Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Canappan Here.
Speaker 3: I'm back with yere Davis.
Speaker 2: Hello, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Andress Age or androism on YouTube now. Previously we explored
Speaker 3: a lesser known chapter in Mexico's radical history before Margon,
Speaker 3: before the Revolution, when a Greek emigrey named Plotino Rocanati
Speaker 3: arrived in the eighteen sixties, convinced that Mexico's indigenous communal
Speaker 3: traditions could form the basis for a new anarchist society.
Speaker 3: Through schools, pamphlets, and mutual aid societies, he helped sow
Speaker 3: the first seeds of anarchist thought on Mexican soil. Some
Speaker 3: of his students pushed even further and flirted with many
Speaker 3: bersion streams of anarchism. Even as Portfilio Diaz's regime clamped
Speaker 3: down and anything that challenges dry for order and progress.
Speaker 3: Rocanati faded from view and many of his students that
Speaker 3: associates had to go underground for a time, but the
Speaker 3: ideas would live on. Quiet sparks are waiting for the
Speaker 3: next revolt, and an actual volt would come in nineteen
Speaker 3: ten when the Mexican Revolution erupted. But keep in mind
Speaker 3: the context here when we talk about revolutions, the focus
Speaker 3: tends to be on the flashpoints, the gunfire, the slogans,
Speaker 3: the major figures, and I will do a lot of
Speaker 3: focus on some of the major figures throughout this history.
Speaker 3: We have to keep in mind the revolutions have routes
Speaker 3: that run deep, run deep below the surface. The revolutions
Speaker 3: are often shaped by decades or centuries of injustice, and
Speaker 3: Mexico's revolution was no exception because for over three decades
Speaker 3: where Fibiodas ruled Mexico with what is basically a velvet
Speaker 3: glove over an iron fist. He brought railroads in electrification,
Speaker 3: but also crave crave costs for the rural poor, the
Speaker 3: indigenous communities, and the working classes. By nineteen ten, thanks
Speaker 3: to his efforts, almost all the land in Mexico was
Speaker 3: in private hands. The rural port on our phone themselves
Speaker 3: as peons and haciendas. About those that fled to the
Speaker 3: city for themselves, proletarianized, made to work at various industries
Speaker 3: for long hours, low pay, and little protection. Despite appearance
Speaker 3: stable and efficient and odderly, the system in Mexico was
Speaker 3: profoundly unjust, and yet many saw it as a model
Speaker 3: for progress. In a region full of instability, a description
Speaker 3: that seems eerily familiar to the situation that's currently taking
Speaker 3: place in El Salvador. Beneath the Polish Veneer, tensions were
Speaker 3: bread workers were organizing, journalists were risking their lives. Teachers
Speaker 3: and lawyers, and even wealthy landowners began to murmur about
Speaker 3: the need for reform, and the countryside, those old communal
Speaker 3: memories refused to die. Even after the land was taken.
Speaker 3: The land was remembered by the term twentieth century. Diaz
Speaker 3: approached as eighties with no successor in sight, and the
Speaker 3: people will get in feder which brings us into the
Speaker 3: first phase of the Mexican Revolution. According to Ahil Cappelleti,
Speaker 3: the author of Anarchism Latin America and the main source
Speaker 3: of this episode, Francisco I Madero wasn't quite.
Speaker 2: A revolutionary in all honesty.
Speaker 3: He just wants to tweet the status coo to keep
Speaker 3: a free market, but ban the reelection of presidents came
Speaker 3: from money. He was an upper class intellectual, a believer
Speaker 3: in parliamentary democracy and in free markets. He read the
Speaker 3: Review spirit the religiously. It was a spiritualist journalism, and
Speaker 3: he believes in a kind of metaphysical liberalism where good
Speaker 3: governance and good intentions could stare history in the right direction.
Speaker 3: Madero's party, the Partido Democrata, was formed with a single
Speaker 3: claire goal and in Porpyrio diazis decades long grip on power.
