Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

The Mexican Revolution / 267
murmur, shout, longing for the moment when their hardened hands will drop the
work tools and take up the rifle that is waiting for the hero's caress.
Comrades: The moment is solemn. It is the moment before the greatest political
and social catastrophe that history has recorded: the insurrection of all the people
against their present conditions.
It will certainly be the blind impulse of the suffering masses. It will be, without
doubt, the chaotic explosion of anger, unrestrained by the guard's revolver or the
hangman's gallows. It will be the overflowing of all indignation, of all bitterness, and
in the chaos that will follow new tyrants will be born, because in such cases with regularity
charlatans become leaders.
Therefore, it rests with you, the conscientious, to prepare the people's minds
fo r this moment, but not for the insurrection, as that will be born of tyranny.
Prepare the people, not only to await this great event with serenity, but also
prepare them for those who would drag them along the paths of flowers and in the
end subject them to the same enslavement that they suffer today.
For the rebellion to succeed without unconsciously forging with its own hands
new chains that will again enslave the people, it is necessary that we, who do not believe
in Government, that we, who are convinced that Government in all its forms and
whoever is at its head is a tyranny because it is not an institution created to protect
the weak, but to protect the strong, must use every circumstance to spread, without
fear, our sacred anarchist ideal, the only human, the only just and the only true.
Failing to do this is to betray the aspirations of the people for a liberty whose
only limits are natural ones, a liberty that will not endanger the conservation of the
species.
Failing to do this is to leave the poor in the hands of those who will sacrifice
them to their own interests. Failing to do this will affirm the conviction of our enemies
who claim "that the day is far off when we will be able to implant new ideas."
Activity, activity and more activity is what we must have at this moment.
Let each man and each woman that loves the anarchist ideal spread it with tenacity,
without thinking of danger or taking notice of ridicule or considering the consequence.
To work comrades, and the future will be our ideal. (Regeneracian, March 1918)
(Further reading: Ward S. Albro, Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magan and the Mexican
Revolution, Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1992 and Colin M.
MacLachlan, Anarchism and the Mexican Revolution: The Political Trials of Ricardo Flores
Magan il1 the United States, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.)