Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: Like one of the cool things that I'm doing is
Speaker 2: taking an extra week to make sure that this really
Speaker 2: big story about neoliberalism and the Zapatistas and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: making sure I do it right, and to facilitate me
Speaker 2: taking that break, I'm learning a rerun. You probably already
Speaker 2: knew that this is part two, but I figured i'd
Speaker 2: tell you again anyway. And this is an episode about
Speaker 2: the Maganistas, who kind of did the Mexican Revolution before
Speaker 2: the Mexican Revolution, and I think they're cool and that
Speaker 2: they did cool stuff, which is why I recorded an
Speaker 2: episode about them, and I'm playing it again, and here
Speaker 2: it is. Hello and Welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: which is podcast about history and the people in it
Speaker 2: who did good things, usually in the face of bad things,
Speaker 2: because that's one of the main things you can do
Speaker 2: when there's a dichotomy is take the other side of dichotomy,
Speaker 2: and if one side of it is bad, then the
Speaker 2: other side is good. I know how words work. I'm
Speaker 2: Margaret Kiljoy with me today. It's Kataboo. How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm great?
Speaker 2: How are you? I'm doing pretty good? My dog is outside.
Speaker 2: Usually when I record, he's like right behind me. I
Speaker 2: was already telling Kath this, but now I'm apparently telling
Speaker 2: everyone This's usually he's like right behind me, and every
Speaker 2: now and then I like look back and get the
Speaker 2: little The major he doesn't have a dog is that
Speaker 2: it's a endorphin machine. You just like look at it
Speaker 2: and then you're like, oh, you know, do you do that.
Speaker 3: Thing when you look at him? And then he said
Speaker 3: out sense is it? And then he just like raises
Speaker 3: his head a little bit to be like hey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he's like oh, and then he puts
Speaker 2: his head back down. It's so good.
Speaker 3: Perfect.
Speaker 2: He's a perfect little angel who is probably now scarying
Speaker 2: off all the airplanes in the yard because he's learned
Speaker 2: that if he barks at airplanes, they fly away, so
Speaker 2: he will probably do it till I die. And I'm
Speaker 2: glad that I don't have a lot of neighbors and
Speaker 2: all my neighbors think that my dog is gigantic and scary,
Speaker 2: and I don't actually hate that. I don't hate that
Speaker 2: my neighbors think I have a giant, scary dog, even
Speaker 2: though I don't. That's what this episode is you just.
Speaker 1: Have to see Rendrow space. It's I know, perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: What this dog looks like.
Speaker 1: I love it, handsome, hands I believe it. I believe that.
Speaker 2: He's a if you mixed a muppet and a tiny
Speaker 2: German shepherd together.
Speaker 1: That's such a perfect description of Rondraw.
Speaker 3: That sounds like the most perfect being that's ever existed.
Speaker 2: I know. The other one is actually I can see
Speaker 2: on screen is Anderson.
Speaker 1: Ye equally perfectly right behind me.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. It's much like how I run across the
Speaker 2: perlatives and history, and I'm like, how can all these
Speaker 2: different things be the first? I should just think about
Speaker 2: it like I think about dogs. All dogs are the
Speaker 2: best dog exactly. And uh. Anderson's person is our producer
Speaker 2: named Sophie.
Speaker 1: Hi, Sophie, that's my favorite way you've ever introduced me.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Well, it's one of the things you're very good at.
Speaker 1: I hope, so I try really hard.
Speaker 2: Also, Ian as our audio engineer, Hi Ian Hi, Ianne him.
Speaker 2: Our music was made for us by unwoman. And this week,
Speaker 2: you know, like, okay, I say this every Wednesday. Every Wednesday,
Speaker 2: I say, go back and listen to Mondays episode because
Speaker 2: it won't make any fucking sense. It's like extra true,
Speaker 2: I think this time, because you're really coming in the middle,
Speaker 2: Like what do you Why do you make the decisions
Speaker 2: you do? I mean, I guess anyone can make any
Speaker 2: decisions they want is relate to this. It's not hurting
Speaker 2: anyone except yourself.
Speaker 3: It's just going to be really confusing because you won't
Speaker 3: get all of the awesome backstory and the Louisa shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Louisa doesn't even come back into the story.
Speaker 3: And exactly do you want to miss out on li Lisa?
Speaker 2: No, Margarita doesn't come back in either.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you're going to mis sell with Lisa
Speaker 3: and Margarita. Ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this week we were talking about the Maganestas,
Speaker 2: the peasant and proletarian uprisings that came shortly before and
Speaker 2: likely sparked the Mexican Revolution. They're anti leader who wishes
Speaker 2: who was the leader, but hates stud he's the leader
Speaker 2: and has complicated feelings. Is a grouchy guy named Ricardo
Speaker 2: Flores Magone who is about to flee Mexico after going
Speaker 2: to jail for like the tenth time. By nineteen oh four.
Speaker 2: We gotta have to get out of here. The government
Speaker 2: it's probably going to kill us at some point, right,
Speaker 2: That is a thing that they do. They have a dictator.
Speaker 2: A few of their crew are already in San Antonio,
Speaker 2: Texas or Laredo, Texas, depending on your source. Most of
Speaker 2: them seem to say San Antonio, including the rich guy
Speaker 2: Ariaga and the feminist journal journalist Mendoza who runs vesper, a,
Speaker 2: Texas based Mexican poet Sarah Stella Ramirez is there too.
Speaker 2: She goes on to become a leader of the resistance.
Speaker 2: She's not woven enough into the stories I read, so
Speaker 2: I'm just shouting out her name. This is it whatever? Anyway,
Speaker 2: everyone knows how bitter I am about this. So that's
Speaker 2: where the they went penniless. Ricardo's pants were actually patched
Speaker 2: up because he couldn't afford new pants, which as an
Speaker 2: anarchist punk who wore black patch pant black patch pants
Speaker 2: for most of my twenties when I wasn't wearing dresses,
Speaker 2: I'm just really excited about this guy who wears all
Speaker 2: black and has patch pants. Also, we're going to see
Speaker 2: Ricardo in a dress before the story is through. Oh fuck,
Speaker 2: guess they took jobs as farm laborers and dishwashers. They
Speaker 2: survived off of the vegetables they gleaned at work. This
Speaker 2: is like another thing that like people talk about all
Speaker 2: these historic revolutionaries, and some of them like a lot
Speaker 2: of just to be rude, A lot of the more
Speaker 2: liberal ones would be from upper class backgrounds, right, and
Speaker 2: they'll like be revolutionary spased with their family money, which
Speaker 2: is a good thing to do, right, But so many
Speaker 2: revolutionaries that I read about, like, yeah, this guy crossed
Speaker 2: into Texas from Mexico and became and started working as
Speaker 2: a day laborer on a farm because that's he had
Speaker 2: to fucking eat. Even though he is going to go
Speaker 2: on and to change the world, he still has to
Speaker 2: fucking eat. And no one's giving him enough money. People
Speaker 2: are giving him money to start his newspaper backup, or
Speaker 2: giving them money to start their newspaper backup.
Speaker 3: And I know you said that it's illegal for him
Speaker 3: to write, is it illegal for people to read?
Speaker 2: It is illegal for him to get it into Mexico. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who don't care about the law.
Speaker 2: Rat So they printed in the United States and then
Speaker 2: kind of some of the bravest and people taking the
Speaker 2: most risks, and it's not sure there's every level of
Speaker 2: risk people are taking. In this story. One of the
Speaker 2: crazy brave things that people do is smuggle them back in.
Speaker 2: A lot of it is like the train union, right,
Speaker 2: They'll be like, oh, yeah, I just put it on
Speaker 2: my train and I'll take it in and so it
Speaker 2: actually kind of cool. Like, not everyone who's going to
Speaker 2: be involved in the social struggle, it's mostly a peasant
Speaker 2: and proletarian struggle. Not everyone's literate, but someone on your
Speaker 2: work crew probably is. So someone is going around and
Speaker 2: going to every fucking hacienda and passing out regeneracy on right,
Speaker 2: and then one person who knows how to read is
Speaker 2: getting up and reading it to everyone else, which is
Speaker 2: absolutely something that people died doing.
