MANIFESTO of September 23rd 1911
Manifesto issued by the Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party, September 23,
1911, scattered at that time broadcast and republished in its official
organ, Regeneracion, January 20, 1912.
Mexicans:
The Organising Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party views with sympathy
your efforts to put in practice the lofty ideals of political, economic and
social emancipation, the triumph of which on earth will bring to an end the
already sufficiently extensive quarrel between man and man, which has its
origin in that inequality of fortune which springs from the principle of
private property.
To abolish that principle means to annihilate all the political, economic,
social, religious and moral institutions that form the environment within
which are asphyxiated the free initiative and the free association of human
beings who, that they may not perish, find themselves obliged to carry on
among themselves a frenzied competition from which there issue triumphant
not the best, not the most self-sacrificing, not those most richly endowed,
physically, morally or intellectually, but the most crafty, the most
egoistic, the least scrupulous, the hardest-hearted those who place their
own well-being above all considerations of human solidarity and human
justice.
But for the principle of private property there would be no reason for
government, which is needed solely to keep the disinherited from going to
extremes in their complaints or rebellions against those who have got into
their possession the social wealth. Nor would be there any reason for the
church, whose exclusive object is to strangle in the human being the innate
spirit of revolt against oppression and exploitation, by the preaching of
patience, of resignation and of humility; silencing the cries of the most
powerful and fruitful instincts by the practice of immoral penances, cruel
and injurious to personal health and --that the poor may not aspire to the
enjoyment of this earth and become a danger to the privileges of the rich
--by promising the humblest, the most resigned, the most patient, a heaven
located in the infinite, beyond the farthest stars the eye can reach.
Capital, Authority, the Church -- there you have the sombre [sic] trinity
that makes of this beauteous earth a paradise for those who, by cunning,
violence and crime, have been successful in gathering into their clutches
the product of the toiler's sweat, of the blood of the tears and sacrifices
of thousands of generations of workers; but a hell for those who, with
muscle and intelligence, till the soil, set the machinery in motion, build
the houses and transport the products. Thus humanity remains divided into
two classes whose interests are diametrically opposed --the capitalist
class and the working class; the class that has possession of the land, the
machinery of production and the means of transporting wealth, and the class
that must rely on its muscle and intelligence to support itself.
Between these two social classes there cannot exist any bond of friendship
or fraternity, for the possessing class always seeks to perpetuate the
existing economic, political and social system which guarantees it tranquil
enjoyment of the fruits of its robberies, while the working class exerts
itself to destroy the iniquitous system and institute one in which the
land, the houses, the machinery of production and the means of
transportation shall be for the common use.
Mexicans! The Mexican Liberal Party recognises [sic] that every human
being, by the very fact of his having come into life, has a right to enjoy
each and every one of the advantages modern civilization offers, because
those advantages are the product of the efforts and sacrifices of the
working class from all time.
The Mexican Liberal Party recognises labour [sic] as necessary for the
subsistance [sic] of the individual and society, and accordingly all, save
the aged, the crippled, the incapacitated and children ought to dedicate
themselves to the production of something useful for the satisfaction of
their necessary wants.
The Mexican Liberal Party that the so-called rights of individual property
is an iniquitous right, because it subjects the greater number of human
beings to toil and suffering for the satisfaction and ease of a small
number of capitalists. The Mexican Liberal Party recognises that Authority
and the Church are the supports of the iniquity of Capital and therefore,
The Organising Junta of the Mexican Liberal Party has solemnly declared war
against Authority, war against Capital, and war against the Church.
Against Capital, Authority and the Church the Mexican Liberal Party has
hoisted the Red Flag on Mexico's fields of action, where our brothers are
battling like lions, disputing victory with the hosts of bourgeoisdom, be
those Maderists, Reyists, Vazquists, Cientificos or what not, since all
such propose merely to put in office some one as first magistrate of the
nation, in order that under his shelter they may do business without any
consideration for the mass of Mexico's population, inasmuch as, one and
all, they recognise [sic] as sacred the right of individual property.
