The Plan de San Diego: Tejano Rebellion, Mexican Intrigue

3. The Magonistas

3The Magonistas Magonistas wrote the Plan de San Diego, as is readily apparent from the Plan itself and especially from the “Manifesto to the Oppressed Peoples of America.” General Victoriano Huerta and his followers never showed much interest in social justice issues or in the plight of Hispanics in the United States, much less that of American blacks. The magonistas did. An immigration inspector described Ramos as being “a fanatic of anarchical tendencies and dangerous.”1 Furthermore, one of the signers of the revised and expanded Plan of San Diego was León Cárdenas Martínez, a militant magonista. The magonistas were so called because they were the followers of Ricardo Flores Magón (Mexican political factions tended to be named after their leader). Flores Magón, a native of the state of Oaxaca, had embarked on a study of the law but instead became a student activist, protesting against the dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz. In 1900, Flores Magón began publishing an opposition newspaper, Regeneraci ón, which the authorities suppressed. Determined to continue his crusade, Flores Magón, and his brother Enrique, went into exile in the United States, first in Texas, then in St. Louis, Missouri, and continued their campaign. The American authorities took action against them, and Flores Magón fled to Canada for a time. He eventually made Los 22 22 The Magonistas Angeles his headquarters, being harassed by agents of the Mexican and U.S. governments and on occasion jailed for violation of the American neutrality laws. In 1906 he was instrumental in forming the Partido Liberal Mexicano (plm), on the grounds that the traditional Liberal party in Mexico was now indistinguishable from the Conservatives in its support of Díaz. The plm announced a sweeping program of fundamental reforms. But Flores Magón kept moving to the political left, becoming an avowed anarchist, a position that cost him the support of moderate Mexicans. Flores Magón’s goals were to overthrow the Díaz regime and to abolish the capitalist system in Mexico, and he failed on both counts. The magonistas were thoroughly penetrated by agents of the two governments and were habitually broke, the faithful being largely laborers who could contribute little to the revolutionary treasury, and Flores Magón lost credibility by remaining safely in Los Angeles while urging his followers to take up arms against Díaz. Flores Magón was a thinker, not a fighter. The one area where the magonistas excelled was propaganda. The Plan de San Diego has the same grandiose unreality as some other magonista schemes, and given that faction’s impressive record of military incompetence, it had absolutely no chance of success. To illustrate the magonistas’ military ineptitude one need only refer to their 1906 attempt to overthrow the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Díaz. Flores Magón himself went to El Paso to direct operations. Their junta in that city devised a plan of campaign. First, two hundred armed militants would assemble in El Paso, cross the river to Ciudad Juárez, blow up the barracks, police station, and city hall, and seize the customhouse , the banks, and the house of the richest citizen. A contingent would then take the train and go capture the state capital, the city of Chihuahua. The El Paso junta would continue to supply war materiel. The victorious magonistas would name one of their colleagues as governor of Chihuahua, the rest of that state would rally to their cause, and there would occur a domino effect as state after state rebelled against Díaz’s rule. The Díaz authorities soon learned of the plan, and two army officers were assigned to function as agents provocateur, claiming that they could induce the Juárez garrison to defect to the 23 The Magonistas 23 magonista cause. When the militants tried to implement their plan, scheduled for October 21, it never happened. On the night of October 19–20, instead of two hundred armed fighters, a small group of idealistic young militants undertook to capture Juárez. They were quickly arrested. Flores Magón, prizing discretion over valor, fled El Paso as quickly as he could.2 The magonistas had mounted their major military campaign in 1911 from California. A force of several hundred, many of them foreign mercenaries , managed to seize several towns in what was then the territory of Baja California. They planned to use...