Speaker 3: It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's like something about the fact that the written
Speaker 2: word can actually change the world, but it's not it
Speaker 2: changes the world because people use it, you know, like
Speaker 2: and people do this other work and everyone is part
Speaker 2: of any way whatever a lot goes on for them
Speaker 2: in the US. This easily could have been a four parter. More,
Speaker 2: I want to focus a bit less on the liberal
Speaker 2: leaders in exile than what the Maganese does themselves, besides
Speaker 2: mcgonnard doing so to fast forward. The liberal leaders in Texas,
Speaker 2: they have a lot of arguments about being moderate or radical,
Speaker 2: liberal or anarchist. They are working tirelessly for revolution. They
Speaker 2: fight off assassins, they get arrested for fighting off their
Speaker 2: own assassin. At one point they move from Texas to
Speaker 2: Saint Louis to get away from the assassins. Then they
Speaker 2: have to move to Toronto, and because the US government
Speaker 2: is after them, then the Canadian government's like, we're going
Speaker 2: to fucking get you. So then they go back to
Speaker 2: Los Angeles. The presidents and police of two countries and
Speaker 2: the fucking Pinkertons are hunting them.
Speaker 3: And this is like early nineteen hundred. So they're taking
Speaker 3: like slow ash trains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus, it's over and over again. They're like Ricardo,
Speaker 2: while he's living in Montreal, is in a meeting in
Speaker 2: El Paso and like, Okay, that's really far. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: they form an organization called the PLM, the Partito Liberal
Speaker 2: and Mexican, the Mexican Liberal Party. In nineteen oh six,
Speaker 2: they release a platform which is basically that they're saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: this is the plan, right, this is what we're going
Speaker 2: to do when we overthrow this fuck. And this is
Speaker 2: a compromise position. It is a compromise position between the
Speaker 2: radicals and the moderates. And really, interestingly, and I think importantly,
Speaker 2: it wasn't the mcgon brother Is there anyone else sitting
Speaker 2: down and going this is what I want? They actually
Speaker 2: like corresponded illegally with like thousands of people in Mexico.
Speaker 2: They were getting hundreds of letters a day. The US
Speaker 2: Mail confiscated over four thousand letters in the end, right,
Speaker 2: And they basically were like, what do you want? Right?
Speaker 2: This is a democratic thing, right, what is our revolutionary program?
Speaker 2: And they put it all together into one document, and it,
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, came out of the
Speaker 2: will of the Mexican revolutionary folks. This is often seen
Speaker 2: as the most important document in Mexican revolution. There would
Speaker 2: go with the superlatives. The books I read said it
Speaker 2: was the most important document in Mexican revolution. And basically
Speaker 2: all the water down liberal reformers who come after pick
Speaker 2: and choose pieces of it. Ever since, the mcgon brothers
Speaker 2: go the opposite way and decide this is not radical enough.
Speaker 2: The current Mexican Constitution borrows heavily from this document because
Speaker 2: the leader of the group that drafted the nineteen seventeen
Speaker 2: constitution had actually started his work writing as a Maganesta
Speaker 2: and it which is just like if you imagine like
Speaker 2: the founding fathers were all like actually radical, you know, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: this document it wanted to curb the powers of the
Speaker 2: executive branch. It wanted to limit presidency to four years
Speaker 2: with no possibility of re election, which has been a
Speaker 2: big issue for like almost one hundred years at this point.
Speaker 2: No more military tribunals, no more compulsory military service. Replace
Speaker 2: prisons with agricultural penal colonies, no more death penalty. Women
Speaker 2: are equal to men in all regards. Free and universal
Speaker 2: secular education for children, free speech, free press, eight hour workday,
Speaker 2: minimum wage, pensions for every job. No child labor unions
Speaker 2: are encouraged. Restore the land to indigenous communities, seize giant landholdings,
Speaker 2: and distribute the land fairly among the peasants. And Mexican
Speaker 2: citizenship is mandatory for land ownership because so much of
Speaker 2: Mexico is owned by foreign business investments. This sounds great,
Speaker 2: It was. It had one one fatal flaw.
Speaker 3: What's that?
Speaker 2: The fatal flaw that afflicts the nineteenth and early twentieth
Speaker 2: century labor union almost everywhere you look. Sophie's giving me
Speaker 2: the look because it came up in the last fucking
Speaker 2: episode we did about Irish miners racism.
Speaker 3: God damn it.
Speaker 2: In a this differs wildly from mcgone, the Maganestas and
Speaker 2: the PM's later politics, and likely mcgon's politics at the time.
Speaker 2: But he also puts it in, so I'm not well
Speaker 2: he the party puts it in. It calls to bar
Speaker 2: Chinese immigration because Chinese workers work for less money than
Speaker 2: Mexican workers or whatever. This is the like fucking lie
Speaker 2: that gets told to workers goddamn everywhere.
Speaker 3: About get everyone fair wages. Yeah, I mean it's like
Speaker 3: the EPs workers, how the RC phone strike for part timers,
Speaker 3: Like that's awesome. Yeah, yeah, you know racist, you can
Speaker 3: everyone should just be able to live. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 3: it's crazy.
Speaker 2: But WHOA, I don't know about all that. Yeah later
Speaker 2: mcgone and the PLM and stuff like right about how
Speaker 2: fucked up this is? The worker's movement knows no borders
Speaker 2: and no nationality and is basically trying to move away
Speaker 2: from a nationalism that had infused the liberal movement, but
Speaker 2: it is absolutely there at the time. The same year,
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh six, a new wave of uprising starts,
Speaker 2: and this particularly starts among miners in the border towns.
Speaker 2: The miners had it really fucking bad. They were paid
Speaker 2: in pesos but forced to buy things in dollars. The
Speaker 2: workers were Mexican, their bosses were estato and a dentis
Speaker 2: like from the US. I hate that there's no English
Speaker 2: word for this besides American, which fucking sucks everywhere else
Speaker 2: in the Western hemisphere is a word for this for US,
Speaker 2: which makes sense. Maybe we could just use a Yankee.
Speaker 3: That's the word that ringo. Yeah, I mean that means foreigner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder. I literally just don't know. I wonder.
Speaker 2: You know, in the USA mostly run across gringo having
Speaker 2: the connotation of specifically white foreigner. But also this is
Speaker 2: absolutely true in this case, right, It is not just
Speaker 2: that the people are from the United States, but there
Speaker 2: are white people from the United States. Yeah. The miners
Speaker 2: are literally not getting paid enough to survive. They go
Speaker 2: into debt into the company's store. They're literally like buying
Speaker 2: shit with money that has like their boss's face printed
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 3: Cool. Yeah, fun.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't it be so much fun? It'd be like fun money,
Speaker 2: you know, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like, you know, just get a box of
Speaker 3: Monopoly and turn it upside down and say, all right,
Speaker 3: try to buy things with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I get paid in dragon Bucks now, but
Speaker 2: it has Anderson on it, so I feel good about it.
Speaker 3: Anxiety.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they die their children inherit their debt.
Speaker 3: Cool. Fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Dead slavery is like actually a thing. It's different
Speaker 2: than chattel slavery, but it's fucking real. So they go
Speaker 2: on strike. It's likely that the PLM and also a
Speaker 2: radical anti racist US miners union called the Western Federation
Speaker 2: of Miners help get this strike going, but they all,
Speaker 2: like everyone's either like taking credit or denying that they
Speaker 2: had anything to do with the strike, right, depending on
Speaker 2: whether how they want to look. So some folks say
Speaker 2: it was a wildcat strike. Either way, the people who
Speaker 2: did it were the workers, whether they were organized from
Speaker 2: outside or not. On June first, nineteen oh six, two
Speaker 2: thousand workers go on strike. The boss whose money is
Speaker 2: on their paper is a rare bad quaker. On this show.
Speaker 2: Usually the Quakers come in hard. Yeah, yeah, especially during
Speaker 2: an abolition in the US times, I guess some of
Speaker 2: the only white people doing any fucking good. This particular
Speaker 2: guy happened to be Quaker and happened be a piece
Speaker 2: of shit, so he was like but he was very like, hey,
Speaker 2: like I pay you better than anyone else, which is
Speaker 2: like true, but it's still not enough to eat, you know.
