Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón while detained at the Los Angeles County Jail, 1917

The Flores Magón brothers are often credited with being the intellectual authors of the democratic movement that led to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. In 1918, Ricardo received a 20-year sentence under the newly enacted Espionage Act of 1917. He died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1922 at the age of 42.

This is a brief biography and excerpt of their work.

Ricardo Flores Magón was born in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, in 1873, to a poor family. His parents were Teodoro Flores and Margarita Magón. He attended elementary and high school then went on to law school in 1893. But he did not become an attorney, instead he became a journalist with “El Demócrata,” an opposition newspaper. In 1900, along with his brother Jesús, he founded “Regeneración,” a very radical and antigovernment paper that ended him in jail. After he was released from jail in 1902, he joined another opposition newspaper, “El Hijo del Ahuizóte.” He was arrested again and in 1904, he was forced to escape to San Antonio, Texas, where he publishlished “Regeneración” again with the help of his brother Enrique. Under constant persecution, the brothers fled to St. Louis, Missouri in 1905, where they continued publishing their newspaper. In this city, they founded the Mexican Liberal Party in 1906. In January of 1911, they directed the uprising of Baja California, and seized the towns of Mexicali and Tijuana. Francisco I. Madero, leader of the revolutionary movement against the Porfirio Díaz’ dictatorship, attempted to bring the “Magonistas” to his side, but Ricardo Flores Magón, leader of the rebels, rejected him arguing that Madero was part of a “revolution of the rich.”

Read about the Flores Magón brothers’ connections to El Paso, Texas and more at Farmworkers.org.

Librado Rivera and Enrique Flores Magón of Regeneración

English version of “Adelante!”, published in Regeneración on November 25, 1911:

“Onwards!” says a mysterious voice that appears, uprooting the innermost core our being. It spurs on all those who are weary, spiritually burdened; whose swollen feet have been bled dry by the long, hard road; we who intend to rest for a while… “Onwards, onwards!” the voice orders us.

And so we go, without taking a breath, our view fixed towards what lies beyond, where our eyes seem to discover the first brightness of a dawn unknown by the flock. Onwards!

But why do we go forwards by ourselves? Turning our heads, we feel our hearts breaking, to see that we can barely divine the flock behind us, far away, very far away, by the small clouds of dust their hooves raise. The flocks need shepherds, leaders; but the leaders they have now do not rush towards the Promised Land. They have full bellies, already forming part of the class of parasites.

Onwards! We are condemned to continue onwards because our temperament demands it. Is a bird singing? It does not matter: Onwards! We must not lose time. Does the velvet of a flower at the side of the road entice us? Onwards! We can not even admire its beauty … time is running out.

Our march is not really a march, but rather a breakneck race towards the Ideal. We do not have the time either to refresh our lips in the pure waters of science, or to expel the bitterness from our souls with the luscious honey of art.

Onwards! Onwards!

Our Authority is our own conscience. She is the one that pushes us, she is our spur. We are slaves, but to our duty.

Onwards!

Read other articles and writings in English and Spanish here.

Learn about the Flores Magón brothers at Magonista.org. See a chronicle of their travels in exile.