Speaker 3: But the more radical forces like Ricardo Flores Margone and
Speaker 3: the Partido Liberal Mexicano or PLM, Madero's vision was nowhere
Speaker 3: near enough to get fooled by the name. By the way,
Speaker 3: the PLM had some revolutionary credentials. It started off as
Speaker 3: a simple anti clerical, anti dtatorial party, but perhaps with
Speaker 3: the influence of North American and Spanish immigrant anacosynicalists, it
Speaker 3: eventually took on a libertarian character, guided also in part
Speaker 3: of the ideological evolution of Malgone himself. It was neither
Speaker 3: liberal nor truly a party in the end, but rather
Speaker 3: a truly revolutionary libertarian organization. We'll get back to Macgone's
Speaker 3: story in Aseca, but the point is where mcgone was
Speaker 3: calling for social revolution, lanary distribution, and worker's control of production.
Speaker 3: Madero merely wanted electoral reform. He had no real program
Speaker 3: for agrarian justice and was quote generally indifferent to the
Speaker 3: problems of the Mexican masses, as Capeletti put it, still,
Speaker 3: Madero's nineteen ten campaign electrified all of those who unit
Speaker 3: for change, revolutionaries and reformists ali His challenge to Diaz
Speaker 3: helped ignite a broader uprising that managed to bring Madero
Speaker 3: into power in nineteen eleven. Before we get into what
Speaker 3: happened during the Madero presidency, let's go back in time
Speaker 3: to follow Ricardo Flora's Maggone story. Magon was born in
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy three in the village of San Antonio Iloxo
Speaker 3: Chitlan in Osaka. His roots straddled both indigenous and Mestizo heritage.
Speaker 3: As a law students in Mexico City, he found himself
Speaker 3: swept into the tide of anti government agitation. Before he
Speaker 3: even turned twenty, he was jailed for the first time.
Speaker 3: He joined the radical press in eighteen ninety three with
Speaker 3: El Democrat and Anti Diav's people. The regime quickly snuffed out,
Speaker 3: but he wasn't detered. In nineteen hundred, he co founded Regeneracion,
Speaker 3: the publication that would become the voice of the Mexican
Speaker 3: left in the twentieth century. It was while behind bars,
Speaker 3: where he often found himself, that Magone encountered the ideas
Speaker 3: that would shape his life's work. Thanks to the library
Speaker 3: of Liberal landowner Camillo Ariaga, he read the writings of
Speaker 3: Kropotkin and Malichest and through those texts, crystallized his anarchist vision. Now,
Speaker 3: even though Magone's ideology incubated quietly in his early political life,
Speaker 3: it didn't stay buried for law. As his conflicts the
Speaker 3: Diaz regime intensified, so too the radicalism of his actions.
Speaker 3: He edited l Ejo del Aquisote, a satirical rat that
Speaker 3: earned him yet another stint in prison, and after his
Speaker 3: release of nineteen oh four, Magaun fled to Texas where
Speaker 3: he Relaunchedacion with renewed purpose.
Speaker 2: By nineteen zho.
Speaker 3: Five, the paper helped spark the creation of the Partido
Speaker 3: Liberal and Hicano or PLA, which, as I said, wasn't
Speaker 3: much of a political party as it was a radical
Speaker 3: organ though it did have some reformist demands mixed it.
Speaker 3: They were trying to soften their language at times to
Speaker 3: appeal to conservative sympathizers of reform. Away from Diadz, the
Speaker 3: PM sought the abolition of the military tri you knows,
Speaker 3: free secular education, workers rights like the eight hour worth
Speaker 3: day minimum wage, and the expropriation of idle lands. In short,
Speaker 3: it went further the nineteen seventeen Constitution that would come
Speaker 3: a decade later. I could be seen as the crystallization
Speaker 3: of many of the Mexican revolutions most popular aims. Magon
Speaker 3: and the PLM established alliances across borders, particularly among the
Speaker 3: industrial workers of the world. But that put a target
Speaker 3: on agone's back for both Mexican and US authorities. You
Speaker 3: already know they can't be having sort of darity like that.
Speaker 3: The Pinkertons rolled up, backed in part by Diaz himself,
Speaker 3: and they were on Magon's tale constantly, even ended up
Speaker 3: as far north as Canada just trying to escape their
Speaker 3: constant harassment. But despite the repression, the momentum could not
Speaker 3: be killed. Between nineteen or six and nineteen oh eight,
Speaker 3: the PLM helped organize a string of strikes and uprisings.
