WRITINGS

THE MEXICAN REVOLT.¹

At last we see a genuine awakening of a people, not to political demands alone, but to economic ones, -fundamentally economic ones. And in the brief period of a few months, some millions of human beings have sprung to a full consciousness of a system of wrong, beginning where all slaveries begin, in the sources of life. They have struck for LAND AND LIBERTY. And even if their revolt shall be crushed by the mailed hand of the United States Government (for I do not believe the present nondescript thing calling itself a government, in Mexico, has craft or power to pacify or crush all the seething elements of rebellion), yet it has set a foremost mark upon the record of human demand, from which hereafter there will be not retreat. From now on, when an oppressed people revolt, they will not demand less.

“Events are the true Schoolmasters”, I hear the justified voice of my dead Comrade Lum² calling triumphantly from his grave. For years and years, the brothers Magon and their coworkers in and out of Mexico have been voices crying in the wilderness which some few thousands at best have heard. But in the storm-wind of popular revolt, rising, no prophet could have foretold when, nor gazer at the aftermath just why it was the chosen hour, in that strong clean-sweeping of the psychic atmosphere, millions of unlettered and otherwise ignorant people saw, as with lightning sharpness cutting a black night, the foundation of all their wrong, and heard the slogan “Land and Liberty” to which their ears were so long deaf, -heard it, raised it, acted on it, are acting on it. With that clear and direct perception of the needful thing to do which lettered men, men of complex lives, nearly always lack, being befogged by too many lights, they move straight upon their purpose, hew down the landmarks, burn the records of the title-deeds.

So, do the plain people. Temporizing men, sophisticated men, men of books and theories, men made timid with much mind, Hamlets all, – they devise solemn indirections; they figure on compensation schemes, on taxation fooleries, on how-to-do and how-not-to-do at the same time. The simple man says “No: you have told us, and truly, that this land was filched away from us by a paper-title scheme. Its power lay in our admitting its right. Well, we no longer admit it; we destroy it. The land is ours; we take it”. And they have driven off the paper-title men, and are working the ground on hundreds of ranches.

It is true there were other millions asleep in the storm; true that many of the awakened have been quieted with political hocus-pocus; true that a hundred and one reactionary forces are battling on the same ground, it is true that the world at large, outside of Mexico, is but little informed as to the real struggle. But that does not alter or diminish the truth that the Slaves of Our Times, in a nation-wide revolt, have smitten the Beast of Property in Land. And once a great human demand is so made, it is never let go again. Future revolts will go on from there; they will never fall behind it.

At present the great press is saying little of the chaos in the Mexican situation, though for the last few days, since as news purveyors they cannot keep entirely silent, small hinting editorials are creeping in, pointing intervention wards, “in case disturbances are not pacified”. No doubt the United States Government would prefer to preserve its hypocritical pretense of abstinent impartiality. It hopes its catspaw will safely pull the chestnuts out of the fire. It is comfortable to pose as the disinterested friend of peace in our sister republic, so long as American landlord powers in Mexico are undisturbed, or so long as the Mexican branch of the Capitalistic Defense Association is able to tend to its division. But one thing has been pretty plain since the provisional government assumed its functions:³ “Barkis is willin”⁴, -but not effulgently able. People who have once taken up arms and felt the satisfaction of ridding themselves of one tyrant, of doing rude justice in opening prison doors, of seeing a whole confraternity of office-holders and office-seekers in anxiety to placate them, are not so unready to taken up arms again; especially when the whole mass of discontent is leavened with conscious revolutionists who are crying the means of social regeneration in their ears.

It is very plain now that the provisional governors are treading on thin crust, and the elections instead of steadying the human subsoil down to mortuary rigidity, may prove the prelude to more violent eruptions. In that case, the reluctant (?) hand at Washington may be forced to play–clubs! on its own responsibility.

Meanwhile, what have the revolutionary elements of the United States to say about it? I almost sneered as I wrote “revolutionary elements”, for candor compels us to inquire where they are. Time was when some people thought the Single Tax was based on a fundamentally revolutionary idea, the final expropriation of the landlord by the people. The Single Tax⁵ papers, however, have said as little as possible about the great Land cry of the Mexican revolutionists, have laid all stress upon the political mirage-chasing by which Madero and his coadjutors side-tracked the uprising of May, and have refused to print the Manifestoes and Appeals of the Mexican Liberal Party, to afford the publicity of their columns to the real demands of the revolutionists, that their readers might give their sympathy and support, and the influence of their understanding. They were waiting, they said, for Madero to pronounce himself upon the land question! I opine they have still quite some wait coming.

From all which, it seriously appears that the expropriation of the landlords by the people, the restoration of the land to the people, is not the object of the single tax movement; on the contrary, the object is the establishment of the single tax itself, -not as a working means to a great end, the establishment of the equal right of all to the use of natural resources, but as a neat sleight-of-hand method for collecting revenue; at best, a way of getting rid of landlords by fooling them into getting rid of themselves, not because they are robbers to be got rid of, but because it’s such a clever trick to play! Men are to demand the land, not that they may get the land, but that the demand may serve as an excuse for instituting the Single Tax!

If this is not the interpretation we are to put upon it, then how else are we to read the conspicuous silence of the Single Tax press concerning this great agrarian revolt? Millions of people have been demonstrating their appreciation that The Land for All the People is the primary foundation for a better economic structure. They have taken a more direct route than the single tax. And the land agitators are silent!

Time was when Socialism was a revolutionary word. And there are still some Socialists who are international revolutionists. But, the official political Socialist Party, -bah! If ever the vitiating influence of the marriage of Socialism with Politics (that old Bluebeard husband of so many fine young wives⁶) was demonstrated beyond disputation, it has been in the official attitude of Socialists towards this spontaneous manifestation of the Mexican people.

The utterances of Victor Berger, “the Socialist Congressman” (we receive this information as to his status with painful reiteration at least once a column in every issue of the Chicago daily Socialist), concerning “the bandits of Mexico” were enough to make the authors of the Communist Manifesto repudiate their name. those strong souls who asserted that “the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things”, and appealed to “Workingmen of All Countries to unite”, -what would they have in common with a smug occupier of a congressional seat, who in a strongly marked German accent makes anti-immigration speeches against Slavs and Italians in the name of protection to American labor (?) and who directs his secretary to say, concerning the Mexican revolt, that “the Socialist Party can afford to have no connection with this movement” (?). In the light of this and similar utterances in the Socialist press (I have even learned on good authority that one Socialist editor really desires United States annexation of Mexico, but dares not advocate it yet, “because it would be unpopular” with Socialist readers) it would appear that the distribution of the Communist Manifesto by the Socialist Party is about of a piece with the distribution of the Christian Gospels by the Christian Church; in both cases, it is traditional literature, which nobody is supposed to taken seriously.

Instead of giving even the news of international revolutionary movements (often one looks in vain for any), or the economic ground-plan of Socialism, we have columns of vice-crusading, sporting pages, and veritable hot-air balloons of self-inflation for having assisted in some relatively trivial petition. Only in their correspondence columns is there some occasional evidence of the indignant spirit of a true Socialist, outraged by all this trimming to suit the wind, this flunkeying to the respectable element, this suffocation of revolutionary principle and sentiment under a time-serving mantle of political prudence and cheap catering. Yes; Politics is nicely bluebearding Socialism. How far away is all this from the serious, intent spirit which watches and welcomes the manifestations of the people themselves –no matter what their degree of development or enlightenment- as the real indications of how the Race will come into its own! Not according to any men´s preconcerted program, not by any little platform-prescription, not by any carefully selected route, not by anybody’s plan of campaign to make an “educated, class-conscious”, etc. ad nauseam vote-casting machine; but in their own unforeseen and unforeseeable, unpredetermined, by-the-hour-and-circumstance-decided way, as the peoples always move, -as Life, which is greater than the peoples, always moves.

And the business of the revolutionist, the Seeker for the Changes of Old Forms, the dreamer of Liberty and Plenty, is to be with them in their struggle, in their victory, in their defeat, whenever, wherever, the people rise.

Hail to our brothers, the Mexican peons, who are too unlettered to read Henry George’s gospel⁷, but who have discharged their landlords and set to working the ground for themselves.

Hail to the Mexican strikers, who likely are too ignorant to pursue a course in the “Evolution of Class-consciousness”, but who are apparently very alive to the fact that Now is the hour to Strike for better conditions, -the hour of governmental weakness and popular strength.