Speaker 2: And also he's friends with Diaz, so he's able to
Speaker 2: skirt even more labor laws than the other people are.
Speaker 3: And Diaz is still in power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Diaz is still in power until nineteen ten, nineteen eleven,
Speaker 2: And so he asks, yeah, because he's been in power
Speaker 2: for thirty fucking years at this point. So he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm cool. I'll just show up and everyone will like
Speaker 2: listen to me. And so he's like, hey, could you
Speaker 2: give meet your demands in writing? And so they sit
Speaker 2: there and they write down their demands and writing, and
Speaker 2: he takes them and then he he politely writes them
Speaker 2: back a letter refusing every single one of their demands,
Speaker 2: and in the meantime, cool Boss has gone to the
Speaker 2: local stores and bought every single gun and given them
Speaker 2: to all the white people working for him all the manager.
Speaker 3: That's just like every flaker, would I know.
Speaker 2: So the worker stage a walkout. A white manager starts
Speaker 2: shooting at them, kills three miners, so they stab him
Speaker 2: to death with a candlestick.
Speaker 3: That's such a slow way to die, being stabbed to
Speaker 3: death with the candles.
Speaker 2: I think it might be the holder that it's like
Speaker 2: the miners go into the.
Speaker 3: Imagine it's the wax and thread and they're just like
Speaker 3: really going at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wouldn't fucking mind. In this case, the manager's
Speaker 2: brother starts shooting them at Okay, I mean to be fair,
Speaker 2: they just killed his brother, but his brother just killed
Speaker 2: a bunch of whatever anyway, So he dies with a
Speaker 2: candlestick in the back too. I feel like this is
Speaker 2: a game of clue. And then they burned the place down.
Speaker 2: They dynamite all the company property. They've been preparing for this. Actually,
Speaker 2: there's like at some point I think the guy the
Speaker 2: reason the owner goes and buys the guns is they're like,
Speaker 2: someone's like, yo, dynamite's missing. That's probably bad, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're starving everyone to death. Anyway, So they're shooting the
Speaker 2: they is bad. Federal troops come in. In the end,
Speaker 2: two hundred workers are dead and twenty thousand people get arrested,
Speaker 2: which is a scale that I can't really fathom.
Speaker 3: I don't understand how you arrest twenty thousand people. Where
Speaker 3: do you put them?
Speaker 2: I don't fucking know.
Speaker 3: That's insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, only one of the sources I read gave the
Speaker 2: number of arrestees, so I don't have like a lower
Speaker 2: number from a different source.
Speaker 3: Either way, A shit done.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Meanwhile, elsewhere, the Yaqui people are rebelling against the
Speaker 2: theft of their lands, and when they're arrested, they're not killed,
Speaker 2: well often they're killed. If they're not killed, they're sent
Speaker 2: to labor plantations and the jungles, far from their homes.
Speaker 2: And so the PLM they're getting fucking ready for revolution.
Speaker 2: They've got forty to seventy cells across the country and
Speaker 2: in the borderlands. A lot of the cells are in
Speaker 2: US border towns, and their plan is to start all
Speaker 2: the uprisings at once on one day, September twenty fourth,
Speaker 2: nineteen oh six. They're coordinating all of this across the
Speaker 2: border by mail, which was not Frankly, that wasn't the
Speaker 2: right way to do it. Everyone figured out what they
Speaker 2: were up to. So cells start getting raided in the
Speaker 2: US and they find all the explosives and guns.
Speaker 3: Is the US rating these cells, like New Mexico.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the US police are doing it a lot of it.
Speaker 2: The Texas Rangers are kind of like the pre border
Speaker 2: patrol Border patrol, and they're doing a lot of it
Speaker 2: as well. Sorry, yeah, I actually I hold you responsible
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 3: It's all me. It's all on me. I'm so sorry everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fortunately you you weren't able to stop the rebels,
Speaker 2: especially those in Mexico. They kind of have nothing to lose, right,
Speaker 2: The people in the US, they're a little bit safer, right,
Speaker 2: Like the US is a really shitty and racist place.
Speaker 2: Only then things are magic and fixed.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, things are good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why every couple of years we have to
Speaker 2: make things fixed permanently again by having some uprisings. So
Speaker 2: some folks just fucking go, even though it's like been
Speaker 2: found out and they're like probably going to lose, They're like,
Speaker 2: we're fucking doing this. Insurgents in northern Mexico apprehend the
Speaker 2: mayor of their town and the treasurer and the trash
Speaker 2: the tax collector of Yumenis, they flee when the soldiers
Speaker 2: are mobilized against them. In Vera Cruz, two hundred rebels
Speaker 2: attack the city of Achaiakon, only to be driven off.
Speaker 2: In Pajupan, they imprisoned city officials and appointed new ones,
Speaker 2: but then they ran out of ammunition and fled federal
Speaker 2: troops and so on and so on. Just across the country,
Speaker 2: liberals or anarchists or whatever, and indigenous folks and other
Speaker 2: people start taking officials hostage. They lose. Most of the
Speaker 2: leaders are executed. Retributions are made against indigenous villages, as
Speaker 2: we've already proven from earlier that is like one way
Speaker 2: they do it, as they just kill everyone in a
Speaker 2: town and set it on fire. An elderly Mexico City
Speaker 2: city edit of an affiliated paper was beaten to death
Speaker 2: during his arrest, so everyone gave up. In Portfolio, Diaz
Speaker 2: is still empowered to day, or everyone kept going. In
Speaker 2: December nineteen oh six, the textile workers went back on
Speaker 2: strike because textile workers fucking love striking. The company tried
Speaker 2: to starve them out, which of course wouldn't happen now.
Speaker 2: No companies just see their union striking and be like,
Speaker 2: we care about them. They wouldn't cut all the trees
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles to try.
Speaker 3: It's just about to say, yeah, what an insane thing
Speaker 3: to do like that. That's just no why did they
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just like they're like, hey, let's get some bad
Speaker 2: pr for basically no reason you want to do that?
Speaker 3: Like that is like and that's like a movie villain
Speaker 3: thing today, like a really bad movie to be like,
Speaker 3: oh my workers are striking, Let's cut the leaves off
Speaker 3: the trees, you know, not just cut down that, like,
Speaker 3: don't even cut down the trees, just cut all the
Speaker 3: leaves off.
Speaker 2: It's like Disney level villain level.
Speaker 3: Ev Yes, it's like Disney knockoff, like when those shitty
Speaker 3: like kids studios try to make like a you know,
Speaker 3: Gratitude knockoff or whatever.
Speaker 2: The villain's like comically bad, which I guess makes sense
Speaker 2: that it's that without their writers. It's people who make
Speaker 2: movies trying to come up with something clever to do.
Speaker 3: They're asking AI, They're like, how do we sound that
Speaker 3: to our strikers, and then chat GVT is like cut
Speaker 3: all the leaves off. Oh my god, that's probably what happened.
Speaker 2: That's probably what happened. Right you and know what else
Speaker 2: is controlled algorithmically tell me the ads that people are
Speaker 2: about to listen to, unless they're on Cooler Zone Media,
Speaker 2: in which case the only ad you listened to was
Speaker 2: me advertising Cooler Zone Media. Here's some ads, and we're
Speaker 2: back the textile workers. They want to their company is
Speaker 2: going to starve them out. However, instead, people from all
Speaker 2: over the country send them money because people are like,
Speaker 2: now we support the textile workers. Fuck yeah. So the
Speaker 2: owners just shut down all the factories in the area
Speaker 2: just to just to defeat the union. They're like, find
Speaker 2: no one gets anything, basically, and because they've been sent
Speaker 2: all this money, the workers are like, well I have
Speaker 2: at least I have enough to eat. So in Rio
Speaker 2: Blanca Blanco, a company store refuses to sell striking worker food.
Speaker 2: Guys like, I got money.
Speaker 3: We'll get money either way. Like you get money if
Speaker 3: you just pay people a living wage, you still get
Speaker 3: Now you're getting no money.
Speaker 2: I know you can their surplus value.