Speaker 3: The most infamous was the Canaean copper strike. Mexican miners
Speaker 3: were paid stop vation wages while their American counterparts earned
Speaker 3: double for the same work. When the miners struck for
Speaker 3: fair pay and better conditions. They were met with deadly force.
Speaker 3: The rebellion that followed saw American rangers in Mexican troops
Speaker 3: massacre more than two hundred people and thousands were yelled.
Speaker 3: Another uprising ignited in Rio Blanco, where textile workers already
Speaker 3: paid a pittance, organized the leadership of Jose Nierra, a
Speaker 3: student of Agon. When negotiations failed and repression ramped up,
Speaker 3: the workers responded, not with another petition, both insurrection. On
Speaker 3: January seventh, nineteen oh seven, they stormed the mill, freed prisoners,
Speaker 3: cut wires, and declared open rebellion. The States responded with
Speaker 3: a bloodbath. Entire families were dragged from their homes and executed.
Speaker 3: Another one of the uprisings was a peasant revolter, began
Speaker 3: in nineteen oh six in Akayukan and spread through Tuxlass, Minettitlan,
Speaker 3: and Tavasco. It was crushed, of course, in nineteen oh
Speaker 3: eight and Viscas, though their plans had been leaked to
Speaker 3: the authorities. Revolutionaries had a fire fight with police and
Speaker 3: freed a town jail. Just two days later, in Las Vegas,
Speaker 3: other students of Magone were fighting for justice. Another set
Speaker 3: of Gorillas of Rose in Palomas, but they failed. Yet
Speaker 3: another insurrection happened in via the lead Yucatan, and they
Speaker 3: suffered summary executions, and all those events, all those small
Speaker 3: revolutionary bands challenging the states. They failed, but they emboldened
Speaker 3: the dream of a different world with their will to act.
Speaker 3: Lagoon was jailed again in nineteen oh seven, but it
Speaker 3: wasn't over for him yet.
Speaker 2: And I really don't like.
Speaker 3: To romanticize, you know, this idea of the uprisings that
Speaker 3: they failed, but you know they're still inspiring. You want
Speaker 3: to go too far into that where you know, your
Speaker 3: self sacrifice for self sacrifice sake. But I think it's
Speaker 3: important to point out that there were multiple failed attempts
Speaker 3: before the successful uprising that ushered in the Mexican Revolution.
Speaker 3: It wasn't, you know, a first time successful attempt, And
Speaker 3: by the time Macgaun was released from prison in nineteen ten,
Speaker 3: the revolution had already begun to burn across Mexico, and
Speaker 3: that is in part in thanks to the efforts of
Speaker 3: those uprisings. Even though those individual uprisings failed, the Catalan
Speaker 3: immigrant Amadeo Ferez pumped up this energy in nineteen eleven
Speaker 3: with ltipograph Fo Mexicano, yet another newspaper with a fierce
Speaker 3: anarcho syndicalist spirit, meant to mobilize urban workers. At the
Speaker 3: same time, old anarchist typographers were not only printing their message,
Speaker 3: they were forming unions like the Union de Canteras Mexicanos.
Speaker 3: In mid nineteen twelve, Juan Francisco Moncaliano arrived from Qure
Speaker 3: and quickly rallied a dive first group of workers into
Speaker 3: Grupo Loose, set on establishing a progressive education platform at
Speaker 3: La Francisco Ferrer.
Speaker 2: By September nineteen.
Speaker 3: Twelve, these unions and Groupo Loose united to form La
Speaker 3: Cassa del Brero, forging a distinctly anarcho synicalist identity. The
Speaker 3: organized lectures built libraries of classic anarchist works and launched
Speaker 3: a new biweekly called Lucca, all while energizing a massive
Speaker 3: May Day rally in nineteen thirteen, where twenty eight thousand
Speaker 3: workers rallied. Like Margone, these radicals saw through the hollow
Speaker 3: promises of Madero's democracy. Voting for a new president wouldn't
Speaker 3: free the peasantry, The legislative seats wouldn't redistribute land, no congress,
Speaker 3: no matter whole liberal, would ever voluntarily dismantle the system.
Speaker 2: That fed it.