Hail to the Mexican Revolution, victorious or defeated. And hail to the next that rises!

¹ Véase: “The Mexican Revolt” Mother Earth, v. VI, n. 6, agosto de 1911, p. 105 y ss. Publicado, bajo el título de “Tierra y Libertad. Su mensaje a la humanidad” en dos partes: Regeneración, (4, 61, 4, y 4, 62, 4). Al artículo le precedía el siguiente párrafo de los editores: “El siguiente artículo, por Voltairine de Cleyre, de Chicago, apareció en el número de agosto de Mother Earth. Su valor no se ha visto disminuido por los eventos que han tenido lugar desde que fue publicado por primera vez, y no podría serlo, dado que da voz a verdades eternas. Estamos por imitar el ejemplo que nos han dado en Nueva York, y vamos a publicarlo como panfleto.”
² Refiérese a Dyer Daniel Lum (1839-1893). Poeta, periodista, sindicalista y anarquista estadounidense. Tras la detención de Alan Parsons, uno de los Mártires de Chicago, fue el editor de Alarm, vocero de la Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores en Chicago, Ill. Transitó del espiritismo y el abolicionismo al sindicalismo y al anarquismo. Fue pareja de la joven Voltairine de Cleyre. Publicó, A Concise History of the Great Trail of the Chicago Anarchists in 1866 y The Economics of Anarchy: A Study of the Industrial Type, entre otros.
³ El gobierno provisional de Francisco León de la Barra fungió del 25 de mayo al 6 de noviembre de 1911.
⁴ “Barkis quiere…” Frase proveniente de la novela “David Copperfield” de Charles Dickens. Remite a la voluntad de alguien para hacer algo.
⁵ Refiérese al movimiento anglosajón Single Tax, inspirado en las ideas de Henry George expuestas en su Progreso y Pobreza (1897). Partiendo de la premisa de que todo el valor proveniente de la tierra, (incluidos los recursos naturales y otros), estos pertenecen a todos y debe de retribuirse su explotación a través de un impuesto único.
⁶ Refiérese al movimiento anglosajón Single Tax, inspirado en las ideas de Henry George expuestas en su Progreso y Pobreza (1897). Partiendo de la premisa de que todo el valor proveniente de la tierra, (incluidos los recursos naturales y otros), estos pertenecen a todos y debe de retribuirse su explotación a través de un impuesto único.
⁷ Véase supra, n. 23. Henry George (1839.1897) Periodista y economista político. En torno al concepto de Single Tax -impuesto único sobre la tierra-, mismo que no reconocía como propio, se desarrolló un fuerte movimiento en Estados Unidos de características progresistas y antimonopólicas, cuya influencia abarcó a socialistas y anarquistas. Autor, entre otros de Our Land &Land Policy (1871), Progreso y Pobreza (1879) y Moses and the Crime of Poverty (1889)

THE MEXICAN REVOLUTION¹

That a nation of people considering themselves enlightened, informed, alert to the interests of the hour, should be so generally and so profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their backyard, so to speak, as the people of the United States are ignorant of the present revolution in Mexico, can be due only to profoundly and generally acting causes. That people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be so, is inexcusable.

It is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you,—as one interested in every move the people make to throw off their chains, no matter where, no matter how,—though naturally my interest is greatest where the move is such as appears to me to be most in consonance with the general course of progress, where the tyranny attacked is what appears to me the most fundamental, where the method followed is to my thinking most direct and unmistakable. And I add that those of you who have such principles and sympathies are in the logic of your own being bound, first, to inform yourselves concerning so great a matter as the revolt of millions of people—what they are struggling for, what they are struggling against, and how the struggle stands—from day to day, if possible; if not, from week to week, or month to month, as best you can; and second, to spread this knowledge among others, and endeavor to do what little you can to awaken the consciousness and sympathy of others.

One of the great reasons why the mass of the American people know nothing of the Revolution in Mexico, is, that they have altogether a wrong conception of what «revolution» means. Thus ninety-nine out of a hundred persons to whom you broach the subject will say, «Why, I thought that ended long ago. That ended last May»; and this week the press, even the Daily Socialist, reports, «A new revolution in Mexico.»² It isn’t a new revolution at all; it is the same revolution, which did not begin with the armed rebellion of last May, which has been going on steadily ever since then, and before then, and is bound to go on for a long time to come, if the other nations keep their hands off and the Mexican people are allowed to work out their own destiny.

What is a revolution? and what is this revolution?

A revolution means some great and subversive change in the social institutions of a people, whether sexual, religious, political, or economic. The movement of the Reformation was a great religious revolution; a profound alteration in human thought—a refashioning of the human mind. The general movement towards political change in Europe and America about the close of the eighteenth century, was a revolution. The American and the French revolutions were only prominent individual incidents in it, culminations of the teachings of the Rights of Man.³

The present unrest of the world in its economic relations, as manifested from day to day in the opposing combinations of men and money, in strikes and bread-riots, in literature and movements of all kinds demanding a readjustment of the whole or of parts of our wealth-owning and wealth-distributing system,—this unrest is the revolution of our time, the economic revolution, which is seeking social change, and will go on until it is accomplished. We are in it; at any moment of our lives it may invade our own homes with its stern demand for self-sacrifice and suffering. Its more violent manifestations are in Liverpool and London to-day, in Barcelona and Vienna to-morrow, in New York and Chicago the day after. Humanity is a seething, heaving mass of unease, tumbling like surge over a slipping, sliding, shifting bottom; and there will never be any ease until a rock bottom of economic justice is reached.⁴

The Mexican revolution is one of the prominent manifestations of this world-wide economic revolt. It possibly holds as important a place in the present disruption and reconstruction of economic institutions, as the great revolution of France held in the eighteenth century movement. It did not begin with the odious government of Diaz nor end with his downfall, any more than the revolution in France began with the coronation of Louis XVI, or ended with his beheading. It began in the bitter and outraged hearts of the peasants, who for generations have suffered under a ready-made system of exploitation, imported and foisted upon them, by which they have been dispossessed of their homes, compelled to become slave-tenants of those who robbed them; and under Diaz, in case of rebellion to be deported to a distant province, a killing climate, and hellish labor. It will end only when that bitterness is assuaged by very great alteration in the land-holding system, or until the people have been absolutely crushed into subjection by a strong military power, whether that power be a native or a foreign one.

Now the political overthrow of last May, which was followed by the substitution of one political manager for another, did not at all touch the economic situation. It promised, of course; politicians always promise. It promised to consider measures for altering conditions; in the meantime, proprietors are assured that the new government intends to respect the rights of landlords and capitalists, and exhorts the workers to be patient and—frugal!

Frugal! Yes, that was the exhortation in Madero’s paper to men who, when they are able to get work, make twenty-five cents a day. A man owning 5,000,000 acres of land⁵ exhorts the disinherited workers of Mexico to be frugal!

The idea that such a condition can be dealt with by the immemorial remedy offered by tyrants to slaves, is like the idea of sweeping out the sea with a broom. And unless that frugality, or in other words, starvation, is forced upon the people by more bayonets and more strategy than appear to be at the government’s command, the Mexican revolution will go on to the solution of Mexico’s land question with a rapidity and directness of purpose not witnessed in any previous upheaval.

For it must be understood that the main revolt is a revolt against the system of land tenure. The industrial revolution of the cities, while it is far from being silent, is not to compare with the agrarian revolt.

Let us understand why. Mexico consists of twenty-seven states, two territories and a federal district about the capital city. Its population totals about 15,000,000. Of these, 4,000,000 are of unmixed Indian descent, people somewhat similar in character to the Pueblos⁶ of our own southwestern states, primitively agricultural for an immemorial period, communistic in many of their social customs, and like all Indians, invincible haters of authority. These Indians are scattered throughout the rural districts of Mexico, one particularly well-known and much talked of tribe, the Yaquis, having had its fatherland in the rich northern state of Sonora, a very valuable agricultural country.

The Indian population—especially the Yaquis and the Moquis⁷—have always disputed the usurpations of the invaders’ government, from the days of the early conquest until now, and will undoubtedly continue to dispute them as long as there is an Indian left, or until their right to use the soil out of which they sprang without paying tribute in any shape is freely recognized.

