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, Tuesday March 26, 1918
Las Angeles, California – Publication of “Manifesto” Leads to Arrests
The publication of a “Manifesto” by Mexican Revolutionaries, Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado Rivera, in the March 16th edition of Regeneración has led to the arrests of our Mexican Comrades. According to the plan outlined below, they will be tried under the federal Espionage Act.
From The Los Angeles Times of March 22, 1918:
Ricardo Flores Magon and Librado Rivera
AN INVESTIGATION by government agents was begun yesterday in the ramifications of a plan to foment a local Mexican insurrection, following the arrest of Ricardo Flores Magon and Liberado [Librado] Rivera, kingpins of the local anarchistic group and editors an publishers of Regeneracion, organ of the Los Angeles Bolsheviki [this is, of course, absurd as the Bolsheviki are not anarchists]. United States Commissioner D. M. Hammack fixed the bail in each case at $25,000.
Magon was picked up on the street in front of the Federal Building by Deputy United States Marshal Dolph Bassett, and just before noon, the same officer grabbed Rivera in the courtroom of Superior Judge Willis, where he was a witness for the defense in the Palma murder trial.
As Rivera was taken down the steps he scattered a number of sealed copies of Regeneracion, that had been addressed to followers of the unpatriotic cult. Enrique Flores Magon, the brother of Ricardo, was also in the courtroom and smiled when he saw Rivera taken away. For once he was outside the Federal net.
The complaint upon which the accused were arrested was based on a “Manifesto,” that appeared in the columns of Regeneracion, last Saturday, signed by Ricardo Flores Magon and Liberado Rivera.
Assistant United States District Attorney W. Fleet Palmer, who has charge of the prosecution under the Espionage Act, declared that the article was deliberate on their part to cause dissatisfaction, anarchy and open rebellion against all forms of government. He thought they ought to be sent out of the country.
MANIFESTO TO ANARCHISTS.
The “Manifesto” is addressed to the assembly of organization in Mexican Liberal party, anarchists of the world and workingmen in general. They are addressed as “companions.”
The “Manifesto” says
The clock of history will soon point with hands inexorable instant death to society, already agonizing. The death of the old society is at hand, and it will not be delayed much longer. Everything indicates that the end will come unexpectedly.
The flames of discontent are revived by the blows of tyranny each time more enraged and cruel in every country, the fist is contracted, the mind exalted, the heart beating violently and where they do not murmur they shout, all sighing for the moment in which the calloused hand during hundreds of centuries of labor drop the fecund tools and grab the rifle which previously awaits the caress of the hero.
Companions: The moment is solemn, it is the moment preceding the greatest political and social catastrophe that history registers; the insurrection of all the people against existing conditions.
It falls to our lot, the intellectual, to prepare the popular mentality until the moment arrives, and why not prepare the insurrection, since the insurrection is born of tyranny? Prepare for action, comrades, and the future will be for our ideal.
Ricardo Flores Magon declared that the “manifesto” only contained what “everybody knows to be true: that everybody is acquainted with a condition that means the triumph of labor over the monopolistic classes.”
The attention of the local Federal authorities has been drawn toward the Regeneration on several occasions recently, and copies of the paper are known to have contained unpatriotic and anarchistic editorials. The issue of last Saturday was so outspoken, that C. L. Keep, special agent of the Department of Justice, thought it was time to suppress the publication.
It is known that the defendants have been making a campaign for money among the peons and the lower classes of Mexicans. Last fall, when the sugar beet growers were having trouble keeping their help, the Magons were often in evidence in the Plaza district, teaching the Mexicans principles of unrest and anarchy and advising them not to accept the terms that had been offered them by the sugar beet men.
IN TROUBLE BEFORE.
The Magon brothers have been in trouble many times, dating as far back as 1907, when the authorities got after them in St. Louis, for the circulation of seditious documents. Later Ricardo Flores Magon, and his brother, Enrique Flores Magon, were sent to the Arizona penitentiary at Florence, for violation of the neutrality laws, and
On June 21, 1912, Liberado Rivera and Anselmo Figueroa, who at that time was the active editor of Regeneracion were convicted in Judge Olin Wellborn’s court, for violation of the neutrality laws, and were given one year and eleven months in the Federal penitentiary at McNeil’s Island. Figueroa died of consumption while serving his stretch.[WE NEVER FORGET] It was on this occasion that Lucille Norman, an adopted daughter of Ricardo Flores Magon, angered at the action of the court and to show her indifference to the enforcement of the law, led a crowd of Mexicans, made up of friends of the accused men, in a hand-to-hand fight against the police who were escorting the prisoners from the Federal prison to the County Jail. The riot call was sounded and a platoon of police succeeded in dispersing the crowd, although it was necessary to carry the Norman girl, kicking and screaming, to jail.
On June 22, 1916, the two Magon brothers were found guilty in Judge Oscar Trippet’s court, of violation of the neutrality laws, and Enrique was sentenced to pay a fine of $1000 each on two indictments and be imprisoned in the Federal penitentiary at McNeil’s Island for three years. Ricardo was given a year and a day at the same prison, with a fine of $1000 on each of two indictments.
An appeal was taken and several months ago the judgment of the lower court was affirmed by the United States District Court of Appeal. Then J. H. Ryckman filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court and that matter is now pending.”
When Ricardo Flores Magon and Liberado Rivera were arraigned before United States Commissioner D. M. Hammack, yesterday, further proceedings were continued indefinitely. Both of them asked for attorneys. The preliminary hearing is not likely to be held at all as the case will be taken directly to the Federal grand jury, as soon as it can be prepared.
Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution:
The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores Magón in the United States
by Colin M. MacLachlan
University of California Press, 1991
(search separately: raul palma 1918; lucille norman) https://books.google.com/books?id=A3YG_R8kSEoC
