposed the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. They are considered precursors of the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
- Jesus (1871-1930)
- Ricardo (1874-1922)
- Enrique (1877-1954)
Origins
The parents of the Flores Magón siblings were the military Teodoro Flores and Margarita Magón. The Flores Magón's childhood was spent in Oaxaca, they lived with indigenous communities of the Sierra Mazateca where their father was considered tata (boss) for his experience. From him they received the teachings on indigenous thought that contained principles of an autochthonous libertarian communism, which Ricardo and Enrique would later outline with the reading of anarchist thinkers.
In 1881 the family moved to Mexico City in search of better living conditions
The brothers
Jesus (1871 - 1930)
Richard (1873 - 1922)
Cipriano Ricardo Gerónimo Flores Magón, known as Ricardo Flores Magón (San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, Mexico; September 16, 1873-Leavenworth, Kansas, United States; November 21, 1922), was an anarchist, socialist, activist, writer and Mexican philosopher.
He is one of the three brothers Flores Magón, leaders of the teachers. He is considered an important figure in the social movement that the Mexican Revolution has appreciated.He helped overthrow Porfirio Díaz, seeking his bad reputation through reports published in newspapers. Ironically, once he died, the State against which Flores Magón fought so hard began to recognize him as the great precursor of the Mexican Revolution. In 1945, during the commemoration of Labor Day, his remains were transferred to the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City. In 1993, the Chamber of Deputies decreed that the name of Ricardo Flores Magón be inscribed in gold letters on the wall of honor of the Legislative Palace of San Lázaro. In 2008 the National Institute of Anthropology and History In order to make an exhaustive compilation of Flores Magón's writings, the Ricardo Flores Magón Electronic Archive was made public on the Internet.
Henry (1877 - 1954)
Anti-Porfiriots
Teodoro Flores, father of the Flores Magón family, harbored a deep hatred against Porfirio Díaz and had instilled in his children since they were children. Díaz did not recognize or reward Flores' participation in the Battle of April 2, 1867 against the French.
In their youth, the Flores Magóns participated in student revolts in Mexico City (1892) against the re-election of Porfirio Díaz to the presidency of Mexico. At that time, Jesús was studying at the National School of Jurisprudence and Ricardo at the Escuela National Preparatory.
In 1893 the three of them collaborated in the edition of the newspaper El Demócrata, Jesús as editor, Ricardo as proofreader and Enrique as assistant printer and editor. Jesús and other collaborators were apprehended, Ricardo managed to escape disguised as a printer and Enrique was not arrested due to his young age. Nine months later Jesus was released. That same year his father Teodoro Flores died.
From 1900 they increased their political and journalistic activity, they founded the newspaper Regeneración and in 1902, Ricardo and Enrique edited El hijo de El Ahuizote. Both newspapers were suppressed by the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Díaz and the brothers were expatriated in 1904 after being imprisoned several times.
The tenacious criticism of the Flores Magón family, together with their revolutionary approaches, were the most lucid and advanced of their time. Neither the anti-reelection uprising of Francisco I. Madero, nor the Constitution promulgated by the movement headed by Venustiano Carranza they managed to emulate the economic, social and political aspirations of the Flores Magón.
Revolutionaries
The political activities of the Flores Magón between 1900 and 1910 are considered precursors of the Mexican Revolution promoted by the anti-reelection movement of Francisco I. Madero. However, it should be noted that although Jesús sympathized with Madero and even collaborated with him in his provisional government. For their part, Ricardo and Enrique did not share the ideals of the Madero project.
In exile since 1904, Ricardo and Enrique promoted the creation of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM for its acronym) that published its program in 1906 in San Luis (Missouri). At that time they began to organize a social revolution through insurrections and strikes to overthrow the government of Porfirio Díaz. Thus, the Flores Magón, through the PLM, influenced and promoted the Cananea and Río Blanco Strike, the Acayucan Rebellion, and various insurrections in small towns in the north of the country as part of a plan to spread the revolution throughout the national territory. However, both the Díaz and the Roosevelt governments in the United States relentlessly persecuted and repressed the insurrectionary movement of the Liberal Party.
In 1908 they organized new insurrections on the border with the United States that were defeated due to lack of resources and organization.
Anarchists
Like other liberals of the time, the Flores Magón family had been familiar with works by anarchist authors since the turn of the century. Enrique affirmed that when they were young, his brother Jesús brought them a book entitled The nihilists and that this was his first approach to social ideas. Jesús and Ricardo attended the Liberal Congress in San Luis Potosí in 1901, invited by Camilo Arriaga. This had a library where you could find works by European socialist and anarchist thinkers such as Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Fourier, Owen, Blanc and Bakunin, as well as Marx, Engels and the Mexican publisher Francisco Severo Maldonado. However, there were few who assumed anarchist ideas in the revolutionary struggle like Ricardo and Enrique. This was one of the reasons for the division in the liberal groups, because while some sought only political reforms, the Flores Magón sought deeper changes. In this way they came to propose the abolition of the State and private Property, as part of a social, political and economic revolution of a libertarian nature. The most important military campaign promoted by the Flores Magón family was the Baja California Rebellion, which took control of the peninsula from January to June 1911 when they were defeated by federal troops of Francisco I. Madero, supported by the US government.
The libertarian thought of the Flores Magón family resulted from an amalgamation between the community conception of life in indigenous peoples, the Mexican liberal tradition of the 19th century, and the thought of European anarchist philosophers.