Douglas dis arizona11/5/2023 They published their own newspaper, El Demó crata, and distributed Regeneraci ó n. The smelter and railway workers who formed the Club Libertad came together out of love for their homeland but also to fight for their rights as workers. The ferocity of the forces set against them deepened their commitment. Agents of the two nations spied on, jailed, beat, and tortured them, and, time and again, destroyed their printing presses. Forced into exile, they brought their ideals with them and fought not only for a Mexican change of regime but for working people everywhere: “…the cause of the wage-slave against his master has no frontiers it is not a national problem but a universal conflict it is the cause of all the disinherited the world over, of every one who has to work with his hands and his brains to bring his family a loaf of bread.” Particularly active among borderland miners, they suffered repression from the governments of the U.S. ![]() The mag ó nistas organized liberal clubs and published newspapers on both sides of the border. Their slogan was Tierra y Libertad, Land and Liberty, which became the slogan of the Mexican Revolution. Regeneraci ó n promoted a positive ideal of society organized through cooperation, without bosses, priests, landlords, or politicians. Among other leaders were his brother, Enrique Flores Mag ón, Juan Sarabia, Librado Rivera, Antonio Villarreal, and Lá zaro Guti é rrez de Lara. Its central figure was Ricardo Flores Mag ón, who fled into exile in the U.S. The Partido Liberal Mexicano was founded in 1901 to oppose the dictatorship, with the newspaper Regeneraci ó n as its primary tool for agitating and organizing. It also offered villagers the means of escape and carried railway workers with radical ideas and newspapers, including Regeneraci ó n. The railroad brought in troops to subdue not only the Apaches but also strikes and village rebellions. ![]() Geronimo’s final defeat in 1886 meant the end of Apache raids, and Chihuahua’s population increased. The railroad connected Mexico City with El Paso, Texas, and brought an economic boom, facilitating mining and cattle exports to the United States and raising land values. The transfer of wealth impoverished local economies and enriched the elite. He brought foreign investors to build railways, and the trains took Mexico’s natural resources out of the country: timber, copper and other ore, cotton, sugar, henequen, and tropical hardwoods. He appointed governors and municipal authorities to positions that had previously been elected by the communities and sent his cronies to rule distant states. He imposed harsh penalties for protest and gagged the opposition press. I am still seeking the PLM newspaper, El Demó crata, published in Douglas around 1906–1907.ĭíaz ruled with an implacable hand. I received digital copies of the Phoenix Spanish-language Wobbly newspaper, La uni ón industrial, from an archive in Amsterdam. ![]() I visited the Special Collections and law libraries at the University of Arizona and corresponded with librarians across the country. I read all of it and found an excellent unpublished dissertation-thank you, Ellen Howell Myers!-that gave me footnotes that led to more footnotes. Hector’s binder reflected the extensive research he had done some years earlier, including articles on the Bisbee Deportation, the Cananea strike, and enough to whet my curiosity about the Partido Liberal Mexicano, a precursor to the Mexican Revolution, who organized smelter and railway workers in Douglas in the early days. I was looking for a project in Cochise County–Northeastern Sonora. ![]() It was 2016 I had just turned in my dissertation, later published as a book, which focuses on revolutionaries in Chihuahua in the 1960s. I began this project when Hector Salinas showed me a binder of articles and asked me to research the Partido Liberal Mexicano (Mexican Liberal Party, PLM) in Douglas.
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