Speaker 3: For them, revolution was no less than put in land
Speaker 3: and production in the hands of the people. No bosses,
Speaker 3: no landlords, no masters, just workers organizing life on their
Speaker 3: own terms. Revolution, if we could even be called, that
Speaker 3: had mobilized peasants, workers and radicals. But that moderate phase
Speaker 3: was about to end because once seated as president, Madero
Speaker 3: leaned heavily on old elites. He really siphoned energy away
Speaker 3: from genuine social change with that reformance to push that
Speaker 3: he was doing, a move that sounds all too familiar.
Speaker 3: Madero's refusal to enact meaningful change lost in his allies
Speaker 3: very quickly. Figures like Pasqual Orosco and even Emiliano Zapata,
Speaker 3: who had initially supported the rebellion against Diaz, became dissillusion.
Speaker 3: So while Madero governed, the PLM continued its fight, now
Speaker 3: against the emergent new regime in northern Mexico. P M
Speaker 3: aligned forces initially rose alongside Madero's but they did not
Speaker 3: make common cause with him. When strategic positions and two
Speaker 3: hour were lost with the middle class and Orosco sided
Speaker 3: with Madero, the mogonists turned their attention elsewhere. The next
Speaker 3: target was bad Her California. In early nineteen eleven, they
Speaker 3: began seasoned towns Mexicali, Los Alcodonis, Tecate, and finally Tijouhanna,
Speaker 3: seeking to establish a libertarian society, a model for what
Speaker 3: they called a free America. But the backlash was swift. American,
Speaker 3: British and French businesses owned pretty much all of Baja California.
Speaker 3: Landowners and newspaper mogules in California, USA, which were often
Speaker 3: the same people, panicked and ended up smearing the mcgonists
Speaker 3: as secessionists trying to handle from Mexican land to the US.
Speaker 3: In truth, as mcgonn wrote in Regeneracion, does Baja California
Speaker 3: belonged to Mexico.
Speaker 2: It does not.
Speaker 3: It is under the control of foreign capital. Mexicans owned
Speaker 3: nothing of it. The PLM's campaign was not about taking
Speaker 3: Mexico apart. It was about reclaiming it from the hands
Speaker 3: of foreign elites. Nothing less than land and liberty as
Speaker 3: a couple of he put it.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: On the contrary, mcgon's goal was nothing other than a
Speaker 3: classless and stateless libertarian society that would provide the archetype
Speaker 3: and pointed departure for the Mexican and World revolutionia end quote.
Speaker 3: The downfall of the Baja California campaign came in the
Speaker 3: hands of bourgeois champion Madero, backed by the US government
Speaker 3: and capitalists. By mid nineteen eleven, the mcgonists uprising in
Speaker 3: Baja California had effectively been extinguished, yet the saga didn't
Speaker 3: end there. On the fourteenth of June and nineteen eleven,
Speaker 3: Macgone and three of US associates were arrested, tried in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles, and mcgone himself was sentenced to McNeil Island
Speaker 3: Prison in Washington, State of Faith. He endured until nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 3: which meant that Macgone wouldn't be present in Mexico for
Speaker 3: the death of one of his biggest ops.
Speaker 2: Since Madero failed to gain.
Speaker 3: The support of radicals or secure the loyalty of reactionaries,
Speaker 3: the conservative military overthrew and assassinated him in stalling Victoriano
Speaker 3: Huerta into power in nineteen thirty and just like that,
Speaker 3: the so called moderate phase the Mexican.
Speaker 2: Revolution ended in blood.
Speaker 3: Quieta's dictator ship tried to to imact the clock to
Speaker 3: the Portphyrian era, Cuarta ruled with military force and repression,
Speaker 3: the usual stuff, persecuting labor organizers, shutting down radical spaces,
Speaker 3: deporting foreign activists, jailen dissenters, murdering people. Crackdowns eventually hit
Speaker 3: La Cassa de Lobrero's publications and destroyed the anarchist library.
