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Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 2, 1911
“The Insurrectos” by Kate Brownlee Sherwood
From the Spokane Industrial Worker of June 1, 1911:
Tag: Tierra y Libertad
Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Mexican Revolution” by Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman, Part III
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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 31, 1920
“The Mexican Revolution” by Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman, Part III
From The Liberator of July 1920:
The Mexican Revolution
By Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman
[Part III of III.]
There are other interesting personalities behind the new revolution-Calles
[Plutarco Elías Calles] (pronounced Kah-yayz), for example, ex-military governor of Sonora, Secretary of Commerce and Labor and leader of the Sonora secession. He is without doubt the most forceful, the most radical, the most intelligent and widely informed among the present leaders of Mexico.As governor of Sonora he proved himself a champion of labor, and he gave the Indians lands, and each a gun and five hundred rounds of ammunition with which to protect and hold them. Carranza immediately telegraphed him, when these acts became known, to take back the lands. Calles replied: “Send a stronger man than I am, for I can’t do it.” Calles has tried to enforce Article I23 of the Constitution, which is the most enlightened labor code of any capitalist country. As a result the Phelps-Dodge Company, which operates the great copper mines at Cananea, closed their works. Calles instructed the workers to take charge of them and run them. He told me how surprised he was to see how well they did it. The representatives of the Phelps-Dodge Company hurried back upon the scene with a great bill for damages. Calles admitted their claims, but then he turned to the Mexican constitution.
“I read here,” he said, “that any company that ceases operations without giving two weeks’ notice must pay three months’ salary to its employees. Go bring your payrolls, and we will strike a balance to see how much YOU owe the workers, whom I represent.” The mine representatives decided to return to Cananea and put in safety appliances, build club rooms, reading rooms, and, to crown all, a huge concrete swimming pool for the workers.
“Do you know of any other mine in the world that has a swimming pool for its workers?” Calles asked me as he told this story, and then he laughed. At the same time the same company, just over the international line in Bisbee, was driving its workers, across the heat-eaten sands of the desert. so Calles, not being able to enforce Article I23 in the civilized United States, did what he could by sending food to the unfortunate victims.
Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Mexican Revolution” by Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman, Part II
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Hellraisers Journal – Friday July 30, 1920
“The Mexican Revolution” by Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman, Part II
From The Liberator of July 1920:
The Mexican Revolution
By Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman
[Part II of III.]
There have been a great many myths regarding the benefits of the Carranza régime, such as the opening of schools, giving lands to the Indians, nationalizing the sub-soil, etc., etc. One by one the pitifully few schools of the Diaz administration have been closed until Tacubaya and Mixcoac, two of the largest residence suburbs of Mexico City cannot boast a single public school. Land, given to the Indians, has in many cases, as in Yucatan, Tabasco and Morelos, been wrested away by military might, while a single grant to a General has often amounted to more in area than all the lands given away to the people during the whole of the Carranza rule. Under the cloak of the slogan of Mexico for the Mexicans, which has so attracted the imaginations of American radicals, he has stabbed every liberty in the back, and has built up a grasping, grafting, unprincipled military clique, the members of which have ridden across the land looting, murdering and stirring up revolt, until the federal soldier is more feared and hated than the bandit.
Directly the revolution resulted from two things: the attempt on the part of the government to railroad Bonillas, former ambassador at Washington, into the presidency; and the attempt to repeat the story of Yucatan and its murders in Sonora, the home state of Obregon.
To guarantee the election of Bonillas, government candidates were imposed by force in half a dozen states, Obregon meetings were broken up by the sabers of the man on horseback, Obregon himself was arrested on fake charges of inciting a rebellion. The knowing shook their heads, and predicted his murder within a week or two.
In the meantime Carranza was pouring soldiers into Sonora, against the repeated remonstrances of Governor de la Huerta, to crush the railroad strike and several mining strikes that were on, and probably in addition to break up the state government and impose his own officials as he had done in Yucatan, in Tabasco, in half a dozen other states.
Hellraisers Journal: From The Liberator: “The Mexican Revolution” by Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman, Part I
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Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 29, 1920
“The Mexican Revolution” by Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman, Part I
From The Liberator of July 1920:
The Mexican Revolution
By Carleton Beals and Robert Haberman
[Part I of III.]
AFTER ten years of practice any people should understand quite thoroughly the technique of conducting a respectable, eat-out-of-your-hand revolution. The Mexican revolution which brought a new régime into power some few days ago was orderly, efficient, easily successful. Less than a month from the day the sovereign state of Sonora raised the banner of revolt, the revolutionary army-el ejercito liberal revolucionario-galloped into the capital without the firing of a single shot.