The communistic customs of these people are very interesting, and very instructive too; they have gone on practicing them all these hundreds of years, in spite of the foreign civilization that was being grafted upon Mexico (grafted in all senses of the word); and it was not until forty years ago (indeed the worst of it not till twenty-five years ago), that the increasing power of the government made it possible to destroy this ancient life of the people.

By them, the woods, the waters, and the lands were held in common. Any one might cut wood from the forest to build his cabin, make use of the rivers to irrigate his field or garden patch (and this is a right whose acknowledgment none but those who know the aridity of the southwest can fully appreciate the imperative necessity for). Tillable lands were allotted by mutual agreement before sowing, and reverted to the tribe after harvesting, for re-allotment. Pasturage, the right to collect fuel, were for all. The habits of mutual aid which always arise among sparsely settled communities were instinctive with them. Neighbor assisted neighbor to build his cabin, to plough his ground, to gather and store this crop.

No legal machinery existed—no tax gatherer, no justice, no jailer. All that they had to do with the hated foreign civilization was to pay the periodical rent-collector, and to get out of the way of the recruiting officer when he came around. Those two personages they regarded with spite and dread; but as the major portion of their lives was not in immediate contact with them, they could still keep on in their old way of life in the main.

With the development of the Diaz regime, which came into power in 1876 (and when I say the Diaz regime I do not especially mean the man Diaz, for I think he has been both over cursed and overpraised, but the whole force which has steadily developed centralized power from then on, and the whole policy of «civilizing Mexico,» which was the Diaz boast), with its development, I say, this Indian life has been broken up, violated with as ruthless a hand as ever tore up a people by the roots and cast them out as weeds to wither in the sun.

Historians relate with horror the iron deeds of William the Conqueror, who in the eleventh century created the New Forest by laying waste the farms of England, destroying the homes of the people to make room for the deer. But his edicts were mercy compared with the action of the Mexican government toward the Indians. In order to introduce «progressive civilization» the Diaz regime granted away immense concessions of land, to native and foreign capitalists—chiefly foreign indeed, though there were enough of native sharks as well. Mostly these concessions were granted to capitalistic combinations, which were to build railroads (and in some cases did so in a most uncalled for and uneconomic way), «develop» mineral resources, or establish «modern industries.»

The government took no note of the ancient tribal rights or customs, and those who received the concessions proceeded to enforce their property rights. They introduced the unheard of crime of «trespass.» They forbade the cutting of a tree, the breaking of a branch, the gathering of the fallen wood in the forests. They claimed the watercourses, forbidding their free use to the people; and it was as if one had forbidden to us the rains of heaven. The unoccupied land was theirs; no hand might drive a plow into the soil without first obtaining permission from a distant master—a permission granted on the condition that the product be the landlord’s, a small, pitifully small, wage, the worker’s.

Nor was this enough: in 1894 was passed «The Law of Unappropriated Lands.»⁸ By that law, not only were the great stretches of vacant, in the old time common, land appropriated, but the occupied lands themselves to which the occupants could not show a legal title were to be «denounced»; that is, the educated and the powerful, who were able to keep up with the doings of the government, went to the courts and said that there was no legal title to such and such land, and put in a claim for it. And the usual hocus-pocus of legality being complied with (the actual occupant of the land being all the time blissfully unconscious of the law, in the innocence of his barbarism supposing that the working of the ground by his generations of forbears was title all-sufficient) one fine day the sheriff comes upon this hapless dweller on the heath and drives him from his ancient habitat to wander an outcast.

Such are the blessings of education.

Mankind invents a written sign to aid its intercommunication; and forthwith all manner of miracles are wrought with the sign. Even such a miracle as that a part of the solid earth passes under the mastery of an impotent sheet of paper; and a distant bit of animated flesh which never even saw the ground, acquires the power to expel hundreds, thousands, of like bits of flesh, though they grew upon that ground as the trees grow, labored it with their hands, and fertilized it with their bones for a thousand years.

«This law of unappropriated lands,»⁹ says William Archer, «has covered the country with Naboth’s Vineyards.»¹⁰ I think it would require a Biblical prophet to describe the «abomination of desolation» it has made.

It was to become lords of this desolation that the men who play the game—landlords who are at the same time governors and magistrates, enterprising capitalists seeking investments—connived at the iniquities of the Diaz regime; I will go further and say devised them.

The Madero family alone owns some 8,000 square miles¹¹ of territory; more than the entire state of New Jersey. The Terrazas family, in the state of Chihuahua, owns 25,000 square miles¹²; rather more than the entire state of West Virginia, nearly one-half the size of Illinois. What was the plantation owning of our southern states in chattel slavery days, compared with this? And the peon’s share for his toil upon these great estates is hardly more than was the chattel slave’s—wretched housing, wretched food, and wretched clothing.

It is to slaves like these that Madero appeals to be «frugal.»

It is of men who have thus been disinherited that our complacent fellow-citizens of Anglo-Saxon origin, say: «Mexicans! What do you know about Mexicans? Their whole idea of life is to lean up against a fence and smoke cigarettes». And pray, what idea of life should a people have whose means of life in their own way have been taken from them? Should they be so mighty anxious to convert their strength into wealth for some other man to loll in?

It reminds me very much of the answer given by a negro employee on the works at Fortress Monroe to a companion of mine who questioned him good-humoredly on his easy idleness when the foreman’s back was turned. «Ah ain’t goin’ to do no white man’s work, fo’ Ah don’ get no white man’s pay.»

But for the Yaquis, there was worse than this. Not only were their lands seized, but they were ordered, a few years since, to be deported to Yucatan. Now Sonora, as I said, is a northern state, and Yucatan one of the southernmost. Yucatan hemp¹³ is famous, and so is Yucatan fever, and Yucatan slavery on the hemp plantations. It was to that fever and that slavery that the Yaquis were deported, in droves of hundreds at a time, men, women and children—droves like cattle droves, driven and beaten like cattle. They died there, like flies, as it was meant they should. Sonora was desolated of her rebellious people, and the land became «pacific» in the hands of the new landowners. Too pacific in spots. They had not left people enough to reap the harvests.

Then the government suspended the deportation act, but with the provision that for every crime committed by a Yaqui, five hundred of his people be deported. This statement is made in Madero’s own book.¹⁴

Now what in all conscience would anyone with decent human feeling expect a Yaqui to do? Fight! As long as there was powder and bullet to be begged, borrowed, or stolen; as long as there is a garden to plunder, or a hole in the hills to hide in!

When the revolution burst out, the Yaquis and other Indian peoples, said to the revolutionists: «Promise us our lands back, and we will fight with you.» And they are keeping their word, magnificently. All during the summer, they have kept up the warfare. Early in September, the Chihuahua papers reported a band of 1,000 Yaquis in Sonora about to attack El Anil; a week later 500 Yaquis had seized the former quarters of the federal troops at Pitahaya. This week it is reported that federal troops are dispatched to Ponoitlan¹⁵, a town in Jalisco, to quell the Indians who have risen in revolt again because their delusion that the Maderist government was to restore their land has been dispelled. Like reports from Sinaloa. In the terrible state of Yucatan, the Mayas are in active rebellion; the reports say that «the authorities and leading citizens of various towns have been seized by the malcontents and put in prison.» What is more interesting is, that the peons have seized not only «the leading citizens,» but still more to the purpose have seized the plantations, parceled them, and are already gathering the crops for themselves.

Of course, it is not the pure Indians alone who form the peon class of Mexico. Rather more than double the number of Indians are mixed breeds; that is, about 8,000,000, leaving less than 3,000,000 of pure white stock. The mestiza, or mixed breed population, have followed the communistic instincts and customs of their Indian forbears; while from the Latin side of their make-up, they have certain tendencies which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority.

The mestiza¹⁶, as well as the Indians, are mostly ignorant in book-knowledge, only about sixteen per cent. of the whole population of Mexico being able to read and write. It was not within the program of the «civilizing» regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning in the people’s hands. But to conclude that people are necessarily unintelligent because they are illiterate, is in itself a rather unintelligent proceeding.

Moreover, a people habituated to the communal customs of an ancient agricultural life do not need books or papers to tell them that the soil is the source of wealth, and they must «get back to the land,» even if their intelligence is limited.

