Manifesto to the Workers of the World – Mexican Liberal Party (1911)

Text as it appeared in ‘Regeneración’, English Section, April 8, 1911, edited by Ethel Duffy Turner. The Spanish-language version appeared on the front page of the same issue. The English-language translation was republished in the Industrial Workers of the World newspapers, ‘Solidarity’, April 22, 1911, New Castle, Pennsylvania, and ‘Industrial Worker’, May 4, 1911, Spokane, Washington. Excerpts were republished in ‘Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism’, July 1911, London, UK

To the Workers of the World

Comrades: For more than four months the Red Flag has flamed on the battlefields of Mexico, carried aloft by emancipated workers whose aspirations are epitomized in this sublime war cry: LAND AND LIBERTY!

The people of Mexico are right now in open rebellion against their oppressors and taking part in the general insurrection are found the supporters of modern ideas, those convinced of the fallacy of political panaceas in the redemption of the proletarian from economic slavery, those who do not believe in the goodness of paternal governments nor in the impartiality of laws fashioned by the bourgeoisie, those who know that the emancipation of the workers ought to be accomplished by the workers themselves, those convinced of DIRECT ACTION, those who deny the “sacred” right of property, those who do not take up arms for the purpose of raising any master to power, but to destroy the chains of wage-slavery. Those revolutionists are represented by the organized Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party, (519 1/2 E. 4th St., Los Angeles, Cal., U.S.A.) whose official organ, “Regeneración,” clearly explains its tendencies.

The Mexican Liberal Party is not fighting to destroy the Dictator Porfirio Diaz in order to put in his place a new tyrant. The Mexican Liberal Party is taking part in the actual insurrection with the deliberate and firm purpose of expropriating the land and the means of production and handing them over to the people, that is, to each and every one of the inhabitants of Mexico, without distinction ol sex. This act we consider essential to open the gates for the effective emancipation of the Mexican people.

There is also another party in arms; the Anti-re-electionist Party, whose leader, Francisco I. Madero, is a millionaire who has seen his fabulous fortune grow with the sweat and the tears of the peons of his haciendas. This party is fighting to make “effective” the right to vote, and to found, in short, a Bourgeois Republic like that of the United States. This purely political and capitalist party is, naturally, an enemy of the Mexican Liberal Party, because it sees in the activity of the Liberals a menace to the survival of the Bourgeois Republic, which guarantees to politicians, to seekers for jobs, to the rich, to all the ambitious, to those who would like to live at the cost of the suffering and the slavery of the proletarian, the continuance of social inequality, the capitalist system, the division of the human family into two classes: that of the exploiters and that of the exploited.

The Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz is about to fall; but the Revolution will not end by this act alone. Upon the tomb of this infamous dictatorship there will stand, face to face, with arms in the hand, two social classes: that of the well-fed and that of the hungry, the first upholding the interests of its caste, and the second, the abolition of those privileges by means of the installation of a system which guarantees to every human being Bread, Land and Liberty.

This formidable fight of the two social classes in Mexico is the first act of the great universal tragedy which will soon have for its stage the surface of the whole planet, and whose final act will be the triumph of the noble formula, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity that the political revolutions of the bourgeoisie have not been able to crystallize into fact because they have not dared to break the backbone of tyranny, capitalism and authority.

Comrades of all the world, the solution of the Social Problem is in the hands of the disinherited of the whole earth, for they only require the practice of one great virtue: SOLIDARITY. Your brothers in Mexico have had the courage to raise on high the Red Flag, but not to make a puerile boast with it in inoffensive manifestations through streets and plazas which almost always terminate with the arrest and the wounding of the participators by the cossacks of the tyrant, but to sustain it firmly in the battlefields as a spirited challenge to the old society which it is trying to crush, in order to build on the solid earth the New Society of justice and of love.

Our forces, however generous and self-sacrificing they may be, may be annihilated by the solid action of the bourgeoisie of all the countries of the world. By the simple act of having brought about the appearance of the Red Flag in the Mexican battlefield, the bourgeoisie of the United States has obliged President Taft to send twenty thousand soldiers to the Mexican border, and warships to the Mexican ports. What are the workers of the world doing in the meantime? Crossing their arms, and viewing as from the seats of a theater the persons and the events of this tremendous drama, which ought to move every heart, which ought to arouse every conscience, which ought to make the nerves of all the dispossessed of the world víbrate intensely and to make them rise as one man to hold back the fleets and to halt the uniformed slaves of every country.

Agitation! That is the supreme recourse of the present time. Individual agitation of the class-conscious workers; collective agitation of labor organizations and of groups organized

for liberal propaganda; systematic agitation of the labor press and of free thought; agitation in the street, in the theatre, in the street cars, in meetings, in the bosom of the home; in every place where you can find ears disposed to listen, consciences capable of indignation, hearts which are not calloused by the injustice and brutality of their environment; agitation by means of letters, manifestos, leaflets, of conferences, of meetings, by whatever means it may be possible, making clear the necessity of working at once and with vigor in favor of the radical revolutionists of Mexico who need three important things: a world-wide protest against the interference of the powers in Mexican affairs, class conscious workers determined to propagate the doctrines of social emancipation among those not class conscious, and MONEY, MONEY and MORE MONEY for the support of the Social Revolution in Mexico.

Comrades, reprint this Manifesto, translate it into every language and circulate it in every corner of the world. Ask the labor press to insert in its columns, read “Regeneración” and send your piece of money to the Organized Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party, 519 1/2 E. Fourth St., Los Angeles, Cal., U.S.A.

Our cause is yours: it is the cause of the silent slave of the soil, of the pariah of the workshop and the factory, of the galley-slave of the sea, of the hard-labor convicts of the mines, of all those who suffer from the inequality of the capitalist system.

Our cause is yours: if you remain inactive while your brothers meet death embracing the Red Flag, you will give with your inaction a rude blow to the cause of the proletarian.

We shall not spend time in showing you what has come of your indifference, of your lack of solidarity, of the disregard of your duty in failing to unite to precipitate the advent of the Social Revolution, of all that to which is due the lamentable late-coming of the New Era in which will exist the universal country of the free and of human brotherhood. Now you have the Social Revolution in view in Mexico. What do you wait for in order to begin your work? Are you waiting for this noble movement to be crushed that you may fill all space with your protests, which will be impotent to bring back life to your better brothers or to drive away from the breasts of those who survived the despair which this fracas will provoke, the fracas that you yourselves have caused by your indifference?

Meditate, comrades, and go ahead and work, without loss of time, before your aid shall come too late.

Understand the danger under which we face all the governments of the world, who see in the Mexican movement the apparition of the Social Revolution, the only one which the powerful ones of the world fear.

Comrades: comply with your duty.

Signed by the Organized Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party in the City of Los Angeles, California, U.S.A., on April 3, 1911.

Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio de P. Araujo, Librado Rivera, Anselmo L. Figueroa, Enrique Flores Magón