Speaker 3: I know you can still get money by selling people food.
Speaker 3: You're getting no money by doing this. You are so
Speaker 3: bad at owning a business.
Speaker 2: One money or zero money.
Speaker 3: I'd rather have one money if I was a goulish
Speaker 3: cartoon character that wants to starve workers. I would still
Speaker 3: like at least one money.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, in the end, the store owner gets nothing
Speaker 2: because they looted the store and burned it down buckets.
Speaker 2: Then they went and said everyone free at the local jail.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: And so the rebels their maganese does and they're not subtle.
Speaker 2: The editor of their newspaper of the local, the Textile
Speaker 2: Worker newspaper, said, when we run into difficulties with management,
Speaker 2: we shall strike, and if the strike is not successful,
Speaker 2: we shall turn to dynamite and revolution. Soon that particular
Speaker 2: editor was on the run I believe had to move
Speaker 2: to the United States for saying that the dictatorship freaked
Speaker 2: the fuck out about this textile thing. Men, women and
Speaker 2: children is a quote sorry from author Hernandez Padia. Men,
Speaker 2: women and children were pulled from their homes and executed
Speaker 2: in the barracks. Those able to flee were later captured
Speaker 2: and killed. Meanwhile, management at the Rio Blanco mill raised
Speaker 2: their champagne filled glasses and in unison honored General Martinez
Speaker 2: with a toast. They celebrated the massacre. Yeah, it's a.
Speaker 3: Do you're celebrating kids being slaughdered, and at no point,
Speaker 3: you're not like, oh wow, am I the bad guy here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, they said, are we the baddies? But then
Speaker 2: they looked at their Sorry, I don't know if I can.
Speaker 3: They were like, yeah, we're thick, We're good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Meanwhile in the US, a lot of the labor
Speaker 2: union in the US is trying to support this. To
Speaker 2: the goth Irish socialist Mother Jones, she probably didn't identify
Speaker 2: as a goth. She was just a woman who wore
Speaker 2: black mourning clothes all the time. So she was a
Speaker 2: goth because we've always been here, much like trans people
Speaker 2: have always been here, Goths always been here. Mother Jones.
Speaker 2: We talked about her in her black dresses and her
Speaker 2: tough as fuck labor organizing in the Blair Blair Mountain episode.
Speaker 2: She liked to cuss, She liked to hang out with
Speaker 2: real rowdy boys with revolvers, and she fights against the
Speaker 2: repression of the Maganestas in the US and alongside the
Speaker 2: rest of the US labor movement, and she puts political
Speaker 2: pressure on governments to get rebels freed from US jails.
Speaker 2: She successfully frees at least one of the sort of
Speaker 2: the liberal editors who are in the US who are
Speaker 2: writing not Magone but another one. She goes on a
Speaker 2: speaking tour around the country about the struggle of the PLM.
Speaker 2: Labor unions raise thousands of dollars. The minor unions in
Speaker 2: particular a supportive since many of their members are Mexican
Speaker 2: or Mexican American themselves, and basically there's just dozens of
Speaker 2: groups all over the US working to support the PLM.
Speaker 2: They keep trying to catch Ricardo Flores Magone. I was
Speaker 2: not to say you can't catch him, but he's been.
Speaker 2: He gets caught like eighteen times in his life. But
Speaker 2: they fail a lot too. He keeps escaping out windows
Speaker 2: and shit because he's pretty sure if they catch him.
Speaker 2: At this point he's one hundred percent going to Mexico
Speaker 2: and getting executed. He is a twenty thousand dollars bounty
Speaker 2: on his head. There are scores of private detectives after
Speaker 2: him from multiple agencies. So he flees from Los Angeles
Speaker 2: by resorting to the old standby. He dresses as a
Speaker 2: woman and moves to San Francisco. Yes, yeah, the real
Speaker 2: question is whether he kept the mustache when he did
Speaker 2: that or not.
Speaker 3: I hope to that he did. It's an impressive mustache.
Speaker 2: It is. It is. He doesn't stop organizing mlon the run.
Speaker 2: I don't know what happened with his family at this point.
Speaker 2: He has a common law wife at this point, and
Speaker 2: they agreed upon basically they're both anarchists, and they both
Speaker 2: believe in the sort of anarchist feminist principle at the
Speaker 2: time of being against the formal institution of marriage. So
Speaker 2: they're common law married, and he adopts her daughter as
Speaker 2: his own, and they stay tight the rest of his life,
Speaker 2: which is like a good turn. Usually when we have
Speaker 2: like a self obsessed man who's like grouchy when he
Speaker 2: doesn't get his way and is like a radical, he's
Speaker 2: also just like a misogynist piece of shit, right mcgon
Speaker 2: Ricardo flour Is mcgon is like interesting. He clearly believe it,
Speaker 2: believes and writes in a lot of feminist principles. And
Speaker 2: one of the things that I ran across at one
Speaker 2: point was that the other like Broie guys he's hanging
Speaker 2: out with, won't crack certain jokes around him. And it
Speaker 2: doesn't quite say what jokes, but I think it's misogynist
Speaker 2: jokes that he's just like won't fucking put up with.
Speaker 2: So he's like mostly really he is better than everyone
Speaker 2: else around him who are men, but he also like
Speaker 2: is some of his earlier a lot of his articles
Speaker 2: are like women should support the revolution by supporting their
Speaker 2: men or whatever at various points, like really boring shit too,
Speaker 2: at various points, so whatever, But usually I talk about
Speaker 2: these people and then they're like, wife and kids fucking
Speaker 2: hate them because they're like, these people treated me like shit.
Speaker 2: He his wife and his daughter like him and help
Speaker 2: fight for him, so they.
Speaker 3: Both like him, Like you don't. Just I really love
Speaker 3: like a curmudgeon who is a wife guy, you know,
Speaker 3: like he hates everyone except like three people. That's like
Speaker 3: a an archetype. I really enjoy. Yeah, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: that you know, he has a wife and daughter who
Speaker 3: love him. Yeah, I yeah, just very at least tolerate
Speaker 3: him and speak positively.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like actively like fight campaign to get him
Speaker 2: out of jail multiple times, choose to continue to live
Speaker 2: with him, have no legal bounds to him, and continue
Speaker 2: to do all of these things, you know, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: so the Maganest does they decide they're going to try
Speaker 2: their nineteen oh six plan again, only in nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 2: They don't really actually change that much about the plant.
Speaker 3: Do they still do it by mail?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the problem. That is, there is more time
Speaker 2: for more people to get armed and organized, and their
Speaker 2: messaging is getting less subtle and more radical. They're basically like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: here's a quote. We do not fight for abstractions, but
Speaker 2: from material realities. We want land for everyone, for everyone bred.
Speaker 2: Insofar as blood must necessarily flow, it will be so
Speaker 2: that the conquest we secure will benefit everyone and not
Speaker 2: just a certain social cast. Macgon can't lead this one.
Speaker 2: He's back in jail. He's a lost track of why
Speaker 2: he gets rested in nineteen oh seven, but he gets
Speaker 2: rested in nineteen oh seven. He isn't freedom next freed
Speaker 2: until until nineteen ten. He keeps trying to be in
Speaker 2: charge from jail, but basically people are doing it without him,
Speaker 2: and I don't know there's still a floor as Magon involved.
Speaker 2: Enrique is throwing down in running papers. Ricardo is writing
Speaker 2: fiery shit in prison, which he's really fucking good at.
Speaker 2: I think he's better at that than he is running things, honestly,
Speaker 2: and the way he gets his stuff that he writes
Speaker 2: in prison out is that he sews paper into his
Speaker 2: underwear and then passes on to his lawyers to smuggle out.
Speaker 2: And the nineteen oh eight uprising was more organized than
Speaker 2: the previous one. There's sixty groups in the US and Mexico.
Speaker 2: They're planning action. They divide Mexico into five different parts
Speaker 2: where make sure that everywhere gets hit. Each group develops
Speaker 2: its own plan of attack and gathers its own weapon
Speaker 2: and fighters. But delegates carry message. Actually huh, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's totally by mail. But now I'm reading this and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I think maybe it wasn't as much by mail,
Speaker 2: possibly because of occamas and jail, because you have delegates
Speaker 2: going carrying messages between groups and giving talks. Basically, like
Speaker 2: they're like going around given talks being like, hey, we're
Speaker 2: gonna have a revolution next month, y'all should do it.