In these moments of confusion so propitious for the attack on oppression
and exploitation; in these moments in which Authority, weakened,
unbalanced, vacillating, attacked on every side by unchained passions, by
tempests of appetites that have sprung into life, and hope immediately to
glut themselves; in these moments of anxiety, agony and terror on the part
of privileged, compact masses of the disinherited are invading the lands,
burning the title deeds, laying their creative hands on the soil and
threatening with their fists all that was respectable yesterday --
Authority, Capital, the Clergy. They are turning the furrow, scattering the
seed and await, with emotion the first fruit of free labour.
These Mexicans, are the first practical results of the propaganda and of
the action of soldiers of the proletariat, of the generous upholders of our
equalitarian [sic] principles, of our brothers who are bidding defiance to
all imposition and all exploitation with the cry -- a cry of death for all
those above, but of life and hope for all those below -- "Long Live Land
and Liberty."
Expropriation must be pursued to the end, at all costs, while this grand
movement lasts. This is what has been done and is being done by our
brothers of Morelos, of Southern Puebla, of Michoacan, of Guerrero,
Veracruz, of the Northern portion of the State of Tamaulipas, of Durango,
Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, and
parts of other States, as even the Mexican bourgeois press itself has had
to confess. There the proletariat has taken possession of the land without
waiting for a paternal government to deign to make it happy, for it knows
that nothing good is to be expected of governments and that the
emancipation of the workers must be the task of the workers themselves.
These first acts of expropriation have been crowned with most pleasing
success; but they must not be limited to taking possession of the land and
the implements of agriculture alone. There must be a resolute taking
possession, of al the industries by those working in them, who should bring
it about similarly that the lands, the mines, the factories, the workshops,
the foundries, the railroads, the shipping, the stores of all kinds and the
houses shall be in the power of each and every one of the inhabitants,
without distinction of sex.
The inhabitants of each region in which such an act of supreme justice has
been effected will only have to agree that all that is found in the stores,
warehouses, granaries, etc., shall be brought to a place of access by all,
where men and women of reliability can make an exact inventory of what has
been collected and can calculate the time it will last -- the necessities
and the number of inhabitants that will have to use it being taken into
account -- from the moment of expropriation, until the first crops shall
have been raised and the other industries shall have turned out their first
products.
When such an inventory has been made the workers in the different
industries will understand, fraternally and among themselves, how to so
regulate production that none shall want while this movement is going on,
and that only those who are not willing to work shall die of hunger -- the
aged, the incapacitated, and the children, who have a right to enjoy all,
being excepted.
Everything produced will be sent to the community's general store, from
which all will have the right to take what their necessities require, on
the exhibition proof that they are working at such an industry.
The human being aspires to satisfy wants with the least possible
expenditure of effort, and the best way to obtain that result is to work
the land and other industries in common. If the land is divided up and each
family takes a piece there will be grave danger of falling anew into the
capitalist system, since there will not be wanting men of cunning or
grasping habits who may get more than others and in the long run exploit
their fellows. Apart from that danger is the fact that if each family works
its little patch of land it will have to toil as much or more than it does
today under the system of individual property to obtain the miserable
result now achieved; but, if there is joint ownership of the land and the
peasants work it in common, they will toil less and produce more. Of course
there will be enough for each to have his own house and a ground-plot for
his own pleasure. What has been said as to working the land in common
applies to working the factories, working shops, etc., in common. Let each,
according to his temperament [sic], tastes, and inclinations choose the
kind of work that suits him best, provided he produces sufficient to cover
his necessary wants and does not become a charge on the community.
Operating in the manner pointed out, that is to say, expropriation being
followed immediately by the organisation [sic] of production, free of
masters and based on the necessities of the inhabitants of each region,
nobody will suffer want, in spite of the armed movement going on, until the
time when, that movement having terminated with the disappearance of the
last bourgeois and the last agent of authority, and the law which upholds
privilege [sic] having been shattered, everything having been placed in the
hands of the toilers, we shall meet in fraternal embrace and celebrate with
cries of joy in inauguration of a system that will guarantee to every human
being Bread and Liberty.