Accordingly, they have got back to the land. In the state of Morelos, which is a small, south-central state, but a very important one—being next to the Federal District, and by consequence to the city of Mexico—there has been a remarkable land revolution. General Zapata, whose name has figured elusively in newspaper reports now as having made peace with Madero, then as breaking faith, next wounded and killed, and again resurrected and in hiding, then anew on the warpath and proclaimed by the provisional government the arch-rebel who must surrender unconditionally and be tried by court-martial; who has seized the strategic points on both the railroads running through Morelos, and who just a few days ago broke into the federal district, sacked a town, fought successfully at two or three points, with the federals, blew out two railroad bridges and so frightened the deputies in Mexico City that they are clamoring for all kinds of action; this Zapata, the fires of whose military camps are springing up now in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla as well, is an Indian with a long score to pay, and all an Indian’s satisfaction in paying it. He appears to be a fighter of the style of our revolutionary Marion and Sumter¹⁷; the country in which he is operating is mountainous, and guerilla bands are exceedingly difficult of capture; even when they are defeated, they have usually succeeded in inflicting more damage than they have received, and they always get away.

Zapata has divided up the great estates of Morelos from end to end, telling the peasants to take possession. They have done so. They are in possession, and have already harvested their crops. (Morelos has a population of some 212,000.)

In Pueblo reports in September told us that eighty leading citizens had waited on the governor to protest against the taking possession of the land by the peasantry. The troops were deserting, taking horses and arms with them.

It is they no doubt who are now fighting with Zapata. In Chihuahua, one of the largest states, prisons have been thrown open and the prisoners recruited as rebels; a great hacienda was attacked and the horses run off, whereupon the peons rose and joined the attacking party.

In Sinaloa, a rich northern state—famous in the southwestern United States some years ago as the field of a great co-operative experiment in which Mr. C. B. Hoffman, one of the former editors of The Chicago daily Socialist, was a leading spirit¹⁸—this week’s paper reports that the former revolutionary general, Juan Banderas¹⁹, is heading an insurrection second in importance only to that led by Zapata.

In the southern border state of Chiapas, the taxes in many places could not be collected. Last week news items said that the present government had sent General Paz²⁰ there, with federal troops, to remedy that state of affairs. In Tabasco, the peons refused to harvest the crops for their masters; let us hope they have imitated their brothers in Morelos and gathered them for themselves.

The Maderists have announced that a stiff repressive campaign will be inaugurated at once; if we are to believe the papers, we are to believe Madero guilty of the imbecility of saying, «Five days after my inauguration the rebellion will be crushed.» Just why the crushing has to wait till five days after the inauguration does not appear. I conceive there must have been some snickering among the reactionary deputies if such an announcement was really made; and some astonished query among his followers.

What are we to conclude from all these reports? That the Mexican people are satisfied? That it’s all good and settled? What should we think if we read that the people, not of Lower but of Upper, California had turned out the ranch owners, had started to gather in the field products for themselves and that the Secretary of War had sent United States troops to attack some thousands of armed men (Zapata has had 3,000 under arms the whole summer and that force is now greatly increased) who were defending that expropriation? if we read that in the state of Illinois the farmers had driven off the tax collector? that the coast states were talking of secession and forming an independent combination? that in Pennsylvania a division of the federal army was to be dispatched to overpower a rebel force of fifteen hundred armed men doing guerilla work from the mountains? that the prison doors of Maryland, within hailing distance of Washington City, were being thrown open by armed revoltees?

Should we call it a condition of peace? Regard it a proof that the people were appeased? We would not: we would say that revolution was in full swing. And the reason you have thought it was all over in Mexico, from last May till now, is that the Chicago press, like the eastern, northern, and central press in general, has said nothing about this steady march of revolt. Even The Socialist has been silent. Now that the flame has shot up more spectacularly for the moment, they call it «a new revolution.»

That the papers pursue this course is partly due to the generally acting causes that produce our northern indifference, which I shall presently try to explain, and partly to the settled policy of capitalized interest in controlling its mouthpieces in such a manner as to give their present henchmen, the Maderists, a chance to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. They invested some $10,000,000 in this bunch, in the hope that they may be able to accomplish the double feat of keeping capitalist possessions intact and at the same time pacifying the people with specious promises. They want to lend them all the countenance they can, till the experiment is well tried; so they deliberately suppress revolutionary news.

Among the later items of interest reported by the Los Angeles Times are those which announce an influx of ex-officials and many-millioned landlords of Mexico, who are hereafter to be residents of Los Angeles. What is the meaning of it? Simply that life in Mexico is not such a safe and comfortable proposition as it was, and that for the present they prefer to get such income as their agents can collect without themselves running the risk of actual residence.

Of course, it is understood that some of this notable efflux (the supporters of Reyes²¹, for example, who have their own little rebellions in Tabasco and San Luis Potosi this week) are political reactionists, scheming to get back the political loaves and fishes into their own hands. But most are simply those who know that their property right is safe enough to be respected by the Maderist government, but that the said government is not strong enough to put down the innumerable manifestations of popular hatred which are likely to terminate fatally to themselves if they remain there.

Nor is all of this fighting revolutionary; not by any means. Some is reactionary, some probably the satisfaction of personal grudge, much, no doubt, the expression of general turbulency of a very unconscious nature. But granting all that may be thrown in the balance, the main thing, the mighty thing, the regenerative revolution is the Reappropriation of the land by the peasants. Thousands upon thousands of them are doing it.

Ignorant peasants: peasants who know nothing about the jargon of land reformers or of Socialists. Yes: that’s just the glory of it! Just the fact that it is done by ignorant people; that is, people ignorant of book theories; but not ignorant, not so ignorant by half, of life on the land, as the theory-spinners of the cities. Their minds are simple and direct; they act accordingly. For them, there is one way to «get back to the land»; i. e., to ignore the machinery of paper land-holding (in many instances they have burned the records of the title-deeds) and proceed to plough the ground, to sow and plant and gather, and keep the product themselves.

Economists, of course, will say that these ignorant people, with their primitive institutions and methods, will not develop the agricultural resources of Mexico, and that they must give way before those who will so develop its resources; that such is the law of human development.

In the first place, the abominable political combination, which gave away, as recklessly as a handful of soap-bubbles, the agricultural resources of Mexico—gave them away to the millionaire speculators who were to develop the country—were the educated men of Mexico. And this is what they saw fit to do with their higher intelligence and education. So the ignorant may well distrust the good intentions of educated men who talk about improvements in land development.

In the second place, capitalistic land-ownership, so far from developing the land in such a manner as to support a denser population, has depopulated whole districts, immense districts.

In the third place, what the economists do not say is, that the only justification for intense cultivation of the land is, that the product of such cultivation may build up the bodies of men (by consequence their souls) to richer and fuller manhood. It is not merely to pile up figures of so many million bushels²² of wheat and corn produced in a season; but that this wheat and corn shall first go into the stomachs of those who planted it—and in abundance; to build up the brawn and sinew of the arms that work the ground, not meanly maintaining them in a half-starved condition. And second, to build up the strength of the rest of the nation who are willing to give needed labor in exchange. But never to increase the fortunes of idlers who dissipate it. This is the purpose, and the only purpose, of tilling soil; and the working of it for any other purpose is waste, waste both of land and of men. In the fourth place, no change ever was, or ever can be, worked out in any society, except by the mass of the people. Theories may be propounded by educated people, and set down in books, and discussed in libraries, sitting-rooms and lecture-halls; but they will remain barren, unless the people in mass work them out. If the change proposed is such that it is not adaptable to the minds of the people for whose ills it is supposed to be a remedy, then it will remain what it was, a barren theory.

Now the conditions in Mexico have been and are so desperate that some change is imperative. The action of the peasants proves it. Even if a strong military dictator shall arise, he will have to allow some provision going towards peasant proprietorship. These unlettered, but determined, people must be dealt with now; there is no such thing as «waiting till they are educated up to it.» Therefore the wisdom of the economists is wisdom out of place—rather, relative unwisdom. The people never can be educated, if their conditions are to remain what they were under the Diaz regime. Bodies and minds are both too impoverished to be able to profit by a spread of theoretical education, even if it did not require unavailable money and indefinite time to prepare such a spread. Whatever economic change is wrought, then, must be such as the people in their present state of comprehension can understand and make use of. And we see by the reports what they understand. They understand they have a right upon the soil, a right to use it for themselves, a right to drive off the invader who has robbed them, to destroy landmarks and title-deeds, to ignore the taxgatherer and his demands.