Speaker 3: Hey, yeah, we'll send the ABDI.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that they do is they
Speaker 2: actually write two groups, and one of it works really
Speaker 2: well and one of it works really badly. They write
Speaker 2: to all of the indigenous allies that they've worked with
Speaker 2: and all of the other and basically they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: y'all down, we're gonna fucking overthrow this government. You want
Speaker 2: to help overthrow this government, We'll make sure everything goes good.
Speaker 2: And that went really well. They also sent letters to
Speaker 2: all the army of Mexico and we're like, hey, we're
Speaker 2: like of the people. You're probably a conscript. We're actually
Speaker 2: fighting for good shit. You should come join us. This
Speaker 2: mostly just leads to like really easy infiltration because someone
Speaker 2: like a bunch officers show up and they're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we're like to like with you. What's the plan again? Yeah,
Speaker 2: several cells get busted this way.
Speaker 3: As many as like last time, or if you were.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. More uprisings do happen, but I don't
Speaker 2: know the like percent of people who get busted ahead
Speaker 2: of time. I only read about one particular bust ahead
Speaker 2: of time, so I'm actually guessing fewer, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: One of the letters Ricardo had smuggled out was to
Speaker 2: his brother and it explained, okay, so they're moving more
Speaker 2: from liberal to anarchist at this point right overall, both
Speaker 2: in terms of their ideology and their strategy and but
Speaker 2: not what they're saying. They are still the Liberal Party right,
Speaker 2: and Ricardo smuggles out a letter that basically says the
Speaker 2: revolution has to be anarchist in nature, and he's like,
Speaker 2: the reason is because revolutions are always betrayed by leaders
Speaker 2: in bourgeois pressures that co opt and corrupt the will
Speaker 2: of the people, which happens in the nineteen ten revolution.
Speaker 2: So he's right about that. But then he says, they
Speaker 2: should still call themselves liberals and just act like anarchists
Speaker 2: and state their aims, which were anarchists, but they should
Speaker 2: disguise their true goal.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This gets argued about about whether or not this worked
Speaker 2: for them. Some people are like, the reason it worked
Speaker 2: as well as it did is because of this. Other
Speaker 2: people are like, it actually kind of fucked them up
Speaker 2: because it forestalled a bunch of rifts that were going
Speaker 2: to happen, and so then instead the rifts happened during
Speaker 2: like a worse time, right, and it underestimated the radical
Speaker 2: will of the revolutionaries. I don't fucking know. I don't
Speaker 2: know what was right here. I have a honesty thing
Speaker 2: where I think you should just be about what you're about.
Speaker 2: But I also have a thing where being ideologically stubborn
Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily make anyone good, and so.
Speaker 3: People don't know that they actually identify with the different
Speaker 3: ideology because the word's scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And it's been decades since. They're like an
Speaker 2: anarchist tradition in Mexico of large size and things like that.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, I don't fucking know they did what
Speaker 2: they did. So in nineteen oh eight, both sides are
Speaker 2: getting ready. When you go around and give talks like
Speaker 2: we're gonna have a revolution on the following day, it's
Speaker 2: not a good way to keep things undercover.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Troops are stationed on the border. Political officials go into hiding.
Speaker 2: This is like such a good winning moment, like even
Speaker 2: if you fail at your shit, if everyone was like,
Speaker 2: oh fuck, it's like when Trump had to go hide
Speaker 2: in his bunker, you know. Yeah, the Northern States go
Speaker 2: under martial law and hundreds of PLM activists are arrested
Speaker 2: and murdered. The US hates them too. They absolutely threaten
Speaker 2: US interests in Mexico and even US interests at home. Basically,
Speaker 2: the fears that of Mexico turns into a worker's paradise,
Speaker 2: it'll stop exporting cheap labor. So one of the very
Speaker 2: first things that the precursor to the FBI, the Bureau Investigation.
Speaker 2: One of the very first things they do in their
Speaker 2: history is attack the PLM, like go after the PLM,
Speaker 2: keep track of them, try and bring down their leaders,
Speaker 2: all of that stuff. The Alpaso cell was the main
Speaker 2: one I know about getting raided in particular. It was huge.
Speaker 2: It was two hundred to eight hundred people. But this
Speaker 2: one didn't get caught by any other means except their
Speaker 2: neighbors were like, you know, these people are a lot
Speaker 2: of like crates and shit in their yard. It's kind
Speaker 2: of weird. So they called the cops, and yeah, so
Speaker 2: the nimbi's brought down. I mean, the NIMBI is probably
Speaker 2: proud of shit of themselves because they they find bombs
Speaker 2: and guns and like maps to all the like banks
Speaker 2: in the town in northern Mexico where they're gonna go
Speaker 2: with like.
Speaker 3: No one likes a snitch. Yeah, come on, guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So once again the oppression mostly works but doesn't.
Speaker 2: At the same time, in Viesca, two hundred pl fighters
Speaker 2: women and men rose up. They take over the palace,
Speaker 2: They bomb the house of the district boss. District bosses
Speaker 2: are these like the political cronies of Diaz who oversee
Speaker 2: all of the different things in a region. Right, they're
Speaker 2: just like the fucking symbol of corruption. They go and
Speaker 2: they free all the prisoners in the jail. They take
Speaker 2: over the town and they set up their platform, which
Speaker 2: is the anarchism disguised as liberalism. They march off to
Speaker 2: the next town. They're scattered by federal troops. In akiyucn Akiukan,
Speaker 2: a city in southeast Mexico, the PLM did the same thing.
Speaker 2: They empty a jail, they declare the liberal program and
Speaker 2: that the dictatorship was dead. There's only one exchange of
Speaker 2: gunfire in this particular time with some cops. One revolutionary
Speaker 2: was injured, one cop was killed. In the end, they're
Speaker 2: dispersed one fight near the border. So one of the
Speaker 2: other things I kind of cut through it in the
Speaker 2: fast forwarding when they were like hanging out in the US,
Speaker 2: they make friends with the IWW, the Industrial Workers of
Speaker 2: the World, who are like, if you end up doing
Speaker 2: shows about the US and the nineteen tens and twenties,
Speaker 2: you're gonna like the IWW because they're fucking everywhere and
Speaker 2: they're doing everything cool. They are like the ones who
Speaker 2: just like put a nail in. Well, okay, other people
Speaker 2: became racist and with labor unions later, but they were
Speaker 2: the ones who were like, fuck racist labor organizing that
Speaker 2: is some fucking bullshit, and like really actively worked with
Speaker 2: a lot of different immigrant communities and not just ethnic
Speaker 2: whites like previous Anyway, whatever, I like them. They are
Speaker 2: a big part of They're like thrown down with the
Speaker 2: maganeste As left and right, and they're like, all right,
Speaker 2: we'll fucking help you invade Mexico whatever, like so far
Speaker 2: of the same struggle, right and this. I think that
Speaker 2: they were in this one border town because I think
Speaker 2: it's Les Vacas that I don't remember. I didn't write
Speaker 2: into the fucking script. I think the IWW threw down
Speaker 2: because one poet later describing it talks about a blonde
Speaker 2: guy who's fighting for the anarchists, who takes a bullet
Speaker 2: and the thigh, the shin in the shoulder and keeps fighting.
Speaker 2: It's hot, yeah, you know, it makes me happy for
Speaker 2: the inner like international solidarity and the guy who takes
Speaker 2: three bullets and it's just like you, fuck it, I'm aragorn.
Speaker 2: You can't fucking see dude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good for you, dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like Yellen and German He's like, what the fuck.
Speaker 2: And everywhere they did this, people took note of the
Speaker 2: fact that these rebels, compared to a lot of other
Speaker 2: rebels in history, that they were all pretty used to.
Speaker 2: They didn't rob or steal, and so they had the
Speaker 2: people's support. They would I mean they would, like I
Speaker 2: think they would rob banks, right, but they wouldn't like
Speaker 2: take money from people. This all there's more fighting overall
Speaker 2: the uprising. It fails, and no small part because the
Speaker 2: Pinkertons in the US government doing all their investigations and shit.