Mexicans! It is for this the Mexican Liberal Party is struggling. For this
a Pleiades of heroes is spilling its generous blood, fighting under the Red
Flag to the famous cry of "Land and Liberty."
The Liberals have not laid down their arms despite the treaty of peace made
by the traitor Madero with the tyrant Diaz, or despite the offers of the
bourgeoisie which proposed to fill its pockets with gold. It has acted thus
because we Liberals are men who are convinced that political liberty does
not benefit the poor but only the place hunters, and our object is not to
obtain offices or distinctions, but to take everything out of the hands of
the bourgeoisie that it may put in the power of the workers.
Whichever one of them may triumph the activity of the different political
bands who are now disputing among themselves for supremacy will result in
exactly what happened under the tyrant Porfirio Diaz, since no man, however
well-intentioned he may be, can do anything in favour [sic] of the poor
class when he finds himself in power. That activity has produced the
present chaos, and we, the disinherited ought to take advantage of the
special circumstances in which the country finds itself, in order to put in
practice, without the loss of time, on the spot, the ideals of the Mexican
Liberal Party. We should not wait to carry expropriation into effect until
the peace has been made, for by that time the supplies in stores,
granaries, warehouses, and other places of deposit will have been
exhausted. Moreover, owing to the state of war prevailing throughout the
country, production will have been suspended and the sequel of the struggle
will be famine. But if we carry expropriation and the organisation of
labour into effect during the struggle no one will be in lack of the
necessities of life then or afterwards.
Mexicans! If you wish to be free once more, struggle only for the Mexican
Liberal Party. All others are offering you political liberty when they have
triumphed. We liberals invite you to take immediate possession of the land,
the machinery, the means of transportation and the buildings, without
excepting any one to give them to you and without waiting for any law to
decree it, since the laws are not made by the poor but by the gentry, who
take good care not to make any against the interests of their caste.
It is the duty of us poor people to work and struggle to break the chains
that make us slaves. To leave the solution of our problems to the educated
and rich is to put ourselves voluntarily in their clutches. We, the
plebians [sic]; we, the tatterdemalions; we, the starvelings; we who have
no place wherein to lay our heads and live tortured by uncertainty as to
whence will come tomorrow's bread for our women and little ones; we, who
when we have reached old age, are ignominiously discharged because we can
no longer work; it is for us to make powerful efforts and a thousand
sacrifices to destroy to its lowest foundations the edifice of the old
society which has been a fond mother to the rich and vicious and a
hard-hearted stepmother to the workers and the virtuous.
All the ills that afflict humanity spring from the existing system which
compels the majority to toil and sacrifice itself that a privileged
minority may satisfy its wants and even its caprices while living in ease
and vice.
The evil would be less if all the poor were guaranteed work, but production
is not regulated for the satisfaction of the needs of the workers but for
what the bourgeoisie want, and they so manage things that it shall not
exceed their capacity of expenditure. Hence the periodic stoppage of
industry, or restriction of the number of workers, which proves also how
perfect is the machinery operated for the advantage of the rich by the
proletariat.
To make an end of all this its is necessary that the workers take into
their own hands the land and the machinery of production, so that they
themselves may regulate the production of wealth in accordance with their
own needs.
Robbery, prostitution, assassination, incendiarism, swindling -- these are
the products of the system that places men and women in conditions in
which, that they may not die of hunger, they find themselves obliged to
take where they can or prostitute themselves; for, in the majority of
cases, even though they have the greatest desire to work, no work is to be
had or it is so badly paid that there is no getting the sum necessary to
satisfy the most imperious necessities of the individual and his family.
Moreover, the long hours of work under the present capitalist system, and
the conditions under which it is carried on, in a short time make an end of
the worker's health and even of his life. These industrial catastrophes
have their origin solely in the contempt with which the capitalist class
looks on those who sacrifice themselves for it.