And however primitive their agricultural methods may be, one thing is sure; that they are more economical than any system which heaps up fortunes by destroying men.

Moreover, who is to say how they may develop their methods once they have a free opportunity to do so? It is a common belief of the Anglo-Saxon that the Indian is essentially lazy. The reasons for his thinking so are two: under the various tyrannies and robberies which white men in general, and Anglo-Saxons in particular (they have even gone beyond the Spaniard) have inflicted upon Indians, there is no possible reason why an Indian should want to work, save the idiotic one that work in itself is a virtuous and exalted thing, even if by it the worker increases the power of his tyrant. As William Archer says: «If there are men, and this is not denied, who work for no wage, and with no prospect or hope of any reward, it would be curious to know by what motive other than the lash or the fear of the lash, they are induced to go forth to their labor in the morning.» The second reason is, that an Indian really has a different idea of what he is alive for than an Anglo-Saxon has. And so have the Latin peoples. This different idea is what I meant when I said that the mestiza have certain tendencies inherited from the Latin side of their make-up which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority. The Indian likes to live; to be his own master; to work when he pleases and stop when he pleases. He does not crave many things, but he craves the enjoyment of the things that he has. He feels himself more a part of nature than a white man does. All his legends are of wanderings with nature, of forests, fields, streams, plants, animals. He wants to live with the same liberty as the other children of earth. His philosophy of work is, Work so as to live care-free. This is not laziness; this is sense—to the person who has that sort of make-up.

Your Latin, on the other hand, also wants to live; and having artistic impulses in him, his idea of living is very much in gratifying them. He likes music and song and dance, picture-making, carving, and decorating. He doesn’t like to be forced to create his fancies in a hurry; he likes to fashion them, and admire them, and improve and refashion them, and admire again; and all for the fun of it. If he is ordered to create a certain design or a number of objects at a fixed price in a given time, he loses his inspiration; the play becomes work, and hateful work. So he, too, does not want to work, except what is requisite to maintain himself in a position to do those things that he likes better.

Your Anglo-Saxon’s idea of life, however, is to create the useful and the profitable—whether he has any use or profit out of it or not—and to keep busy, busy; to bestir himself «like the Devil in a holy water font.» Like all other people, he makes a special virtue of his own natural tendencies, and wants all the world to «get busy»; it doesn’t so much matter to what end this business is to be conducted, provided the individual—scrabbles. Whenever a true Anglo-Saxon seeks to enjoy himself, he makes work out of that too, after the manner of a certain venerable English shopkeeper who in company with his son visited the Louvre. Being tired out with walking from room to room, consulting his catalogue, and reading artists’ names, he dropped down to rest; but after a few moments rose resolutely and faced the next room, saying, «Well, Alfred, we’d better be getting through our work.»

There is much question as to the origin of the various instincts. Most people have the impression that the chief source of variation lies in the difference in the amount of sunlight received in the native countries inhabited of the various races. Whatever the origin is, these are the broadly marked tendencies of the people. And «Business» seems bent not only upon fulfilling its own fore-ordained destiny, but upon making all the others fulfill it too. Which is both unjust and stupid. There is room enough in the world for the races to try out their several tendencies and make their independent contributions to the achievements of humanity, without imposing them on those who revolt at them.

Granting that the population of Mexico, if freed from this foreign «busy» idea which the government imported from the north and imposed on them with such severity in the last forty years, would not immediately adopt improved methods of cultivation, even when they should have free opportunity to do so, still we have no reason to conclude that they would not adopt so much of it as would fit their idea of what a man is alive for; and if that actually proved good, it would introduce still further development. So that there would be a natural, and therefore solid, economic growth which would stick; while a forced development of it through the devastation of the people is no true growth. The only way to make it go, is to kill out the Indians altogether, and transport the «busy» crowd there, and then keep on transporting for several generations, to fill up the ravages the climate will make on such an imported population.

The Indian population of our states was in fact dealt with in this murderous manner. I do not know how grateful the reflection may be to those who materially profited by its extermination; but no one who looks forward to the final unification and liberation of man, to the incorporation of the several goodness’s of the various races in the one universal race, can ever read those pages of our history without burning shame and fathomless regret.

I have spoken of the meaning of revolution in general; of the meaning of the Mexican revolution—chiefly an agrarian one; of its present condition. I think it should be apparent to you that in spite of the electoral victory of the now ruling power, it has not put an end even to the armed rebellion, and cannot, until it proposes some plan of land restoration; and that it not only has no inward disposition to do, but probably would not dare to do, in view of the fact that immense capital financed it into power.

As to what amount of popular sentiment was actually voiced in the election, it is impossible to say. The dailies informed us that “in the Federal District where there are 1,000,000 voters, the actual vote was less than 450,000”. They offered no explanation. It is impossible to explain it on the ground that we explain a light vote in our own communities, that the people are indifferent to public questions; for the people of Mexico are not now indifferent, whatever else they may be. Two explanations are possible: the first, and most probable, that of governmental intimidation; the second, that the people are convinced of the uselessness of voting as a means of settling their troubles. In the less thickly populated agricultural states, this is very largely the case; they are relying upon direct revolutionary action. But although there was guerilla warfare in the Federal District, even before the election, I find it unlikely that more than half the voting population there abstained from voting out of conviction, though I should be glad to be able to believe they did. However, Madero and his aides are in, as was expected; the question is, how will they stay in? As Diaz did, and in no other way—if they succeed in developing Diaz’s sometime ability; which so far they are wide from having done, though they are resorting to the most vindictive and spiteful tactics in their persecution of the genuine revolutionists, wherever such come near their clutch.

To this whole turbulent situation three outcomes are possible:

1. A military dictator must arise, with sense enough to make some substantial concessions, and ability enough to pursue the crushing policy ably; or
2. The United States must intervene in the interests of American capitalists and landholders, in case the peasant revolt is not put down by the Maderist power. And that will be the worst thing that can possibly happen, and against which every worker in the United States should protest with all his might; or
3. The Mexican peasantry will be successful, and freedomin land become an actual fact. And that means the death-knell of great land-holding in this country also, for what people is going to see its neighbor enjoy so great a triumph, and sit on tamely itself under landlordism?

Whatever the outcome be, one thing is certain: it is a great movement, which all the people of the world should be eagerly watching. Yet as I said at the beginning, the majority of our population know no more about it than of a revolt on the planet Jupiter. First because they are so, so, busy; they scarcely have time to look over the baseball score and the wrestling match; how could they read up on a revolution! Second, they are supremely egotistic and concerned in their own big country with its big deeds—such as divorce scandals, vice-grafting, and auto races. Third, they do not read Spanish, and they have an ancient hostility to all that smells Spanish. Fourth, from our cradles we were told that whatever happened in Mexico was a joke. Revolutions, or rather rebellions, came and went, about like April showers, and they never meant anything serious. And in this indeed there was only too much truth—it was usually an excuse for one place-hunter to get another one’s scalp. And lastly, as I have said, the majority of our people do not know that a revolution means a fundamental change in social life, and not a spectacular display of armies.

It is not much a few can do to remove this mountain of indifference; but to me it seems that every reformer, of whatever school, should wish to watch this movement with the most intense interest, as a practical manifestation of awakening of the landworkers themselves to the recognition of what all schools of revolutionary economics admit to be the primal necessity—the social repossession of the land.

And whether they be victorious or defeated, I, for one, bow my head to those heroic strugglers, no matter how ignorant they are, who have raised the cry Land and Liberty, and planted the blood-red banner on the burning soil of Mexico.