Speaker 2: So I think nineteen o nine, shortly after this, there's
Speaker 2: one indigenous Myo guy. His name is Fernando Polmaz and
Speaker 2: he's like, well, we have a problem. Why don't we
Speaker 2: go for the most direct solution that we can think
Speaker 2: of for the problem of this dictator. So he waited
Speaker 2: for Portfolio Das to give a public appearance and then
Speaker 2: he shot him.
Speaker 3: But uh oh, yeah, we know how he does.
Speaker 2: I know he did. He was wearing a bulletproof vest.
Speaker 2: They had those in like nineteen twenty apparently ridiculous, I know,
Speaker 2: And the crowd had the assassin's back. And this is
Speaker 2: the first time whenever in the show someone like goes
Speaker 2: up and tries to kill Azar or whatever, the crowd
Speaker 2: is like fuck you and tries to kill the assassin.
Speaker 2: Right now, people fucking hate Diaz. The crowd who was
Speaker 2: there to see Diaz speak help his would be assassin
Speaker 2: get away safely.
Speaker 3: That's so embarrassing for him, I know.
Speaker 2: You know, it's kind of just like it was a draw,
Speaker 2: you know, both people got away. And in nineteen ten,
Speaker 2: Ricardo gets out of prison alongside a bunch of other
Speaker 2: PLM folks in I think Los Angeles, and they are
Speaker 2: met with crowds throwing flowers and cheering, and so he's
Speaker 2: Ricardo Flora's mccon so immediately just goes back to chainsmoking
Speaker 2: and sitting over a typewriter where General Sion is becoming internationalists.
Speaker 2: They now have an English language page is eventually, and
Speaker 2: it's funny because like the Spanish language part of it
Speaker 2: for a long time, eventually it balances out. For a
Speaker 2: long time, the Spanish language part is like, we're going
Speaker 2: to fucking overthrow this shit. We're going to redistribute the lands.
Speaker 2: There is gonna be full fucking socialism is going to
Speaker 2: fucking rule. And the English paper is like us good
Speaker 2: liberals wish to see more democracy in Mexico, your neighbor.
Speaker 3: But then it's crazy that like he had flowers throw
Speaker 3: an irons should in like la and I've never heard
Speaker 3: of this guy. Yeah, yeah, I mean like he had
Speaker 3: this much investment in like US labor movements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, US labor movement and US and Mexican American rights,
Speaker 2: which is later what he ends up fighting for a
Speaker 2: lot too. And yeah, no is people are bad at memory,
Speaker 2: which is why if they take these Do we sell
Speaker 2: memory pills? Sophie?
Speaker 3: Oh, what about dick pills?
Speaker 2: Do we sell dick pills? Sometimes? More or less?
Speaker 1: Is that the occasionally?
Speaker 2: Do we sell titty skills? Does anyone advertise estrogen on
Speaker 2: this show?
Speaker 1: I feel like we got offered something for that at
Speaker 1: one point, but I don't know if it actually happened.
Speaker 1: I don't care. I try to not know as much
Speaker 1: about our ads.
Speaker 2: That's that's fair. Well, let's refer to one of our
Speaker 2: old standbys. This show is sponsored by the idea of
Speaker 2: not talking to cops. If you're arrested, you just want
Speaker 2: to talk to a lawyer, not a cop. Talking to
Speaker 2: a cop won't make your case better. Talking to a
Speaker 2: lawyer might. And then it also purchased shit. I guess
Speaker 2: it doesn't actually impact us one way or the other,
Speaker 2: whether or not you.
Speaker 1: Do like a gift for your lawyer that teaches you
Speaker 1: to shut the fuck up and not talk to cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if we're sponsored by Flowers. I like Flowers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was nice.
Speaker 2: Thanks, here's some ads and we're back. So they've started
Speaker 2: their newspaper backup, running it out of la They have
Speaker 2: a new slogan at Tierra Libertad, Land and Liberty, which
Speaker 2: they got from friends of the pod. The Russian Neurodniks
Speaker 2: were early socialists and nihilis and Russia who left the
Speaker 2: cities to go organize agrarian communities. Later, he passes on
Speaker 2: this slogan to Emiliano Zapada and it becomes one of
Speaker 2: the main slogans of the Mexican Revolution. But more importantly
Speaker 2: than newspapers and slogans, there's now a revolution. It's full scale.
Speaker 2: It's in Mexico. A guy named Madero who could have
Speaker 2: been in this story like eight times earlier, but I
Speaker 2: kept cutting him out because Eventually I'm going to do
Speaker 2: a Mexican Revolution episode and he'll be all over it
Speaker 2: as the almost good guy but kind of not. He
Speaker 2: used to support mcgon when mcgon was more of a liberal,
Speaker 2: but now mcgon's gone further left and Madero has gone
Speaker 2: further to center. Madero ran for president in nineteen ten.
Speaker 2: He was arrested. He lost a rigged election, so he
Speaker 2: escaped from prison, goes to the US, calls for a revolution,
Speaker 2: and basically he actually wants the liberal reforms in kind
Speaker 2: of a century way, but he's pretty genuine about what
Speaker 2: he wants. Madero writes the anarchists, begging for their support,
Speaker 2: and mcgon responds by writing an essay like publishing an
Speaker 2: essay titled Madero is a Trader to the Cause of Liberty.
Speaker 2: We are now entering mcgon's curmudgeonally fuck stage, where he
Speaker 2: is mad that no one is his radicals and now
Speaker 2: that the revolution is happening, which fair, I mean he
Speaker 2: fucking him and his friends laid the groundwork and then
Speaker 2: saw it not be what it could have been. But
Speaker 2: the PLM, which is more and more openly anarchist, they
Speaker 2: don't just sit the Mexican Revolution out the Mexican Revolution
Speaker 2: fought by several different armies working more or less on
Speaker 2: the same side, but like not and actually they end
Speaker 2: up in fighting each other. It's a whole fucking thing.
Speaker 2: So the PLM is like, all right, well, our big
Speaker 2: thing is that we invade Mexico from northern from Texas
Speaker 2: and then try and set everyone free. So they played
Speaker 2: their strengths and they try to invade Chihuahua State in
Speaker 2: northern Mexico, just to get a sense of when I
Speaker 2: say land distribution was unequal in Mexico during this time,
Speaker 2: the governor of Chihuahua was a banker who personally owned
Speaker 2: two million acres of land. He also owned the main
Speaker 2: bank in the area. His family owned seventy million acres.
Speaker 2: They're just for a sense of scale, because that's a
Speaker 2: number that just doesn't make any sense to me. There
Speaker 2: are only seven states in the US with more than
Speaker 2: seventy million acres total. Like this is like if I
Speaker 2: don't know one guy owned Nevada.
Speaker 3: Wow, which is about that's so much for one guy
Speaker 3: to own.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's just going to use it. I
Speaker 2: don't think he's going to use it all.
Speaker 3: I just don't think you can use seventy million acres.
Speaker 3: And I know that's controversial, but I really, I really
Speaker 3: think that.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine that water bill.
Speaker 2: Especially if it's Nevada, right, Jesus, Yeah, you'd have an
Speaker 2: army instead. Okay. Also, this extended family owns the railroads,
Speaker 2: the mines, the mills, the sugar refineries, the breweries, the granaries,
Speaker 2: the meat packing plants, and telephone companies of Chihuahua. Cool
Speaker 2: so crony state. Right, So the PLM is like, all right,
Speaker 2: we're going to pad Juaha, I'm free. But they're already
Speaker 2: past their prime at this point nineteen oh eight. They
Speaker 2: don't recover from it. Hundreds or thousands of them have
Speaker 2: been murdered already. Their leadership or anti leadership or whatever
Speaker 2: was still in exile. Macgone never comes to the front.