Speaker 3: But outter this repression emerged a new tactic. They basically said,
Speaker 3: you know, you could build in our books, That's fine,
Speaker 3: do what you have to do. We're not going to
Speaker 3: stop us from spreading our message. They established grassroots orators,
Speaker 3: the Tribuna Roja, who took the revolutionary message directly to
Speaker 3: the working classes, given speeches where they were at and
Speaker 3: sharing the message even without access to literature. By May
Speaker 3: nineteen fourteen, a new people in Antipascion Obrera was law,
Speaker 3: though it too felt praide the regime's brutality. Thankfully, the
Speaker 3: regime wouldn't last long. Becausetor's power didn't go unchallenged. From
Speaker 3: the north, Venustiano Carranza and the Constitutionalists rose to oppose him,
Speaker 3: claiming to defend the Madero's legacy. From the south, Emiliano
Speaker 3: Zapata refused to accept any government that ignore the demands
Speaker 3: of landless peasants. As throughout the country armed, the struggle reignited,
Speaker 3: which brings us to Emiliano Zapata himself. He was doing
Speaker 3: his own thing politically, but he was inspired in part
Speaker 3: for the anarchist supporterism Agne. His ideology was rooted in Nikalpui,
Speaker 3: the collective land systems of his conditionous ancestors. He eventually
Speaker 3: adopted the slogan Tierra Ileritad and rallied behind the Plan
Speaker 3: de Ayala, demanding land redistribution and local self governance. He
Speaker 3: had little tolerance for political maneuvering. He saw the false
Speaker 3: promises of figures like Cuerta and Caranza for Zapata revolution,
Speaker 3: masara wa, elections or modernization. It was what given land back.
Speaker 3: That's really all he cared about. In contrast, as the
Speaker 3: warriotis Mario, there was Pancho Villa. He was a charismatic
Speaker 3: northern general and a populist who worked with and against Carranza.
Speaker 3: As Magon described him, Zapata delivers riches.
Speaker 2: To their true owners, the poor.
Speaker 3: Villa executes the proletarian who takes a piece of bread
Speaker 3: end cooked. Though both were opposed to Caranza, their goals,
Speaker 3: strategies and ethics were far part Like I said, Mariotis
Speaker 3: warrior quet didn't last long. As I mentioned, he was
Speaker 3: ousted by nineteen fourteen, so just about a year of
Speaker 3: being in power and being a violent dictator. And after
Speaker 3: predator fell, Pinustiano Caranza rose to fill the vacuue. Like
Speaker 3: I said, he claimed to be continuing Madero's legacy, and
Speaker 3: his vision of Mexico was just as top down. He
Speaker 3: wasn't exactly fond of anarchists or the radical left in general,
Speaker 3: but faced with pressure from these zapatistas in the south
Speaker 3: and VIA's forces in the north, he courted his labor
Speaker 3: organizations like Cassa de la Brero Mundial, offer gestures of support,
Speaker 3: a few favorable labor reforms, and even physical space like
Speaker 3: giving them the Jesuit College Santa Brigida as headquarters.
Speaker 2: In return, Kranza hoped to build a loyal.
Speaker 3: Base of organized workers, integrate them into his constitutional army,
Speaker 3: and neutralize the more radical strains of revolution. I'm sorry
Speaker 3: to say that it partially worked. He was able to
Speaker 3: buy off some of these workers. While this alliance gave
Speaker 3: La Casa de Lobrero's space to organize workers throughout the
Speaker 3: country and ramp up educational and prostatizing efforts, much like
Speaker 3: what would take place in Spain years later, the anarchists
Speaker 3: began to lose their anarchist roots from the collaboration. Instead
Speaker 3: of back in Zapata. In February nineteen fifteen, Lacassa signed
Speaker 3: a pact with the constitutionalist forces and created quote unquote
Speaker 3: Red Battalions within Caranzas Army. But although Lacassa expanded its
Speaker 3: influence and managed amount strikes among miners, teachers, drivers, bakers,
Speaker 3: oil workers, textile workers, carpenters, button makers, and barbers in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifteen in response to the economic pressures of inflation
Speaker 3: and unemployment, by early nineteen sixteen, their government allies were
Speaker 3: cracking down on them. Not long after hiring the Red Battalions.
Speaker 3: They fired the Red Battalion, so they shut down Lacasa's offices.
Speaker 3: They sent key figures to jail. In response, the workers'
Speaker 3: movement held a national congress in Veracruz, and out of
Speaker 3: this emerged a new labor federation built on anarchist syneclist principles,
Speaker 3: committed not to capturing power but to dismantle it the
Speaker 3: Confederaci del Trabajo de Larijon and Hicana. In May nineteen sixteen,
Speaker 3: a general strike erupted in protest of the imprisonment of
Speaker 3: La Caasa's leadership and to demand urgent economic relief. While
Speaker 3: the strike was an immediate success, its ease led many
Speaker 3: young militians to believe the change could come through a
Speaker 3: benevolent state. Notably Luis Morons, who would later lead the
Speaker 3: Confederacion Brera Mexicana was crom signed agreements.
