Ricardo Flores Magón

Ricardo Flores Magón (born September 16, 1873, San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, Mexico—died November 21, 1922, Leavenworth, Kansas, U.S.) was a Mexican reformer and anarchist who was an intellectual precursor of the Mexican Revolution.

Flores Magón was born to an indigenous father and a mestiza mother. He became involved in student activism while studying law in Mexico City. He was first imprisoned in 1892 for leading a small demonstration against the reelection of Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz. He soon joined with a small group of liberal reformers, with whom he founded the magazine Regeneracíon in 1900. Flores Magón was imprisoned twice for his radical activities with the group, and the government suppressed Regeneracíon in 1901. Following his third arrest in 1903 for opposing the Díaz government, Flores Magón and several of the other radicals fled to the United States. After surviving an assassination attempt in Texas, Flores Magón moved with the rest of the group to St. Louis, Missouri, where they formally established the Mexican Liberal Party (Partido Liberal Mexicano; PLM) in 1905 and resumed publication of Regeneracíon. Flores Magón became the PLM’s most-visible leader.

Even though American officials initially viewed Flores Magón as a Mexican problem, U.S. government agents soon shared an interest with Mexican officials in prosecuting him for his subversive writings. Following armed PLM campaigns and an economic crisis in 1907, the Mexican government hired private detective Thomas Furlong to capture Flores Magón with the hope of extraditing him to México. Though Furlong soon caught him in Los Angeles, the Mexican government was not able to secure his extradition. Instead, he was tried and convicted in Arizona for conspiracy to violate neutrality laws and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Before the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Flores Magón’s growing radicalism was curtailed by the moderating influence of liberals and socialists within the PLM. Flores Magón would later describe the party’s 1906 program and manifesto—proposing taxation of church property, an eight-hour workday, a minimum wage, protection of indigenous peoples, and other reforms—as timid. He was significantly more supportive of the 1911 manifesto that attacked private property and declared war against authority, capital, and the clergy. Despite his criticism of liberal and socialist demands, for many years Flores Magón refused to publicly acknowledge his anarchist beliefs. He thought that the stigma associated with anarchism would deter Mexicans from supporting the PLM.

As antiradical hysteria swept the United States, Flores Magón was increasingly linked to domestic radicals. In 1912 he was again convicted of conspiracy under U.S. neutrality laws, for his support of a short-lived invasion of Baja California by anarchists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1916 he was found guilty of mailing obscene material, specifically a call for the abolition of private property. In 1918 he was convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 and mailing indecent material—namely, various articles from Regeneración.

Flores Magón was imprisoned for almost 8 of his 18 years in exile. In 1922 he was found dead in his cell at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas. Officially, he had died of a heart attack, though it was speculated that he had been murdered by prison guards or died of medical neglect. After supporters transported his body to Los Angeles, Mexican railway workers paid to send Flores Magón’s body to Mexico City, where thousands of people carrying anarchist red-and-black flags attended his funeral.