Irritated as is the poor man by the injustice of which he is the victim;
angered by the luxury flaunted in his face by those who do nothing; beaten
on the street by the policeman for the crime of being poor; compelled to
hire out his labour on tasks distasteful to him; badly remunerated;
despised by all who know more than he does or who, having money, think
themselves the superiors of those who have none; having in prospect an old
age of bitter sorrow and the death of an animal turned out of the stable as
unserviceable; disquieted from day to day by the possibility of being
without work; obliged to regard as enemies even the members of his own
class, since he knows not who among them will offer his services for less
than he himself is earning -- it is natural that in such circumstances
there should be developed in the human being anti-social instincts and that
crime, prostitution, and disloyalty should be the inevitable fruits of the
old and hateful system we are trying to destroy, to its very lowest roots,
that we may create in its stead a new one of love, of equality, of justice,
of fraternity, of liberty.
Rise, all of you, as one man! In the hands of all are tranquility [sic],
well-being, liberty, the satisfaction of all healthy appetites. But we must
not leave ourselves to the guidance of directors. Let each be master of
himself. Let all be arranged by the mutual consent of free individualities.
Death to slavery! Death to hunger! Long life to "Land and Liberty!"
Mexicans! With hand on heart and with a tranquil conscience we formally and
solemnly appeal to you all, men and women alike, to embrace the lofty
ideals of the Mexican Liberal Party. As long as there are rich and poor,
governors and governed, there will be no peace, nor is it to be desired
that there should be; for such a peace would be founded on the political,
economic and social inequality of millions of human beings who suffer
hunger, outrages, the prison and death, while a small minority enjoys
pleasures and liberties of all kinds for doing nothing. On with the
struggle! On with expropriation, for the benefit of all and not of the few!
This is no war of bandits, but of men and women who desire that all may be
brothers and enjoy, as such, the good things to which nature invites us and
which the brawn and intelligence of man have created, the one condition
being that each should devote himself to truly useful work.
Liberty and well-being are within our grasp. The same effort and the same
sacrifices that are required to raise to power a governor -- that is to
say, a tyrant -- will achieve the expropriation of the fortunes the rich
keep from you. It is for you, then, to choose. Either a new governor --
that is to say, a new yoke -- or life-redeeming expropriation and the
abolition of all imposition, be that imposition religious, political or of
any other kind.
LAND AND LIBERTY!
Signed in the city of Los Angeles, State of California, United States of
America, September 23, 1911.
Ricardo Flores Magon
Anselmo L. Figueroa
Librado Rivera
Enrique Flores Magon
Antonio de P. Aruajo
*This has been reproduced from: Flores Magon, Ricardo. Land and Liberty:
Anarchist Influences in the Mexican Revolution. David Poole, ed. Montreal:
Black Rose Books, 1977.
For further reading:
Albro, Ward S. Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican
Revolution. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1992.
Cockcroft, James. Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution,
1900-1913, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976.
Flores Magon, Ricardo. Land and Liberty: Anarchist Influences in the
Mexican Revolution. David Poole, ed. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1977.
Gomez-Quinones, Juan. Sembradores, Ricardo Flores Magon y El Partido
Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique. Los Angeles: Aztlan Publications,
Chicano Studies Center University of California. 1973.
Hart, John M. Anarchism and the Mexican Working Class, 1860-1931. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1987.
Langham, Thomas C. Border Trials: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Mexican
Liberals. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1981.
MacLachlan, Colin M. Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution, The Political
Trials of Ricardo Flores Magon in the United States. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1991.
Raat, Dirk W. Revoltosos: Mexico's Rebels in the United States, 1903-1923.
College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1981.
Sandos, James. Rebellion in the Borderlands: Anarchism and the Plan of San
Diego, 1904-1923. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.
Turner, Ethel Duffy. Ricardo Flores Magon y el Partido Liberal Mexicano.
Morelia: Editorial "Erandi" del Gobierno del Estado Morelia, 1960.
Zamora, Emilio. The World of the Mexican Worker in Texas. College Station:
Texas A & M University Press, 1993.