Speaker 2: He stays in the US, coordinating and writing. I don't
Speaker 2: think this was cowardice, because nothing he can do is safe, right,
Speaker 2: But I don't know. The best I read was basically
Speaker 2: people were like, he didn't fancy himself a general or
Speaker 2: like a revolutionary leader, right, But a lot of people
Speaker 2: are like, if he had showed up, the people who
Speaker 2: are following his ideas would have probably probably more people
Speaker 2: would have fought whatever. Maybe if he had led it
Speaker 2: all at all, would have gone horribly bad because he's
Speaker 2: not fucking general. The PLM march on Shiuawa. They're coming
Speaker 2: from Texas. Their military leader at this point is a
Speaker 2: guy named Guierto who had been writing for Regeneracy on
Speaker 2: as far as, and he's might be the actual source
Speaker 2: of the quote it's better to die in your feet
Speaker 2: than live on your knees. It gets attributed to Zapata,
Speaker 2: but Guierto wrote an essay under that name before Sapata
Speaker 2: even really came on the scene. Later, FDR uses this
Speaker 2: quote it might just come from an ancient Greek anyway.
Speaker 2: I really have always liked this quote. So that's why
Speaker 2: I'm like, got really excited about It's a great quote,
Speaker 2: kying to source it one time Gietto when when US
Speaker 2: cops tried to arrest him, he escaped out his bedroom
Speaker 2: window on a rope made out of sheets tied together.
Speaker 2: And I love how much weird fucking wacky shit actually happens.
Speaker 3: In history, some cartoon shit.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they invade, they commandeer trains, they blow up bridges,
Speaker 2: they recruit soldiers as they go. They go and they
Speaker 2: liberate towns. The residents join their cause. When I say invade,
Speaker 2: it's like worth pointing out that it's like the people
Speaker 2: who live in how we're happy about this? The only
Speaker 2: people who are unhappy about other people control it right in.
Speaker 2: The Federal Army counter attacks and they drive the PLM
Speaker 2: out and Guerto is killed. He dies on his feet
Speaker 2: rather than living on his knees. I really liked him.
Speaker 2: The PLM failed, so then they did the last militant
Speaker 2: thing they did. They tried to take over Baja California.
Speaker 2: They picked it because it's sparsely populated and almost all
Speaker 2: the industry was owned by foreign assholes. The goal was
Speaker 2: to turn it into a libertarian, socialist region with equal
Speaker 2: access to the means of production, redistribute all the land
Speaker 2: of the peasants, all that good stuff. Over the course
Speaker 2: of four months, the Mexican anarchists, alongside the Tarahuma people,
Speaker 2: Italian and Spanish anarchists, some soldiers of fortune who turn
Speaker 2: out to be really shitty, like just bad people, and
Speaker 2: comrades from the IWW in the US who don't suck.
Speaker 2: They take control first of MEXICALI Los Agadonas to Caste
Speaker 2: and Tijuana one after the other, and they institute libertarian
Speaker 2: socialism and they're like to each according to their ability,
Speaker 2: from each according to their ability, to each according to need.
Speaker 2: But they're defeated. And they're defeated because at this point
Speaker 2: Madero has taken over, Like Madero wins Ouse Dias. And
Speaker 2: one of the first things that Madero does is he
Speaker 2: puts down the PLM, and he's like, I can't take
Speaker 2: my revolutionary army, my usual the one that just won
Speaker 2: me the revolution, because they like the PLM and if
Speaker 2: I take them, they'll probably all switch sides on me.
Speaker 2: So instead he uses the federal troops, like the army
Speaker 2: he just beat. He takes them. He marches up to
Speaker 2: Baja California, and he puts down the rebellious workers in
Speaker 2: Baja California who are trying to live free. He's supported
Speaker 2: by the US government when he does this, And this
Speaker 2: is like one of the most common tropes I ever
Speaker 2: run across in history. A bunch of like actually radical
Speaker 2: folks and anarchists and peasants and workers run to the
Speaker 2: front lines and start the revolution. Then more moderate forces
Speaker 2: conspire with literally theirs sensible enemy to put them down,
Speaker 2: and they use the same excuse that they always use.
Speaker 2: They call the PLM bandits. This is why I don't
Speaker 2: like Madero. This is why mcgon doesn't like Madero. Madero
Speaker 2: goes on. The recuperation of the of the PLM starts immediately.
Speaker 2: Madero goes on to claim that he was working outside
Speaker 2: with sorry that he was working with the PLM. At
Speaker 2: one point he spreads a rumor that Magon is his
Speaker 2: vice president. And he does this, it wins over a
Speaker 2: ton of the PLM fighters who come and join his armies. Right,
Speaker 2: and this is where having weighted to show your hand
Speaker 2: about being a radical kind of fucks Magon and the
Speaker 2: maganeseism the PLM over. Because he had waited so long
Speaker 2: to make it clear the difference between the PLM and
Speaker 2: the moderates, people had no reason to doubt Madero. When
Speaker 2: Madero is like, oh, no, they're with us, because they
Speaker 2: don't have a way of knowing that they just all
Speaker 2: got murdered by Madero. Yeah, the moderate sides to the US.
Speaker 2: This is the kind of the sad part of the
Speaker 2: story where it all goes to shit. That's always happens
Speaker 2: on cool people who did cool stuff. Every story is
Speaker 2: a tragedy if you don't know when to stop telling it.
Speaker 2: The moderate part of the US Labor Movement they take
Speaker 2: Madero's side in the split. Mother Jones calls mcgonn a
Speaker 2: fanatic and drops her support because he won't play nice
Speaker 2: with Madero. And she's right that he was a zealot. Right,
Speaker 2: and at this point he is casting aside everyone who
Speaker 2: disagrees with him. He is moody as fuck. He demands
Speaker 2: that he gets his way. The revolution slips away from him,
Speaker 2: and he lashes out at friend after friend, and he
Speaker 2: pushes them away at one point. I think after this
Speaker 2: he ends up even pushing away his remaining brothers. Were
Speaker 2: both of his brothers. It's probably for the best that
Speaker 2: he was a zealot for an anti authoritarian cause, because
Speaker 2: that kind of zelotry cannot just negatively impact a movement.
Speaker 2: His did has absolutely negatively impacted the movement, but it
Speaker 2: can also cause people with power to kill everyone they
Speaker 2: disagree with, and he never did that. He cast people aside,
Speaker 2: but he did not do what almost every other revolutionary
Speaker 2: leader does at this stage. Right, only the syndicalist IWW
Speaker 2: and the anarchists in the US labor movement and the
Speaker 2: anarchists in Mexico support the PLM. Still most of them
Speaker 2: are still pretty fucking mad at Macgone because he stayed
Speaker 2: in the US the whole time, right, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: like in the shit. The Mexican Revolution continued, But today's
Speaker 2: the story of the maganest does. And to close up
Speaker 2: on Magone himself, he was arrested again, then he was
Speaker 2: set free, then he was arrested again once when he
Speaker 2: was out. The sort of revolutionary government in Mexico because
Speaker 2: like Madero gets killed and then someone else comes in power,
Speaker 2: and someone comes in power whatever, fucking the sort of
Speaker 2: revolutionary government in Mexico was like, look, you did a lot.
Speaker 2: Do you want a pension? You can come back to
Speaker 2: Mexico and will take care of you. Mcgonne is too
Speaker 2: fucking stubborn or maybe two principal depends on you look
Speaker 2: at it. His quote is thanks, but no, all money
Speaker 2: the state has was stolen from the workers. He says
Speaker 2: that the money will only burn my hands and fill
Speaker 2: my heart with remorse.
Speaker 3: Okay, good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he gets a few years of peace. He
Speaker 2: and his wife and his daughter as well as his
Speaker 2: brother Enrique, and a bunch of other anarchists and several
Speaker 2: other families. They buy like five or six acres in
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and they farm, and they're like poor ast shit.
Speaker 2: They scrape together enough money for like a shitty printing press.
Speaker 2: They put regeneracy on back in but there's like no
Speaker 2: one buying it anymore. PLM's fucking over. But he he
Speaker 2: writes plays, He writes children's stories, He travels around speaking
Speaker 2: about the Mexican Revolution and anarchism. He writes articles to
Speaker 2: crying the treatment of Mexican Americans at the border. He
Speaker 2: also prophetically warns that without internationalist revolution, USND is going
Speaker 2: to move to Mexico, destroy the economy in Mexico, forcing
Speaker 2: immigrants from Mexico into the US.
