Ricardo Flores Magón

Born: 16-Sep-1873

Birthplace: San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, Mexico

Died: 21-Nov-1922

Location of death: Leavenworth, KS [1]

Cause of death: unspecified

Remains: Buried, Rotunda of Illustrious Persons, Mexico City, Mexico



Gender: Male

Race or Ethnicity: Hispanic

Sexual orientation: Straight

Occupation: Anarchist, Journalist, Author

Nationality: Mexico

Executive summary: Agitator behind Mexican revolution

Ricardo Flores Magón spent most of his life publishing revolutionary newspapers and being arrested for what he wrote. He was a critical anarcho-syndicalist thinker, writing many analyses of Bakunin and Marx.

During the end of the Porfiriato, Magón escaped to Texas where he continued to publish revolutionary newspapers for a Mexican audience. He would spend most of the last two decades of his life in a foreign country, attempting to foment rebellion in his homeland while avoiding the dictator Porfirio Díaz's assassins and kidnappers.

In Texas, Magón was an early spokesman for the expatriate political party PLM (Partido Liberal Mexicano). His newspaper Regeneracion, reborn after his printing presses were confiscated by the Mexican dictatorship, incited Mexicanos living in the US to smuggle arms, troops, and even conduct border raids against Diaz's forces- thus opening another front of the revolution. For his outspokenness, he was charged with violation of the US's neutrality laws.

After the fall of the dictator and the subsequent lackluster presidential rule of Francisco Madero, Magón lead an anarchist revolt in Baja California, resulting in more prison time.

His final prison stint in the US was due to his writings against World War I -- he was charged with sedition and imprisoned under the Espionage Act. He died in Leavenworth Penitentiary four years later of natural causes.

Emiliano Zapata's Plan de Ayala is based on Magón's writings, and indeed Zapata's famous quote "Tierra y Libertad" is the name of one of Magón's books.

"We are free, truly free, when we don't need to rent our arms to anybody in order to be able to lift a piece of bread to our mouths."