By Archivo General de la Nación - México
Ricardo Flores Magón is one of the most prominent minds of the Mexican Revolution. From his ideas, journalism and militancy became inspiration for the struggle for the social and political transformation of Mexico in the early twentieth century.
In 1900, Ricardo and Jesús Flores Magón founded the newspaper Regeneración. They adopted an editorial line aimed at denouncing the institutional irregularities of the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship, such as judicial corruption and the injustices committed towards the working class.
Regeneración produced such discomfort that the authorities closed him and imprisoned the Flores Magón brothers in May 1901 for the crime of defamation.
The process lasted several months and, as Ricardo's document reads, was full of injustices.
Upon achieving his freedom, Ricardo resumed his activities in 1902 within the press coordinating the newspaper El Hijo del Ahuizote, but again he was apprehended and locked up along with other colleagues for the alleged crime of outrages to the agents of the authority.
In 1905 the Organizing Board of the Mexican Liberal Party was founded in the city of Saint Louis, Missouri. This political group coordinated different clubs in the United States and Mexico, in which it had a relevant influence in the strike of Cananea in June 1906.
A month later, on July 1, 1906, the Program of the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM) in Regeneration was published. The document proposed economic, political and social proposals such as non-re-election, compulsory basic education and labor improvements.
Workers quickly sympathized with the program because it proposed regulating working hours and minimum wages and providing land for peasants. Soon several workers' mobilizations were organized in Mexico as shown in this pamphlet requisitioned in 1906.
Following the publication of the manifesto, the PLM organized several insurrections to start the revolution and overthrow Díaz, but they were thwarted by Mexican and U.S. authorities who soon followed PLM leaders in the United States and Canada.
The collaboration between the U.S. and Mexican authorities through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the consulates was key for the embassies to exchange information about the activities of Ricardo and other members of the PLM Organizing Board.
Undercover agents, secret police and private companies carried out surveillance and espionage. The Díaz government provided all the necessary facilities and documentation, which is how they found the activities of Ricardo and the PLM Organizing Board.
The agents received documentation with information on the persecuted as shown in this document in which the request of the Chief of Detectives of Montreal for portraits and copies of the writing of Enrique and Ricardo Flores Magón is communicated.
Photograph of Ricardo Flores Magón's prison affiliation
In addition to locating and apprehending the members of the PLM Organizing Board, the espionage sought to integrate files for future judicial processes against them on charges of violating neutrality laws.
The PLM Organizing Board relocated to Los Angeles, California, where they founded the newspaper Revolution in 1907. From that trench the battle of ideas continued, even after the junta's arrest.
In Los Angeles, the Furlong agency followed the board members, located them, watched them from an address across from the house where they lived, and arrested them on August 24, 1907.
This fact was immediately reported in the press and communicated to the Mexican authorities by various means.
In the following days, reports arrived at the Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry of the arrest of the main members of the PLM: Librado Rivera, Antonio I. Villarreal, and Ricardo Flores Magón. Only Henry escaped arrest.
They were imprisoned in Los Angeles, tried for the crime of violating neutrality laws, sentenced to three years in prison, and sent to Arizona in late 1908. Since the apprehension there has been a work of denunciation by his supporters and political organizations.
During his incarceration in Los Angeles, Ricardo and the board members remained under surveillance. His letters were intercepted and transcribed.
Those who were still at large, like his brother Enrique, did not escape the interception and deciphering of letters either.
Abroad, the released PLM members developed their own encryption systems for the letters, which gave the authorities numerous difficulties.
However, they managed to be deciphered and contributed to having more information about their activities.
In the case of Ricardo, even the letters written in tatters of cloth that he exchanged with his partner María Talavera through the underwear he sent to be cleaned, were discovered in September 1908 by the consul of Mexico himself in Los Angeles.
Although the letters were private, they were intercepted, transcribed, photographed and sent to authorities in Mexico.
In this letter, Ricardo talks about the delivery of his clothes and the work of the Socialist Party with Maria.
Ricardo never gave up his fight in the press. It was the light in the midst of the shadows, injustice, abuse and despotism of a regime. Although shortly before 1910 and until his death he was out of Mexico and in prison, his ideas lit the way for countless people.
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