¹ Publicado en Mother Earth, v.VI, n. 10, diciembre de 1911, pp. 301-6; n.11, enero de 1912, p.335-341 y n. 12, febrero de 1912, 374-386; posteriormente, en forma parcial, en dos partes en Regeneración, (4, 69, 1) y la segunda parte, en Regeneración (4, 94, 2).
² Refiérese a la revuelta surgida del Plan de la Empacadora firmado por Pascual Orozco el 12 de marzo de 1912.
³ Refiérese al libro de Thomas Paine Rights of Man (1791). En él se afirma que una revolución política popular es legítima cuando un gobierno no salvaguarda los derechos naturales de su pueblo.
⁴ En la reproducción parcial de este escrito aparecida en Regeneración núm. 94, 15 de junio de 1912, p. 4, se repite el siguiente párrafo antecediendo a la reproducción de los siguientes 16 párrafos: “El Chicago daily informa «Una nueva revolución en México.» No se trata de una nueva revolución en absoluto. Es la misma revolución, que no comenzó con la rebelión armada del pasado mes de mayo; que ha estado ocurriendo de manera constante desde entonces, y desde antes de esa fecha; y está obligada a continuar durante un largo tiempo en el futuro, si las demás naciones mantienen sus manos fuera y al pueblo mexicano se les permite labrar su propio destino.”
⁵ equivalentes a 2,023,428.2 hectáreas.
⁶ Refiérase a los indios Pueblo: Hopi, Zuni, Keres y Jemez.
⁷ Probable confusión entre Moquis y Mayos.
⁸ Refiérese a la Ley de Tierras y Enajenación de Baldíos, promulgada el 26 de marzo de 1894.
⁹ Se trata de del crítico literario escocés William Archer (1856-1924), autor, entre otros, de Vida, juicio y muerte de Francisco Ferrer (1911) y “The Collapse of the Díaz Legend,” McClure’s Magazine XXXVII: 4 (Agosto, 1911).
¹⁰ Reyes, 21.
¹¹ equivale a 20,720 kilómetros cuadrados.
¹² equivale a 64,750 kilómetros cuadrados.
¹³ Refiérase al henequén.
¹⁴ Refiérase a Francisco I. Madero, La sucesión presidencial en 1910: El partido democrático (1910).
¹⁵ Refiérase a Poncitlán, Jal. La noticia referida apareció en The El Paso Times (El Paso Tex.) del 22 de octubre de 1911.
¹⁶ En español en el original.
¹⁷ Refiérase a Francis Marion a El zorro del pantano (1732-1795) y Tomas Sumter a El gallo de pelea (1734-1832), héroes de la Independencia estadounidense, conocidos por su estilo guerrillero de combatir.
¹⁸ Refiérase a la Colonia de Topolobambo, Sin. (1872-1918) promovida por Albert K. Owen.
¹⁹ Juan Banderas a El agachado (1872-1918). Revolucionario sinaloense. Siendo jefe de rurales se unió a la revuelta maderista. Gobernador interino de Sinaloa. Fue encarcelado por el gobierno de Madero cuando buscaba ser elegido gobernador constitucional del mismo Estado. Al salir de la cárcel se unió al zapatismo en febrero de 1912. Emiliano Zapata le nombró General de División por su destacada habilidad militar. En 1915 se unió a la División del Norte y se rindió al constitucionalismo a principios de 1916. Tras un periodo de encarcelamiento, solicitó su incorporación al Ejército Constitucional a Venustiano Carranza. Murió en un altercado con un diputado obregonista.
²⁰ Refiérase al general Pedro Paz, enviado por el gobierno provisional de Francisco de la Barra, en octubre de 1911, a reprimir la llamada Rebelión de la Mano Negra, levantamiento de las élites de San Cristóbal de la Casas en defensas de sus intereses.
²¹ Refiérase al general Bernardo Reyes.
²² En EUA equivale a 35.237 litros.

WILL THIS STRUGGLE BE DROWNED IN BLOOD? PASSION OF MEXICANS FOR LIBERTY HAS BEEN UNQUENCHABLE.¹

Since the publication of my report of the work of the Mexican Liberal Defense Conference I have received a number of requests, on the part of those interested and anxious to do work, for an article of explanation, giving some idea of the scope and present status of the revolution. And indeed, remembering my own ignorance of the subject no longer ago than last May, and the fact that our daily and weekly press, including the Socialist² and other reform journals, is almost absolutely silent on the matter, and that the chief source of information is a paper but little known, even to our own comrades-I mean “Regeneracion,” the organ of the Mexican Liberal Party-I believe it is quite important that an explanatory article be written for the information of the readers of “Volne Listy³”.

It is important that all anarchists, and sympathizers with anarchistic tendencies and developments among the people, should know that the Mexican Revolution neither began nor ended with the spectacular military movements which culminated in the overthrow of Diaz and the substitution of the present government in Mexico. Those movements were but brief, though important, incidents in the whole mighty effort of a people to overthrow an economic system foisted upon them partly by politicians of their own people, but largely by capitalists of this and other countries, whereby they, the genuine children of Mexican soil, have been reduced to a most hateful slavery.

The details of that slavery I do not intend to rehearse; those who wish to inform themselves as to its almost unbelievable horrors should read Turner’s “Barbarous Mexico.”⁴

MEXICO AND ITS PEOPLE.

Mexico consists of twenty-nine States and Territories and a Federal district similar to the District of Columbia. The smaller, but more thickly populated States are those to the southward, in the vicinity of the Federal district. The entire population of Mexico is some fifteen million, our of which four million are of its pre-European-invasion occupants. Of the remaining eleven million, the greater portion are of mixed breed, a relatively small number being of pure Spanish descent.

The mass of the population is agriculturist by instinct, habit and the general conditions of economic development in the country.

The various tribes of Indians have from time immemorial had communal land-holding arrangements which are very afford into the character of the people and for the comparisons they afford between theoretic and practical free communism.

These Indians have within the last half century seen these communal lands of theirs granted away, thousands of acres at a time, to native or alien landlords, and themselves driven to a hateful toil merely to create profit for the landlords. They have rebelled, and, as the reward of their rebellion, have been shot, tortured or sent away to pestiferous districts where they were bound to die within a few months. Thus, the landlords get rid of their “undesirable” tenants.

The half-breed population is also communist, having harked back to their Indian forbears in this respect. And both Indian and half-breed have an utter hatred of work for work’s sake. They wish to work in order to live, but they have no wish to work to make others rich.

A Rebel against Slavery

The Indian’s “laziness” is proverbial among white men; but, far from its being what the white man thinks it is, it is rather the intense protest of a free soul against a useless and degrading waste of life. He wishes to feel himself a child of the sun and sky, a being through whom moves the breath of life, a thing of the soil and the air, and not a tool for the aimless production of heaps of goods at someone else’s orders.

The half-breeds, on the white side again, are the descendants of Latins; and, white the Latin peoples work, they have never hungered and thirsted after purely commercial gain as have northern nations; they have always preserved a devotion to the beautiful (even the useless beautiful) and the more joys of life-song, dance and festival-unknown to the Anglo-Saxon.

Add to all this the enervating climate of much of Mexico, and you have an understanding of what our grab and-get system of life stigmatizes as “Mexican laziness.”

These people want the land; they do not want to live in cities; they want to use the land in their own way, according to their inherited communal customs:

Time and time again they rebelled, and their rebellions have been murderously put down, but this instinctive hunger for the free field of life is so essentially a part of their being that the only way to kill it is to kill the entire agrarian population. At the present time, it has risen up more invincible than ever; and although the people are ignorant-less than 20 per cent being able to read and write-they need no book learning to convince them that the land is theirs by right.

So far as the Mexican government is concerned, (we Anarchist knew it in advance, and the revolutionists are learning it by experience), the present one, which rode into power at the behest of the great financiers of this country and on the crest of a wave of temporary popular infatuation is no more the friend of the revolting people than was the Diaz regime. Why in the name of common sense should any one suppose that Madero, who is one of the greatest landlords of Mexico, and whose own haciendas are cultivated by the same exploited labor as that employed on other great estates, would favor the restoration of the land to the people? On the contrary, he has announced himself in favor of defending all rights of property, and has appealed to the industrial population not to strike and embarrass its employers at the present critical period.

However, neither the industrial population nor the rural one is heeding his appeal. Despite the silence of newspapers in the eastern and central section of this country, the revolution-the economic revolution-is in full swing, and heading straight for free land. No amount of hushing up will put a stop to it; nor can any power at present in sight in Mexico crush it.

Three outcomes of this immense movement are possible:

1. A military organizer of the Diaz type may arise, and unite military forces so as to subdue the people for a time. But at present no such man has appeared.
2. When the vacillators now endeavoring to solve the governmental problems shall have proved themselves incompetent to keep the Mexican revolters from violating “property rights” of American citizens, the U. S. government may be compelled to drop its mask, and openly intervene. Which means a possible protectorate or ultimate annexation, -a consummation devoutly to be avoided.
3. The Mexican people triumphant, and an immense, an irrecoverable blow give not property in land the world over.

Intervention Feared.