They looked strange-those men from the hills, on their lean, tired ponies, as they pounded down Avenida Francisco Madero, Mexico’s fashionable Fifth Avenue, dusty and ragged-colorful with great red and blue bandana handkerchiefs and vivid shirts, with flowers hung on their carbines, but eyes grim with purpose. Yet Mexico paid little attention to them. The stores were open; the honking automobiles crowded the flanks of their ponies; fashionable women went unconcernedly about their shopping. Only occasionally did they stop with a rustle of their silk gowns to gaze at the queer outlaw crew of sandalled Indians and Mestizos sweeping by beneath their great, bobbing sombreros.
During those first days I roamed the streets disconsolately-box seats at a Mexican revolutionary melodrama and no thrills. I tried to imagine the turnover as being a cross-your-heart-to-die proletarian revolution, but merely spoiled the afternoon wishing I were in Russia.
Nevertheless, I made the most of it; hired an automobile and dashed around town taking snapshots of generals-who were easier to find than soldiers-scoured the countryside looking for the victoriously approaching Obregon who was expected in the capital within forty-eight hours with an immense force, of which the bands of cavalry we had seen were the paltry forerunners. Early in the afternoon we burnt up the road to Guadelupe Hidalgo-that venerated religious mecca of Mexico five miles outside of the capital, whishing past red-cross machines speeding back from the wreck of one of the Carranza military trains that had evacuated the capital some twenty minutes before the rebels arrived.
Hellraisers Journal: Staff Writer for Appeal to Reason Interviews Mexican Revolutionaries in Los Angeles Jail
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Hellraisers Journal – Monday January 11, 1909
Los Angeles, California – Against All Odds, Shoaf Meets with Mexican Patriots
From the Appeal to Reason of January 9, 1909:
[by George H. Shoaf]
Los Angeles, Dec. 30.
SOCIALISTS and trade unionists with whom I talked relative to seeing the revolutionists, who were in jail “incommunicado,” declared emphatically that United States District Attorney Oscar Lawler would never let me see them. Only once in six months, they said, had the “incommunicado” rule been broken, and that was when Mrs. Librado Rivera was permitted to hold a few minutes’ conversation with her husband, in the presence of the jailer. Local newspaper men also who had been denied the usual privileges of the press in regard to interviewing prisoners stated that the matter of my seeing Magon and his comrades was entirely out of the question. Even Attorneys Harriman and Holstan, the only persons who were permitted to see the men, seriously doubted whether District Attorney Lawler would grant my request….
The surprise of the jailer, when the marshal ordered him to let me see Magon et al., can better be imagined than described, and when he learned that I was merely the correspondent of a Socialist paper-the Appeal to Reason-he nearly fell off his seat. Socialists are rare visitors at the county jail, except when they are locked up for some crime alleged to have been committed against the government, and I was the object of much curiosity on the part of the mailer and his assistants. So unusual was the order that even the jailer would not be convinced until he verified it by telephoning direct to the district attorney himself. I was invited into a room adjoining the jailer’s office, in which were a number of chairs and a table. Ten minutes later the door was thrown open and, accompanied by their guards, Magon, Villarreal and Rivera walked in…..
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Hellraisers Journal: “Open Letter” from Los Angeles County Jail by Comrades Magón, Rivera, and Villarreal
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.
―Ricardo Flores Magón
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Hellraisers Journal, Saturday July 25, 1908
From Los Angeles County Jail: “Open Letter” by Mexican Revolutionaries
From the Montana News of July 23, 1908:
MEXICAN REVOLUTIONISTS
APPEAL TO ROOSEVELT.
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The “open letter”, of which this is a copy, was mailed to President Roosevelt, upon May 28, by Messrs. Magon, Villarreal, and River, the three Mexican political prisoners who are still in Los Angeles county jail. They have now been in prison over nine months without trial. If their case goes to the supreme court, they m ay be without trial for another year to come. So far, release under bond has been denied them, though it is at times granted even to persons accused of murder.
These men have violated no law. Their crime is that of working for the oppressed of their own country, agitating in behalf of education, improvement in the conditions of labor (throughout Mexico, men, women and children alike, work from 16 to 18 hours per day for wages of from 15 cents to 75 cents), and a more liberal government such as would permit freedom of speech and of the press, as well as election of public officials by the people. Such measures as these are contrary to the policy of the Mexican government. Therefore Magon, Villarreal, Rivera, and their associates are “wanted in Mexico.”
Newspapers and individuals are requested to help these men by giving all possible publicity to this letter.
The letter to President Roosevelt follows:
Hellraisers Journal: George P West Reports on Meeting Between American and Mexican Labor Leaders, Part II
Since we arrived here we have learned
that the American people do not want war,
and especially the working people.
-Carlos Lovera
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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday August 16, 1916
From The Masses: Robert Minor on Mexico and American Politics
Hellraisers Journal: From The Masses: “Persecution of Mexican Refugees” by John Reed
There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Thursday June 22, 1916
From The Masses: John Reed on Arrests of Magón Brothers
