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  • A History of Latinx Immigrant Activism
  • Nancy Raquel Mirabal (bio)

Steve Striffler's Solidarity: Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights examines the multiple responses to US interventions, occupations, and wars in Latin America during the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century. Striffler's key intervention is a constant and needed reminder that US violence, corruption, and deceit in Latin America did not go unnoticed and, in fact, prompted decades of activism.

Striffler's historical reach begins with the late nineteenth century and ends with the wars in Central America, the rise of NAFTA, and the Zapatista Movement. There is a lot to cover here and as a result, it reads more like a survey than an in-depth study of a particular event, movement, or cause. Moreover, by focusing on the US Left, which tends to focus on white leftists, and the politics of solidarity with Latin America and Latin Americans, there is a tendency to minimize, and exclude the activism of communities of color, women, and immigrants in the United States who were active and critical to the success of these very same movements.

For my response, I will look at those moments in Striffler's book where Latin American politics and revolutions inspired immigrants living and working in the United States to organize among themselves and across communities. How would Striffler's argument change if we were to examine US left-wing politics and movements from the perspective of immigrants and communities of color in the United States? For instance, Striffler mentions Ricardo Flores Magón, a Mexican revolutionary and founder of the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) who was exiled in 1904 to San Antonio and later Los Angeles. We learn of Flores Magón through the Industrial Workers of the World's (IWW) connection with the PLM. As Striffler writes, by "1914 the PLM had some 6,000 members on the US side of the border, and in Los Angeles, its Spanish-language newspaper, Regneración, had over 10,000 readers. For its part, and in communication with the PLM, the IWW was organizing workers, including those of Mexican descent throughout the U.S. Southwest" (41). Many of those workers were organizers. Some were members of the PLM, others formed unions, and still others wrote for Regneración. The PLM and Regneración influenced the Mexican immigrant community for decades, establishing a strong radical element [End Page 92] that shaped numerous political organizations, unions, and the activism of women, including Jovita Idar, Luisa Moreno, Emma Tenayuca, Josefina Fierro de Bright, and Paula Carmona (Enrique Flores Mágon's wife and Ricardo Flores Mágon's sister-in-law). These women, as scholars Cynthia E. Orozco Nicole Guidotti Hernandez, Vicki L. Ruiz, Gabriela Gonzalez, and Emma Pérez have so well argued, have yet to garner the historical recognition they so richly deserve for their activism in the United States.1

In March of 1918 Flores Magón was charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and was imprisoned at Leavenworth prison until his death in 1922. While in the United States, as Christina Heatherton writes, "Flores Magón had commanded the world to witness, support, and join the struggle for freedom, especially the struggle of the Mexican Revolution, which he saw as a battle against US imperialism, racism, and capitalism."2 Once at Leavenworth, Flores Magón was part of a collective of radical thinkers who had been imprisoned for their anticapitalist politics and activism. As Heatherton explains, the prison, labeled an "university of radicalism" by one federal surveillance file, was a rare space where activists gathered, met, discussed, and published a prison newspaper, the Leavenworth New Era, where, as Heatherton notes, Flores Magón's brother, Enrique published a regular column called "Mexican Kaleidoscope."3 The reason I bring this up is that the history of activism on the Left can and should move beyond traditional notions of white political alliances. Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón were powerful figures in their own right, who articulated strong criticisms against capitalism and, in doing so, collaborated and worked in tandem with the IWW.

Striffler begins his book with...

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