The present condition, -that of sporadic fighting, and general insubordination-may go on for a year, or two or three. It cannot go on indefinitely. The great property owners will ask more drastic measures; these not forthcoming, some governmental change must follow.

Of the three possibilities, the worst will be the second. It should therefore be the business of us, in the United States, to keep the purpose of the revolution before the working people of this country, as well as its development from week to week, that they may appreciate the situation of the Mexican workers and its relation to their own struggle. Then, when agitation for interference by the U. S. begins, they may oppose such interference intelligently, and with might and main.

Now, the best means of keeping informed its oared “Regeneracion,” published at 914 Boston St., Los Angeles, California. Three-fourths of the paper is in Spanish, but the fourth page is in English. I would suggest that every reader of these lines who is able to read English, send 60 cents for a three months’ subscription to the above given address; and read every line of it, from week to week.

The Spanish editors and publishers of the paper are now under indictment for having violated the neutrality laws and need financial aid for their defense; but more than all the paper should be sustained, – since it is really the voice of the heart of the great revolt. Many thousand copies are smuggled in to Mexico, and read aloud to those who are themselves unable to read, and thus the strength and encouragement of fellowship grow and spread.

While the paper refuses to label itself with any “ism,” its war cry is “Land and liberty,” its teachings anarchistic. It is fatensely alive, having little space for theory but much for facts supporting those theories which are dear to all of us.

To sum up: Our Mexican brothers have appealed to us in a really heart-rending manifesto⁵ not to remain ignorant of their struggle; not to believe it is a political one but an economic one, coming down to the primal needs of man; not to ignore the fact that their battle is our battle; and that we sustain them in this immense struggle which must go on a long time yet. We owe it to them to respond. Sustain and circulate “Regeneracion”; raise money for the defense; hold meetings where these things may be made known. Any money sent for them to me, or to “Volne Listy,” 217 E. 66^th. St., New York, will be forwarded to Los Angeles.

VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.

2038 Potomac Ave., Chicago, Treasurer Mexican Liberal Defense Conference.

¹ Publicado en dos partes, la primera en Regeneración, núm. 63, 11 de noviembre de 1911, p.4 y la segunda parte en el núm. 64, 18 de noviembre de 1911, p.4, proveniente de Volne Listy (Nueva York, N. Y., s. f.). A la primera parte le antecedía: “El siguiente es copia del artículo publicado recientemente por la bien conocida escritora Voltairine de Cleyre, en el “Volne Listy”, el destacado semanario Bohemio. Nuestro limitado espacio nos obliga a posponer a la semana próxima la segunda mitad del artículo. En ella, la autora apremia con vehemencia a todos aquellos interesados en “Tierra y Libertad” a suscribirse a “Regeneración” y a enviarle todas sus contribuciones, como tesorera de la Mexican Liberal Defense Conference, o al “Volne Listy”, 217 E. 66th St., Nueva York. (Se incluyen los subtítulos de la versión de Regeneración.) Dado que se hace mención a la presidencia de Francisco I. Madero, debió de ser escrito en la segunda semana del mes de noviembre de 1911.
² Refiérase a The Socialist, Chicago Ill., ed. C. B. Hoffman (1906-1912).
³ Volné Listy. “Casopis sirci zásady bézvládi” (Páginas Libres. “Revista de divulgación de principios anarquistas”). Nueva York, EUA (1890-1917). Dir. Václav Rejsek. Colabs. Adolph Rette, León Tolstoy, Siegfried Nacht, F. Domel Nieuwenhuis, Pierre Ramus, Carlo Malato, Jean Grave, Emma Goldman, Max Nettlau, V. Cherkesov, Voltairine de Cleyre, Joseph Kucera y otros. Publicación mensual escrita en bohemio. Se trata del más importante órgano impreso de los anarquistas de origen checo en los Estados Unidos. En septiembre de 1911 abrió en sus columnas una suscripción a favor de la revolución de México. Mantuvo un vínculo cordial con Regeneración hasta 1916.
⁴ Refiérase al libro de John Kenneth Turner México Bárbaro, mismo que salió a la venta en Estados Unidos en enero de 1911 bajo el sello Charles H. Kerr and Co. De Chicago, III.
⁵ Refiérase al Manifiesto. La Junta Organizadora del Partido Liberal Mexicano al Pueblo de México, publicado en Regeneración, núm. 56, 23 de septiembre de 1911.

THE COMMUNE IS RISEN.¹

March, 1912

They say “She is dead; the Commune is dead”;
That “if she were living her earthquake tread
Would scatter the honeyless hornets’ hive.”
I am not dead, nor yet asleep;
Nor tardy, though my steps seem slow;
Nor feeble from the centuries’ sweep;
Nor cold, though chill the north winds blow.
My legions muster in all lands,
From field, from factory, from mine,
The workers of the world join hands
Across the centuries and brine.

Never since those lines were sung by the great unknown poet, whose heart shone red through his words, has the pulse of the world beat so true a response as it is beating now. We do not stand to-day as mourners at the Resurrection.

What was it the Commune proclaimed? With what hope did it greet the world? And why did it fall? The Commune proclaimed the autonomy of Paris. It broke the chain that fettered her to the heels of her step-mother, the State, — that State which had left her at the mercy of the Prussian besiegers, refusing to relieve her or allow her to relief herself; that State which with a debt saddled upon the unborn bought off the Prussians, that it might revenge itself upon Paris, the beautiful rebel, and keep the means of her explotation in its own hands.

The Commune was a splendid effort to break the tyranny of the centralized domination with which modern societies are cursed; a revolt at artificial ties, which express no genuine social union, the outgrowth of constructive social work, but only the union of oppression, –the union of those who seek to perfect an engine of tyranny to guarantee their possessions. “Paris is a social unit,” said the communards; “Paris is, within itself, an organic whole. Paris needs no outside shell of coercion to hold it together. But Paris owes no subservient allegiance to that traitorous tool at Versailles, which call itself the government of France; nothing to those who have left us unaided to be mowed by the Prussian guns. And Paris repudiates Versailles. «We shall fight, we shall work, we shall live for ourselves.»

This was the word of the Commune, spoken to the world in the wild morning of the Commune, spoken to the world in the wild morning of the year 1871. And the hope it built upon was this: When France beholds Paris fighting, the dream of’ 48² will rise again; and all her communes will proclaim their freedom, even as we. And then we are bound to win, for the Versailles government cannot conquer a revolt which breaks out everywhere. And France once kindled, the peoples of other nations will likewise rise; and this monster, “the State,” which is everywhere devouring liberty, will be annihilated.

This was the hope that lit the eyes of the Commune with dreaming fire, that March day, forty-one years ago. The hope was doomed to disappointment; within three months the glorious rebel fell. She had called, but the response did not come. Why? Because she had not asked enough. Because making war upon the State, she had not made war upon that which creates the State, that to preserve which the State exists.

With the scrupulous, pitiful Conscience which Authority has cunningly bred in men, the Commune had respected property; had kept its enemy’s books, and duly handed over the balances; had starved itself to feed its foes; had left common resources in private hands. And when McMahon’s troops³ rode sabering thorough the streets of Paris, when Gallifet⁴ the butcher was dashing out children’s brains with his own devil’s hands upon her conquered pavements, the very horses they rode, the very sabers that cut, had been paid for by the murdered.

Every day, throughout the life of the commune, the Bank of France had been allowed to transmit the sinews of war to Versailles, the social blood been drained to supply the social foe.

What appeal could so suicidal a course make to downright human nature, which, even in its utmost ignorance and simplicity, would say at once: «Feed the enemy! And starve myself! For what then shall I fight?»

In short, though there were other reason why the Commune fell, the chief one was that in the hour of necessity, the Commune were not Communists. They attempted to break political chains without breaking economic ones; and it cannot be done.

Moreover the Paris Commune was faced by a problem which will forever face revolting cities with a terrible question mark,-the problem of food supply. Only the revoltee in control of the food-sources themselves can maintain his revolt indefinitely. Never till the rebels of industrial fields have joined their forces with agrarian labor,-or seized the land and themselves made it yield -can industrial or political revolt be anything more than futile struggling for a temporary gain which will alter nothing.