Speaker 2: With Caranza's government.
Speaker 3: Matters intensified ten months later when a second strike broke
Speaker 3: out due to Lope. In response, Caranza ordered mounted police
Speaker 3: to break up assemblies and declared martial law. The strike
Speaker 3: was crushed, its committee suspended all activities, and one prominent
Speaker 3: leader was nearly executed before his sentence was finally commuted.
Speaker 3: La Casa shut down and the strike failed, but the
Speaker 3: anarchists endured. By mid nineteen seventeen, new groups like Loose
Speaker 3: and several local cassas had reappeared throughout the country. However,
Speaker 3: internal debates culminated in the October nineteen seventeen National Workers Congress,
Speaker 3: where reformist forces led by Luis Moronees properly marginalized the anarchists,
Speaker 3: set in the stage for the rise of the crom
Speaker 3: and a more moderate pro management approach aligned with of
Speaker 3: all People, the American Federation of Labor the AFL. Kranza's
Speaker 3: crowning achievement came in that same year with the signing
Speaker 3: of the Constitution of nineteen seventeen on people. It was
Speaker 3: progressive land reform, limitish power, labor protections. But to many revolutionaries,
Speaker 3: including Magon, this wasn't the revolution fulfilled. Far from it.
Speaker 2: It was a.
Speaker 3: Revolution managed their wireless dreams trimmed down to a policy.
Speaker 3: Even its better reforms were hardly enforced. But with the
Speaker 3: Constitution of nineteen seventeen, Krantzer could still claim legitimacy, he
Speaker 3: could claim progress, and he could claim that the revolution
Speaker 3: was over.
Speaker 2: But what happened to revolutionaries.
Speaker 3: Zapata was still fighting for land in the South, but
Speaker 3: Kranzo would assassinate him in By nineteen nineteen, Macgone was
Speaker 3: in prison in the USA, denouncing the betrayal from behind bars.
Speaker 3: Workers were still struggling for real power in they were places,
Speaker 3: and the vast majority of rural Mexicans remained poor dispossessed,
Speaker 3: and dissolution. In case you're wondering what happened to Macgone.
Speaker 3: In nineteen sixteen, he was jail in the US until
Speaker 3: a group of exiled anarchists led by Emma Goldman and
Speaker 3: Alexander Berkman paid his bond. So that feels like a
Speaker 3: cameo or crossover episode of some kind, right.
Speaker 2: And then in.
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventeen, the year of the New Constitution, he was
Speaker 3: back in jail again for speaking out against the First
Speaker 3: World War and calling for a social revolutionary war instead.
Speaker 3: He was sentenced to twenty years and his health deteriorated steadily.
Speaker 3: He wasn't a fan of Carnzer at Tall. He called
Speaker 3: him a strike breaker, an assassin, and a wolf in
Speaker 3: sheep's clothing. When Karanza's government offered him a pension, he said, quote,
Speaker 3: all money obtained by the state represents the sweat, the anguish,
Speaker 3: and sacrifice of workers. If this money came directly from workers,
Speaker 3: I would gladly and even proudly accept it, because they
Speaker 3: are my brothers. But when it comes to the invention
Speaker 3: of the state, after being compelled from the people the money,
Speaker 3: you would only burn my hands and fill my heart
Speaker 3: with remorse end quote So long story short, he didn't
Speaker 3: accept the money. When the US said they might let
Speaker 3: him go if he said sorry and petitioned for a pardon,
Speaker 3: he said, in many words, hell no. Among his more
Speaker 3: beautiful words, he said, quote repentance. I have not exploited
Speaker 3: the sweat, anguish, fatigue, and labor of others. I have
Speaker 3: not oppressed a single soul. I have nothing to repent for.
