Ricardo Flores Magón (1873–1922) was a prominent Mexican activist, journalist, and political reformer, renowned for his fierce opposition to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. In 1900, he founded Regeneración, an influential newspaper that served as a powerful platform for denouncing the regime and championing social justice. His uncompromising activism led to repeated imprisonments under Díaz’s rule. While in exile in the United States, Magón co-founded the Mexican Liberal Party (PLM), advancing anarchist and revolutionary ideals. He remained committed to his cause until his death under suspicious circumstances at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas in 1922. Today, Magón is remembered as a foundational thinker and ideological forerunner of the Mexican Revolution. Consider the following questions when reading the selection below:

• What has been changed by La Revolución?
• What has been gained by workers through La Revolución?
• Who has benefitted from La Revolución?

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That afternoon dies without specific peculiarity. The sun, lazy, did not want to spread his golden hair in all the circumference of the horizon, as if he would be upset from the baseness of men, that because of their smallness they kill each other, because of nothing they suffer, and from nothing they are amused, like poor worms.

Through the dusty highway–and dusty, too–an older man walks. It must have been a long journey, judging by the reflected tired face and his painful walk. He carries a backpack, a shirt, made of bleached cotton, perhaps, and worn out pants. It is a soldier returning home from the Orozco group.

The man walks and walks, walks observing the groups of men and women assiduously, working in their eternal labor, dressed in very humble clothes, with sadness and desperation showing in their sunburned faces. These people work the same, dress the same, have the same look than before the revolution.

The revolutionary stops to contemplate the picture and questions, “Why did we have the
revolution?”

And he continues walking to his village where he will see his loved ones, waiting for him anxiously, for sure, children and wife, after his long absence. The highway is slowly covered by shadows. To his side walks a group of workers marching towards their shacks, with the same looks of weariness, of fatigue, and maybe resentment. The revolutionary turns to the group and asks, “Why did we have the revolution?”

He continues walking towards the village, where he will find his loved ones, where they are
waiting desperately after a long wait, his children and wife.

The barking of dogs denounces the proximity of the village completely submerged in darkness.

The wind weeps between the branches of ash trees burdening the road. Our traveler walks,
walks, and walks, thinking about his loved ones…

The next day the revolutionary has to go back to the furrow, as any other one to make 25 to 50 cents a day; and if Vazquez Gómez has gotten the presidential chair, the poor keep on being poor, keep on being humiliated by the rich and by the authority.

The revolutionary reflects and questions, “Why did we have the revolution?”

Worn out, he returns to his shack, where he had been the night before. A pot of beans is their dinner, with a few tortillas. The dog yawns close to the fire; crickets sing their love in the cracks; children sleep almost naked. “Who won?” asks his wife, who is so happy to be able to stretch and hug her absent husband’s arms, and had not been able to ask the question before. After a few minutes, thinking, the revolutionary answers,

“Well, we did.”

“But you have not even a cent.”

“Well anyhow, we son–we dethroned Madero.”

“But we were left down, as always,” says the woman.

The revolutionary scratches his hair and, not having any other way to answer,and answering as before, he questions, “Why did we have a revolutionary?”

“Why did we have the Revolution?” the woman asks.

And the revolutionary, surprised of this woman thinking like him, could not stand his indignation anymore, backing inside and exclaimed, “The revolution is only for the bold ones, the ones who want to be in the government, the ones who want to live off of the work of others! “

We got furiously obstinate by not listening to the anarchists of Regeneration, who in all ways
have advised us not to follow the employers, to take possession of the land, water, fields, mines, the factories, mills, miner, means of transportation, and that we should commune property to all the population of the Mexican Republic and so, we would consume what we produced. We were told that to struggle to elevate individuals was a criminal offense. We did not listen, because they were poor, from our own class, and as the saying goes, we carry penitence from our own sins. This is what we deserve, for being stupid! Our employers are having a great time right now, while we, the bait, the suckers, the ones who work, sweat, and struggle, show our chests to the enemy; now we are the ones who suffer more than before… Juan sounds the trumpet, announcing a meeting; rubs his eyes…It was a bad dream! Picks up his rifle, and rejoices, knowing the fact he’s joining the lines of the red flag liberators, and yells with sound voice, “Hail to my laud and freedom!”

(From “Regeneración,” number 87, dated April 27, 1912.)