And this is the splendid thing which we have lived to see,-the rebellion of the landworker against the feudalism of Lord Syndicate; the revoltee maintaining himself upon that which he has wrested from the enemy; the red banner of the Commune floating no longer on the wall of a besieged city, but in the open field of expropriated plantations, or over the rock-ribbed, volcano-built forts, whereto the free-riding guerilla fighter retreats after his dash against the lords of the soil.

I cannot speak for others. I cannot say how my comrades have felt during the long stagnant years, when spring after spring we have come together to repeat dead men’s names and deeds, and weep over those whose bones lie scattered from cayenne to New Caledonia⁵. I know that for myself I often felt I was doing a weary and a useless thing, wearing out a habit, so to speak,-trying to warm my cold hands at a painted fire. For all these years since we of this generation have lived in America, there has been no stirring movement of the people of this continent to do a deed worth doing. We have listened with curious fascination to our elder’s stories of the abolition movement; we have welcomed the Russian revolutionists⁶, and enviously listened to their accounts of deeds done or undone. We have watched the sharp crossing of weapons here and there in the ominous massing of Capital and Labor against each other all arounds us; but we have known perfectly well that there was little place for us in that combat, till it shall assume other lines than those which dominate it now, till it shall proclaim other purposes and other means.

All in vain it was for us to try to waken any profound enthusiasm in ourselves over the struggle of some limited body of workers, asking for a petty per cent. of wage. We understand too well that such a fight determines nothing, is like the continuous slipping backward of the feet in an attempt to climb a hill of gliding sand.

But now has come this glorious year of 1911-12, this year of worldwide revolt. Out of the enigmatic East a great storm sweeps; and though but little of its real breadth and height is visible or comprehensible to us, we understand so much: the immemorial silence has been broken, the crouching figure has up-straightened. The sources of our information are such that we cannot tell whether the economic regeneration of enslaved China has actually begun, or the revolt is political merely as our reports make it appear. Which ever it may be , one thing is certain: China is no longer motionless; she is touched with the breath of life; she struggles.

Across the sea, in the island of our stolid forbears, a portentous sound has risen from the depths; in the roots of human life, in coal-caverns, Revolt speaks⁸. And England faces Famine; faces the Property-system, faces a mighty army of voluntarily idle men; beholds the upper and the nether stone of economic folly, and feels the crunching of those merciless wheels, and underground the earthquake rumbles wide,-France, Germany, Austria-the mines growl.

And yet this mighty massing, inspiring and threatening as it is, is for a petty demand-a minimum wage! Such situations produce enlightenment; at any moment the demand may change to “The Mines for the Miners”; but as yet it has not come.

Only here in our America, on this continent cursed with land-grabbing syndicates, into whose unspoiled fatness every devouring shark has set his triple row of teeth,-this land whose mercenary spirit is the butt of Europe-only here, under the burning Mexican sun, we know men are revolting for something; for the great, common, fundamental economic right, before which all others fade,-the right of man to the earth. Not in concentrated camps and solid phalanxes; not at the breath of some leader’s word; but over all the land, from the border to Yucatan, animated by spontaneous desire and resolution, in mutually gathered bands, as freemen fight, not uniformed slaves. And leaders come, and leaders go; they use the revolution and the revolution uses them; but whether they come or go, the land battle goes on.

In that quickening soil, the sower’s response is ready; and the peasant uproots his master’s sugar cane and tobacco, replanting corn and beans instead, that himself and the fighting bands may have sustenance. He does not make the mistake that Paris made; he sends no munitions to the enemy; he is an unlettered man, but he knows the use of the soil. And no man can make peace with him, unless that use is guaranteed to him…. He has suffered so long and so terribly under the hell of landownership, that he has determined on death in revolt rather than resubmission to its slavery.

Stronger and stronger blows the hurricane, and those who listen to the singing in the wind know that Senator Lodge⁹ was right when he said: “I am against intervention, but it’s like having a fire next door.”

That fire is burning away the paper of artificial land-holding. That fire is destroying the delusion that any human creature on the face of the earth has right to keep any other from going straight to the sources of life, and using them. That fire is shooting a white illumination upon the labor struggle, which will make the futile wage war conduced in the United states look like baby’s play.

Yes, honorable Senators and Congressmen, the house next door is on fire-the house of Tyranny, the house of Shame, the house that is built by Robbery and Extortion, our of the sold bodies of a hapless race-its murdered men, its outraged women, its orphaned babies.

Yes, it is on fire. And let it burn,-burn to the ground-utterly. And do not seek to quench it by pouring out the blood of the people of the United States, in a vile defense of those financial adventurers who wear the name American. They undertook to play the game; let them play it to a finish; let them stand man to man against thye people they have robbed, tortured, exiled.

Let it crumble to the ground, that House of Infamy; and if the burning gleeds fly hitherward, and the rotten structure of our own life starts to blaze, welcome, thrice welcome, purifying fire, that shall set us, too, upon the earth once more,-free men upon free land,-no tenant-dwellers on a landlord’s domain. In the roar of that fire we hear the commune’s “earthquake tread,”¹⁰ and know that out of the graves at Père-la chaise, out of the trenches of Satory¹¹, out of fever-plains of Guiana¹², out of the barren burial sands of Caledonia, the Great Ghost has risen, crying across the world, vive la Commune!

¹ Voltairine de Cleyre leyó este texto, el 12 de marzo de 1912, en la reunión conmemorativa de la Comuna de París organizada por el Grupo Bohemio de Chicago en esa misma ciudad. Apareció publicado en Mother Earth, vol. 7, núm 1, marzo de 1912, p. 10-14. El título refiere a Mateo, 28: 6.
² Refiérase al ciclo de revoluciones de ese año en Francia, Alemania, Austria, Hungría e Italia, que puso punto final a la Europa Absolutista. Se caracterizó por su espontaneísmo, la incorporación de demandas nacionalistas y socialistas. Estas últimas enarboladas por el incipiente movimiento obrero.
³ Refiérase a Patrice de Mac-Mahon (1808-1893). General victorioso tanto en la Guerra de Crimea (1885) como en la Segunda Guerra de Independencia de Italia (1859) y gobernador defenestrado de Argelia (1864-1870). Fue el jefe militar de Versalles encargado por Napoleón III para suprimir la Comuna. Posteriormente fue el segundo presidente de la Tercera República francesa (1873-1879).
⁴ Refiérase al general francés Gastón de Galliffet (1830-1909). Participó en la mayoría de las guerras y aventuras militares francesa de su época (Crimea, Argelia, México y la franco-prusiana). Estuvo al frente del ministerio de Guerra que pretendía reformar el ejército francés a partir del caso Dreyfus. Cuando en la Asamblea Nacional se le increpó por su dureza contra los comuneros, respondió: “¿Asesino? ¡Presente!”.
⁵ Refiérase a las colonias francesas de Cayena y Caledonia a donde fueron remitidos los comuneros presos.
⁶ Refiérase tanto al movimiento por la abolición de la esclavitud desarrollado en Estados Unidos a partir de 1827 como a los revolucionarios rusos emigrados a Estados Unidos tras la Revolución Rusa de 1905.
⁷ Refiérase a la Revolución china de 1911 (Revolución de Hsinhai) contra la última dinastía imperial, dinastía Qing, que derivó en el establecimiento de la República de China tras el derrocamiento del Emperador Puyi.
⁸ Refiérase al llamado Gran Descontento Obrero que sacudió a Inglaterra e Irlanda, tras la depresión económica de 1908. La primera ola de huelgas salvajes, a partir de septiembre de 1910 y hasta agosto de 1911, se originó en la cuenca minera de Gales del Sur extendiéndose hasta la conservadora Durham. De junio a septiembre del mismo año, huelgas en el sector de transporte, entre otros, se declararon en ciudades como Liverpool y Manchester. En 1912 se declaró la primera huelga minera en Inglaterra.
⁹ Probable referencia Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924). Miembro del ala conservadora del Partido Republicano, promovió la anexión de Filipinas a los Estados Unidos y la restricción de la migración a su país.
¹⁰ Imagen proveniente del poema Hellas de Percy B. Shelley (1821).
¹¹ Tanto el cementerio de Père Lachaise como el almacén de Satory, ambos en París, fueron lugares en que los comuneros fueron masacrados.
¹² Refiérase a los campos de trabajo que formaban parte del sistema penitenciario francés en la isla de Guyana, en auge entre 1887 y 1938, a donde se calcula que fueron enviados alrededor de 75 000 presos, incluidos un número no determinado de presos políticos.