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, Sunday October 27, 1907
Los Angeles, California – Mexican Revolutionaries Under Arrest
From the Appeal to Reason of October 26, 1907:
ANOTHER MOYER-HAYWOOD CASE
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BY W. A. COREY.
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Ricardo Flores Magón
Probably most readers of the Appeal have received some inkling through the capitalist press of the case of the four Mexican revolutionists now in jail in Los Angeles and fighting extradition to Mexico.
It is another Moyer-Haywood case; another attempt on the part of capitalist tyranny to put men out of the way who have become dangerous to it; another instance of capitalism’s cowardly Black Hand methods. As usual, the capitalist press has acted its part either by blackening the characters of the men or by refusing the case the space its importance warrants.
Three of the men-Magon, Villarreal and Rivera were arrested August 23, in the office of their publication, “La Revolucion,” in Los Angeles, while the fourth, De Lara, was arrested at his lodging September 27th. The first arrests were made without warrants or any show of authority whatever by officers of the Los Angeles police department, acting in conjunction with the Mexican authorities. The three Mexicans, who are powerful men, put up a stiff fight and were overcome with the greatest difficulty.
It was the evident intention of the police to hurry the men to a train and get them over into Mexico before legal steps could be taken to protect them. Once across the Mexican line they would be lined up against a brick wall and summarily shot. It was a case of kidnaping pure and simple; though not as simple as the kidnapers hoped, for they did not reckon with the Socialists, whose lawyers, Job Harriman and A. F. Holston, instantly took up the fight for the prisoners and forced the “persecution” to show their hand in the courts.
