# Ricardo Flores Magón Ricardo Flores Magón was a Mexican anarchist revolutionary, journalist, and intellectual whose writings in the newspaper Regeneración heavily influenced the ideological foundations of the Mexican Revolution. He spent much of his life in US prisons for his anti-imperialist writings, and died in Leavenworth Penitentiary under suspicious circumstances. ## Quick Facts - **Born:** September 16, 1874 - **Birthplace:** San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Mexico - **Nationality:** Mexican - **Occupation:** Anarchist Revolutionary and Intellectual - **Category:** Power & Politics - **Also Known As:** El Apóstol del Anarquismo ## Biography Ricardo was born on 16 September 1874, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, an Indigenous Mazatec community. His father, Teodoro Flores, was Zapotec and his mother, Margarita Magón was a Mestiza. The couple met each other in 1863 during the Siege of Puebla when both were carrying munitions to the Mexican troops. Magón explored the writings and ideas of many early anarchists, such as Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, but was also influenced by anarchist contemporaries Élisée Reclus, Charles Malato, Errico Malatesta, Anselmo Lorenzo, Emma Goldman, and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol. He was most influenced by Peter Kropotkin. He 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. Flores Magón organised with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and edited the Mexican anarchist newspaper Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, which Flores 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. The Magón brothers were from a family of modest means in Oaxaca and all three studied law at the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia (today Faculty of Law of the UNAM). Ricardo initially attended the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. During this time, he participated in student opposition to President Porfirio Diaz and was jailed for five months. Nevertheless, he graduated and then transferred to the National School of Law. While there, he worked as a proofreader for the student newspaper El Demócrata and narrowly escaped arrest when the entire staff was arrested by the police. He was in hiding for three months but continued his studies and received his law degree in 1895. He passed the examination of the Barra Mexicana-Colegio de Abogados (Mexican Bar and Advocate's College), and practiced law for a short time. He continued to study for a higher degree but was expelled from the school in 1898 because of his political activities. In 1900, he and his brother Jesús founded the newspaper Regeneración in which Ricardo wrote numerous articles attacking Diaz. He also wrote articles for the opposition periodicals Excelsior, La República Mexicana, and El Hijo del Ahuizote. He joined the PLM in 1900. In February 1901, Magon would attend the first congress of Liberal Clubs, where he would meet another Mexican revolutionary Librado Rivera who would later become one of the leading figures of the Mexican Liberal Party and the anarchist movement in Mexico as a whole. The congress focused primarily on anti-clericalism and the criticism of the Diaz Dictatorship. Open criticisms of the government by Magon, such as calling the government a “den of thieves” soon led to his arrest for “insulting the president.” He was sentenced to twelve months in prison, relea ## Flight to the United States Brothers Ricardo (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right) at the Los Angeles County Jail, 1917 In 1904, Magón fled Mexico when the courts banned the printing of his writings and he remained in the United States for the remainder of his life. Half this period was spent in prison. He resumed publication of Regeneración and led the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) (Mexican Liberal Party) from abroad. In 1906, he went to California. Around this time PLM uprisings occurred in Mexico which were crushed by the Mexican government. The US sympathized with the Mexican government and started taking PLM leaders in the US into custody. Magón was fearful that he would be caught and be returned to Mexico, where he faced the possibility of execution. Flores Magón, in 1906. In 1907, an American detective by the name of Thomas Furlong was employed by Enrique Creel, at that time governor of Chihuahua, to locate Mexican dissidents in the U.S. The American headquarters of the PLM was in St. Louis at that time. There were a large number of expatriates who knew of its whereabouts and as a result, Furlong had no difficulty locating the dissidents in the city. Magón, however, was living in great secrecy in Los Angeles. He used a pseudonym, and only two other persons in the city knew his real identity. If they needed to see him, they did so between midnight and dawn. The dissidents in St. Louis soon became aware that they were being sought by agents working for the Mexican government. Librado Rivera left the city in order to evade capture and although he was constantly on alert for agents who might be shadowing him, he failed to elude them. He was followed to Los Angeles and to Magón's place of residence. Furlong kept the house under surveillance for some time. Finally, on August 23, 1907, Magón, Rivera and Antonio Villarreal were taken into custody by Furlong, two of his assistants and some officers from the Los Angeles police department. Continuing his work, after being arrested in Los Angeles and imprisoned in Arizona,Magon was able to smuggle out “Manifesto to the American People”, a list of the goals of the PLM movement as well as the explanations as to why he and others were improvised by U.S. authority, as well as what were “plans for a second uprising and in June 1908 insurrections by PLM groups occurred in the states of Baja California, Coahuila and Chihuahua." While in prison, Magon would write to his brother as well as Praxedis Guerrero, a fellow anarchist, poet and journalist, about his own views on anarchism and liberalism. This detailed his original intent for calling himself a liberal, stemming from the belief that he and others wouldn't have been listened to if they called themselves anarchists due to the larger public beliefs of anarchists. In practice the actions of the PLM should remain anarchist in theme and practice even if members continue to call themselves liberal, “We should continue to call ourselves liberals during the course of the revolution, and ## Legacy Flores 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, public schools, towns and neighborhoods are named after them. This includes Ricardo Flores Magón metro station in Mexico City, and the municipalities of Teotitlán de Flores Magón and Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón in Oaxaca. His ideas have also inspired indigenous leaders from Oaxaca, Mexico including the Chatino leader Tomas Cruz Lorenzo. In 1991, Douglas Day published The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magón, a fictional diary covering Flores Magon's life from his birth in Oaxaca until his mysterious death in his cell at Leavenworth. In 1997, an organization of indigenous peoples of Mexico in the state of Oaxaca formed 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. "A world without borders", displayed in New York in 2006 ## Playwright In his work of popular education, Ricardo Flores Magón also used the theater to denounce the faults of society and outline the main lines of the libertarian "program". He is the author of two plays: Verdugos et victimas and Tierra y Libertad. He is also the author of numerous tales, published in the newspaper Regeneración. ## Timeline ### 1863 — The couple met each other in 1863 during the Siege of Puebla when both were... The couple met each other in 1863 during the Siege of Puebla when both were carrying munitions to the Mexican troops ### 1874 — Ricardo was born on 16 September 1874, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, an... Ricardo was born on 16 September 1874, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, an Indigenous Mazatec community ### 1895 — He was in hiding for three months but continued his studies and received his... He was in hiding for three months but continued his studies and received his law degree in 1895 ### 1898 — He continued to study for a higher degree but was expelled from the school in... He continued to study for a higher degree but was expelled from the school in 1898 because of his political activities ### 1900 — In 1900, he and his brother Jesús founded the newspaper Regeneración in which... In 1900, he and his brother Jesús founded the newspaper Regeneración in which Ricardo wrote numerous articles attacking Diaz ### 1901 — In February 1901, Magon would attend the first congress of Liberal Clubs, where... In February 1901, Magon would attend the first congress of Liberal Clubs, where he would meet another Mexican revolutionary Librado Rivera who would later become one of the leading figures of the Mexican Liberal Party and the anarchist movement in Mexico as a whole ### 1904 — Brothers Ricardo (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right) at the Los Angeles... Brothers Ricardo (left) and Enrique Flores Magón (right) at the Los Angeles County Jail, 1917 In 1904, Magón fled Mexico when the courts banned the printing of his writings and he remained in the United States for the remainder of his life ### 1906 — In 1906, he went to California In 1906, he went to California --- Source: https://peoplebio.info/p/ricardo-flores-magon