Speaker 3: My life has been lived without my having acquired any wealth, power,
Speaker 3: or glory, when I could have gotten these three things
Speaker 3: very easily. But I do not regret it. Wealth power
Speaker 3: and gloria only won by trampling others' rights. My conscience
Speaker 3: is at peace, for it knows that under my convict's
Speaker 3: garb beats an honest heart. So he died in his
Speaker 3: jail cell in nineteen twenty two, possibly assassinated. Zapata, like
Speaker 3: I said, was assassinated by Cranzer in nineteen nineteen, and
Speaker 3: Kranz himself was assassinated in nineteen twenty in case who
Speaker 3: Are Keeping Truck? Both of Magon's major ops. He ended
Speaker 3: up outliving right. He outlived Madero and then he outlived Caranzer,
Speaker 3: but he still died in jail, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: kind of tragic. But Kranza's successor, Alvaro Obregon, was both
Speaker 3: friendly with reformists in the YIOM and not as hostile
Speaker 3: to the anarchists as Caranza, which gave the anarchists an
Speaker 3: opportunity to regroup. Strikes built up across the country miners,
Speaker 3: oil workers, textile workers, dock workers and more, some sixty
Speaker 3: five thousand workers in July nineteen twenty. Out of this
Speaker 3: momentum came the Ferracion Communista del Proletariado Mexicano or FCPM.
Speaker 3: It was an ideologically mixed group, but leaned in an
Speaker 3: arctic direction and starkly contrasted itself with the reformist ways
Speaker 3: the CROM and the international ally the AFL. The FCPM
Speaker 3: went on to establish the Confederacion General de Tabajadores or
Speaker 3: CGT in nineteen twenty one as a direct challenge to
Speaker 3: the CROM. They were fully declaring their independence from state
Speaker 3: and party. Their focus was on class struggle. The Mexican
Speaker 3: government flew to his socialist language from time to time,
Speaker 3: but the anarchists saw through the charade. They called out
Speaker 3: that so called socialist light government's deportation of anarchists and socialists.
Speaker 3: They even called Maroney the guy who started crom Mexico's Mussolini.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting insult.
Speaker 3: The CGT stood against the Moscow backed Third International and
Speaker 3: instead allied with councilorsts like Rosa Luxembourg and Anton Panacoec.
Speaker 3: They also formed a specifically anarchist section within the group,
Speaker 3: meant to play the same role played by the FAI
Speaker 3: for the Spanish CGT. The Mexican CGT backed strikes, including
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty one when they backed a real workers'
Speaker 3: strike against US companies, and in nineteen twenty two they
Speaker 3: expelled the CGT leaders who had flirted with electoral politics,
Speaker 3: reiterating their anti party stance.
Speaker 2: They would not.
Speaker 3: Allow themselves to be retaken and capitulated to reformist aims.
Speaker 3: That same year, media protests turned into confrontations when right
Speaker 3: wing thugs kill the demonstrator's child in front of the
Speaker 3: US consolate, and they didn't stop there. Anarchists in the
Speaker 3: CGT helped organize tenant strikes in Mexico City and Veracruz.
Speaker 3: They led general strikes and textile mills and rallied against
Speaker 3: steed violence They protested in solidarity with international struggles from
Speaker 3: Spain to Boston, from the murder of Salvador Sigwi to
Speaker 3: the gelin of Sacco and Vencetti. They also to deal
Speaker 3: with efforts to defame them through misinformation, such as the
Speaker 3: accusation that they were embstling workers' funds. Throughout the early
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties you had some new libertarian publications jumping out.
Speaker 3: You had Viberrojo, you had Lahumi, Dad Sachi, Tario, Tierra Libre, Alba, Anakika,
Speaker 3: and so on. And by nineteen twenty four, under President Kayes,
Speaker 3: who followed the assassinated Obrigon, the tides began to shift.
Speaker 3: Kays was more hostile to the anarchists than a brigon
Speaker 3: and openly favored cron. He gave Morones a cabinet post.
Speaker 3: Past Lowist undermined CGT, organizing and escalated repression. The CGT
Speaker 3: held its ground, organizing general strikes, occupying textile mills, confronting
Speaker 3: the police, expand into the countryside all their usual stuff.
Speaker 3: They fought for short term relief and long term revolution.
