My First Impressions – Enrique Flores Magón (1916)

From ‘Mother Earth’, November 1916, New York City, edited and published by Emma Goldman

I was a mere slip of a boy, but ten years old, when in 1887 our comrades Parsons, Fischer, Engel and Spies were hanged.

At that time, under the bloody tyrant Porfirio Diaz’ regime, it was so common to learn of men being shot, hanged or who had otherwise vanished from the face of the earth, that the news of the tragedy, read by my father to my mother, did not attract much my attention except the fact that it happened in the United States. In my childish fancy, I placed America far away, at the end of the world, surrounded by misery and with odd landscapes, people and things as those described in the fairy tales of the Arabian Nights, the reading of which deeply impressed me,

Another thing that caught my fancy was the fact that these men, being classified as Anarchists, whom my father, not knowing the goal of the Anarchists and their sublime Ideals, described as men who were much like the Terrorists and the Nihilists of Russia. I had heard my father dwell on the marvelous exploits of these two last named and reverenced their sacrifices for the liberation of the Russian people, and that was enough for my childish mind to think of our martyred comrades from Chicago as of big, bold, beautiful men who were all devotion to those who suffer from such tyrants as Porfirio Diaz and the czars of the world.

Times passed on and with it the memory of my big, beautiful men who were hanged in Chicago. Suddenly they were again before me. I was standing at my mother’s side near our cheap, unpainted table, when my father was reading to her something in memoriam of the Chicago Anarchists. I listened intently and wondered how the bodies of the hanged men must have looked, dangling to and fro from the ends of the ropes fastened to the branches of a tall and leafy oak, as men are hanged in Mexico……

And a full realization of the horrible and shameful tragedy of Chicago struck me for the first time. A world of thoughts, feelings and passions like a hurricane opened up before my mental eye. I thought of them going to the gallows with manly poise, serene, smiling, conscious of the end, but conscious also of the immortality of their Ideals for which they were made to die. I thought of the human herd, humbly placing their necks in their daily yoke in factories and sweat-shops instead of rising in rebellious protest against the murder of their comrades.

A sense of humiliation, a feeling of disappointment overcame me, for I still had the fancy in those days, due to distance, that America was really to a large extent the Home of the FREE and the Land of the BRAVE, and not another poor Mexico, populated by cowardly PEONS who submit to the brutal oppression and exploitation of their masters……

Enrique Flores Magón, Editor of “Regeneración”

Los Angeles, Cal., October 19th, 1916

The Mexican-American Conferences

From ‘Mother Earth’, January 1917, New York City, edited and published by Emma Goldman

By Enrique Flores Magón

Serious and imposing as Wilson and Carranza try to make appear their so-called Mexican-American Conferences, they are disgusting to any honest heart, and would be ridiculous if they were not criminal.

If Carranza really were the true ruler of Mexico and not its self-appointed executive, there might be some dignity in the parleys. But things are quite different from what they appear,

Woodrow Wilson, although undeservedly and due to the blindness of many of the American people that have mistaken that piece of glass for a real diamond, has at least the support of the majority of the inhabitants of the United States. But Venustiano Carranza cannot conscientiously be called the ruler of Mexico, since he never was elected as such and the majority of the Mexican people hate him at heart. There is not a single state in the whole Republic without armed rebels in open revolt against that lap-dog of the rapacious American plutocracy.

Besides, Carranza’s doom is rapidly approaching, no matter how determined Wilson and his masters of Wall Street may be to uphold the bearded despot, and no matter how much harder Wilson may make it for all of us rebels by persecuting us through his hirelings in the U.S. Federal Courts or by placing an embargo on arms and ammunition destined to those fighting in Mexico against the so-called de facto government. Carranza’s downfall is sure and Wilson knows it.

Only a Wilson, a man that speaks one way and acts another, who with his velvety tongue is praising Liberty while with his dagger is feeling his way to her heart, may be Machiavellian enough to try to gain the upper-hand on Mexico through diplomatic chicanery when he has failed to do so by means of brutal force, through armed intervention, as he has failed thanks to the honesty and clear vision of American Labor that opposed him.

No matter what the outcome of those so-called Mexican-American Conferences may be, we may be positive that they shall be a dead letter for the Mexican proletariat, Wilson, Carranza and their hirelings may come to terms, but not with the approval of the Mexican people.

We Mexicans are fighting for Land and Liberty.

This is a fight for our ideals, and despair shall give us strength enough to fight it out if necessary until there is none of us left alive or until there shall not be any more rich bloodsucker, nor any government to oppress us, nor any more priests of any religion to deceive us. Our fight is a fight to the finish.

Therefore, we do not care for what Carranza and Wilson may agree to, for we do not care what governments — be it elected or self-appointed — may wish to impose on us.

Through hard experience and some thinking, we have come to the logical conclusion that government, any government, is instituted to protect the rich as against the interests of the poor, and, hence, we are determined not to let any government at all ride on our backs. That explains why during these six last years a number of governments have come and gone to oblivion in Mexico.

We are determined to be free, absolutely free, and we shall be so, despite the wishes of a Carranza or a Wilson, and at the end of this struggle we shall plant the Red Flag of Anarchy on the ruins of Capitalism. Long live the brave fight for Land and Liberty!