Speaker 3: Hit that one on the head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and soon enough he goes back to prison again.
Speaker 2: This time, he goes back to prison for suggesting that
Speaker 2: workers should refuse to fight the First World War. He's
Speaker 2: caught up in the first Red Scare. Basically in the
Speaker 2: United States. The US was like, look, if you say
Speaker 2: you're sorry, will pardon you. But this is fucking magone.
Speaker 2: His mother died without him there because she refused to
Speaker 2: ask him to say he was sorry. He is sick
Speaker 2: as shit with diabetes. He's like near blind, and he writes,
Speaker 2: and this is one of the last things he writes, repentance.
Speaker 2: I have not exploited the sweat, anguish, fatigue, and labor
Speaker 2: of others. I have not oppressed a single soul. I
Speaker 2: have nothing to repent for. My life has been lived
Speaker 2: without my having any wealth, power or glory, when I
Speaker 2: could have gotten these three things very easily. But I
Speaker 2: do not regret it. Wealth power and glory are only
Speaker 2: one by trampling others' rights. My conscience is at peace,
Speaker 2: for it knows that under my convict's garb beats an
Speaker 2: honest heart. He fucking goes hard. He uh. He was
Speaker 2: found dead in his cell on November twentieth, nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 2: in Fort Leavenworth Prison in Kansas, at forty eight years old.
Speaker 2: He was very sick. Most of the anarchists at the
Speaker 2: time believe he was murdered. One of his friends in
Speaker 2: the prison heard a struggle and there were bruises around
Speaker 2: his neck. One PLM supporter in prison said that a
Speaker 2: guard had killed Magon, and then the person who said
Speaker 2: that was killed by seven guards. So he was either
Speaker 2: murdered by a guard or he was murdered by medical neglect.
Speaker 2: Either way, that.
Speaker 3: Might be what I read in the Britannica.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 3: Didn't want to spoil it.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. His wife, Maria lives another twenty six years.
Speaker 2: She organized peasants to her last days. She dies in
Speaker 2: poverty because she who refused a pension in her dead
Speaker 2: husband's name. Mexico's like, Yo, you were mcgon's wife, you
Speaker 2: want a pension. She's like, she wasn't the like stuck
Speaker 2: with She wasn't like stuck with him. She was with him.
Speaker 2: You know. She was of the same sort as him,
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell. Yeah, cloth and yeah.
Speaker 2: Now mcgon is remembered. He get remembered by the new
Speaker 2: government as the forebearer of the revolution, which he maybe
Speaker 2: would have hated. But actually it's his brother Enrique who
Speaker 2: does a lot of the fighting to make sure that
Speaker 2: his memory and the influence he had and the legacy
Speaker 2: of the PLM stays alive. In nineteen twenty, the tenant
Speaker 2: farmer movement in Veracruz started putting on mcgon's plays. Maganesta's
Speaker 2: stayed involved in social struggle right. They were involved in
Speaker 2: the Campesino movement. They added revolutionary syndicalism to the mix
Speaker 2: and the workers movement. In nineteen thirty seven, regeneracy On
Speaker 2: went back into production, and soon it was by Federacian
Speaker 2: Anarchista Mexicana. The ideas and action informed not just the
Speaker 2: anarchist movement, but all the leftist and peasant movements in Mexico. Notably,
Speaker 2: it informed the Zapatistas, the indigenous uprising in Chiapas, who
Speaker 2: I will cover one of these days. It's been on
Speaker 2: top of the list since the beginning, but I just
Speaker 2: want to do it right. One of the towns in
Speaker 2: their territory, I think no, actually, I think there's more
Speaker 2: than one town. There's a town in Chiapas I believe
Speaker 2: called Ricardo Flores Magon. I believe that the town that
Speaker 2: he was born in. I didn't write this in the scripts.
Speaker 2: I don't remember all of it. They changed the name
Speaker 2: from like something something to something Floresmagon and Ricardo Floris
Speaker 2: Macgon's great great nephew runs a museum dedicated to the
Speaker 2: Maganestas in Mexico City. And while they're a little bit buried,
Speaker 2: they'll never be completely Yeah, that's the Magan that.
Speaker 3: Wasn't, in fact a cool person who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got so worried when, like, it's always like
Speaker 2: halfway into the research that I find out someone was
Speaker 2: like a real fucking grouch, right, And I'm like, like,
Speaker 2: I was like three quarters the way through one of
Speaker 2: the books I read about this before they were like,
Speaker 2: oh and his wife Maria, And I'm like, the fuck's
Speaker 2: that didn't come up earlier? That's not worth telling me about.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: You're like, so, what's his relationship to his life?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And like, you know, and and I don't know all
Speaker 2: of it, right, but that's my best inference is that
Speaker 2: he was a grouch. He pushed people away, he was
Speaker 2: a man, he was he fucking tried, and he didn't
Speaker 2: turn into the kinds of pieces of shit that a
Speaker 2: lot of people do. And I can't even imagine what
Speaker 2: it's like to just like put everything into this and
Speaker 2: then just see it work but not Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: but for a lot of the people who were involved
Speaker 2: in the moment, it did work. You know, it didn't
Speaker 2: work by his standards, but it did work by a
Speaker 2: lot of people's standards. Yeah, that's what I got.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 3: It's a great story. Thanks, thanks Margaret.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if people want to hear you tell stories about
Speaker 2: the current mess that is the right wing media sphere,
Speaker 2: how can they do it?
Speaker 3: Yes, you can find me on TikTok at kat m Aboo.
Speaker 3: Also subscribe to my YouTube, which is the same one
Speaker 3: that I've got to mention last episode. You can literally
Speaker 3: just look me up on the Internet and you can
Speaker 3: find me on Twitter, threads, blue Sky. There are too
Speaker 3: many platforms nowadays. I have like a link tree on
Speaker 3: my profile. But yeah, I talk about right wing media
Speaker 3: and all those idiots.
Speaker 2: Yay, Hey, I have a substack. You should. I like
Speaker 2: keep saying I'm quitting Twitter, and I'm like everyone who
Speaker 2: says it, it's like the annoying person who doesn't leave
Speaker 2: the party. It's like, I'm gonna leave, go down with
Speaker 2: the ship of Twitter. I'm not sure. I just don't
Speaker 2: like social media, even though I do it. I'm on
Speaker 2: it all the time, and so I'm like, I almost
Speaker 2: don't want to start another one because I'm just like,
Speaker 2: but I don't lose guy's fun.
Speaker 3: I'll give you an infte code if you grab one yet.
Speaker 2: I am I think?
Speaker 1: Are you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually grabbed Margaret as a user name.
Speaker 1: That's fucking cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it doesn't feel as like elite because there's
Speaker 2: actually it's like Margaret dot b K s K.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also there's no all right, I'm following great, there's
Speaker 3: no video if they don't even have em betting and yeah,
Speaker 3: all these places are just doing it like half ass,
Speaker 3: so yeah, yeah, what.
Speaker 2: Are they thinking? But yeah, I'm trying to write more
Speaker 2: on substack. And you can also follow Sophie around town. No, no,
Speaker 2: don't do that.
Speaker 1: If you do that, I'm a dog will fuck you.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, I will.
Speaker 3: Follow iron dot Dragon at Blue sky Dot.
Speaker 1: Exactly. Did you catch that? If you didn't, too fucking bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I want to plug our our lat like I
Speaker 1: don't know. Whenever you're listening to this. We did a
Speaker 1: really interesting episode on Behind the Bastards with Sarah Marshall
Speaker 1: that was all about the kidnapping craze and conspiracies around that,
Speaker 1: and Robert Evans did a really good article to go
Speaker 1: along with it on his sub stack shatters oone. So
Speaker 1: I want to plug that.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm listening to while walking the dog. Yes,
Speaker 2: today and tomorrow. Oh, possibly dinner tonight. That's that seems good.
Speaker 3: I was listening to Walking about Town. It's great.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Wow, you two can be obsessed with cool
Speaker 2: Zone Media like all of us. Are as we got by.
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