Speaker 3: By nineteen twenty six, CGT had grown into a federation
Speaker 3: of one hundred and fifty seven affiliated groups, unions, syndicates
Speaker 3: occur in communities all included. And yet by the late
Speaker 3: nineteen twenties things started to free. The CROM was declining
Speaker 3: due to their attachments to a government that was no
Speaker 3: longer conciliatory to their political ambitions, and the CGT couldn't
Speaker 3: capitalize on that decline of the CROM. The government sought
Speaker 3: to marginalize them entirely. Thousands of former CROM members joined
Speaker 3: the CGT, while the CGT itself began to make some
Speaker 3: slides toward concession and reformer zone, and so it reached
Speaker 3: a point where they were calling themselves anarchists. But the
Speaker 3: anarchism was nowhere never and yet anarchism didn't die. It morphed,
Speaker 3: it migrated, and it regrouped. After the fall of Spain
Speaker 3: in nineteen thirty nine, exiled members the CNT and FAI
Speaker 3: arrived in Mexico, reinvigorating the scene for a time. They
Speaker 3: published Tierai Libertad, built new organizations, and kept the memory
Speaker 3: and the fight alive. A few anarchists impulses managed to
Speaker 3: emolish within the Mecha Concommunist Party into the early nineteen
Speaker 3: thirties as well. At least according to Kirkschaffer, President Cais
Speaker 3: ended up founding what became the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a
Speaker 3: contradiction if I ever heard it. And they basically ran
Speaker 3: the show in Mexico for seventy one years straight from
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty nine to two thousand. The administration co created
Speaker 3: the conditions. They were both the NEOs Apatis Molls in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four. They're anarchists, as they have been very
Speaker 3: clear to state, but maybe they'll get a two parter
Speaker 3: in the future going into their history in more depth.
Speaker 3: The history of anarchism in Mexico has been quite the story,
Speaker 3: I must say, and with that we've reached the end
Speaker 3: of that classical history. Its modern history is still being written,
Speaker 3: still being told. But this is the end of our
Speaker 3: exploration for now, much as of Mexico's anarchist history, but
Speaker 3: of this entire series of anarchism in Latin America. I
Speaker 3: joked about baking an episode about Quebec's anarchism see but
Speaker 3: that may remain a joke for now.
Speaker 2: We'veur neyed a very.
Speaker 3: Long way together, from the Andes to Buenos Aires, to
Speaker 3: Montevideo to South Bolo to all over We've seen how
Speaker 3: long before the name anarchism arrived in the Latin America's
Speaker 3: shows people who resisting hierarchy through indigenous forms of autonomy,
Speaker 3: African Maroon communities, and peasant traditions of land sharing and reciprocity.
Speaker 3: We saw how these anarchic and anarchist instincts met new
Speaker 3: ideas genuinely and intentionally. Anarchist ideas coming from Pudin, Bacunan
Speaker 3: and Kropotkin brought over in pamphlets and in the minds
Speaker 3: of exiles and immigrants in Mexico. Those forces took on
Speaker 3: a revolutionary scale. Rota Kanati planted the seed, Macgone amplified
Speaker 3: its voice. The workers, the peasants, the students. They all
Speaker 3: gave it their all, their fire, And even when that
Speaker 3: fire was smothered by reformists, by nationalists, by reactionaries, by capitalists,
Speaker 3: by the bullets and the bribe, it never truly went out.
Speaker 3: Across the Americas, these movements rarely one in the traditional sense.
Speaker 3: They will often betrayed, suppressed, and erased from history. But
Speaker 3: although anarchy was not achieved, anarchists and the anarchist idea
Speaker 3: will survive.
Speaker 2: Anarchists thought is.
Speaker 3: Radically resilient, and it never really disappears, and usually just
Speaker 3: goes underground or into the margins, or into new forms,
Speaker 3: from student collectives to feminist organizations to squads to ecological struggles,
Speaker 3: inspiring movements that aren't necessarily anarchists, but lean in a
Speaker 3: direction that questions some of the familiar patterns of authority.
Speaker 3: Thank you for walking this journey with me. I've been
Speaker 3: Andrew Saige. You can find me on YouTube at androism
Speaker 3: support the work over a Patreon dot com slash change True.
Speaker 3: All sources, citations, and further reading can be found in
Speaker 3: the show notes. This has been, It Could Happen, Walpoworks, all.
Speaker 2: The People Peace.
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