Studies on Anarchism
The best introductions to the subject of anarchism are George Woodcock’s Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements and Daniel Guerin’s Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. Other useful works in the field include The Anarchists, by James Joll, and The Anarchists, by Irving L. Horowitz. The Horowitz version offers the reader a diverse collection of anarchist essays. A seminal approach by Paul Avrich in The Russian Anarchists has resulted in a valuable methodological contribution to the study of anarchism in one country. He successfully relates developments within Russia to Western Europe. The older classics by Max Nomad, Rebels and Renegades and Apostles of the Revolution, are excellent studies.
Essential for an understanding of the movement are the works contributed from the anarchist leadership itself. Among these are essays by three men who profoundly affected Mexican anarchism : Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Proudhon. The most important of these works is Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, which gave anarchism historical justification at a critical phase in the movement’s growth. Proudhon’s What Is Property? was a landmark effort and had tremendous influence in nineteenth-century Mexico. Also useful are Fields, Factories and Workshops and The Conquest of Bread, by Kropotkin, and a collection of Bakunin’s essays edited by G. P. Maximoff, entitled The Political Philosophy of Bakunin.
Studies on Mexico
There are several social histories of Mexico that will provide an understanding of nineteenth-century Mexican social realities and knowledge of either the urban labor or the agrarian movements. The best study is Moisés González Navarro’s monumental El porfiriato: La vida social from the Historia Moderna de México series edited by Daniel Cosio Villegas. This book contains a wealth of material regarding the overall Mexican social scene between 1876 and 1910, including social unrest. Unfortunately, the footnotes are indecipherable.
A work of importance is Estadísticas económicas del porfiriato: Fuerza de trabajo y actividad por sectores, compiled by the Seminario de la Historia Moderna de México, with an introduction by Fernando Rosenzweig. This study offers a wealth of economic data which prepares the basis of an explanation for not only the resurgence of Mexican anarchism, but also the causation of lower-class alienation and an analysis of the coming of the Mexican Revolution.
Four indispensable contributions are Francisco R. Calderón,
La república restaurada: La vida económica; Luis González y González et al.,
La república restaurada: La vida social; two volumes by Luis Nicolau d’Olwer et al.,
El porfiriato: La vida económica; and two volumes by Daniel Cosio Villegas,
El porfiriato: La política interior—all part of the Historia Moderna de México series.
Interpretations which discuss the social setting and the labor and agrarian movements are Jesús Silva Herzog, El agrarismo mexicano y la reforma agraria; Luis Chávez Orozco’s brief Prehistoria del socialismo en México; and El movimiento obrero en México by Alfonso López Aparicio. Two works which contain information regarding anarchism and the critical years of the labor and agrarian movements are El nacimiento, 1876–1884, vol. 1 of El porfirismo: Historia de un régimen, by José C. Valadés; and Apuntes históricos del movimiento obrero y campesino de México, 1844–1880, by Manuel Díaz Ramírez. The latter book, despite its polemical aspects, was the first attempt to analyze the nineteenth-century Mexican agrarian and urban labor movements. For an examination of the Porfirian regime’s management of organized labor, see David Walker’s master’s thesis, “The Mexican Industrial Revolution and Its Problems: Porfirian Labor Policy and Economic Dependency, 1876–1910.”
An important recent contribution is El socialismo en México, siglo XIX, by Gastón García Cantú. The first section of this book is a well-written conceptualization of nineteenth-century Mexican socialism in contemporary Marxian terms. The author tries to convince us that Marx had a heavy impact upon Mexican socialism in the 1860’s and 1870’s. Mexicans in that early period were indeed interested in “socialism,” but it was the Spanish “antiautoritario” variety that reached them first. Marxism remained a secondary force within Mexican socialism until the success of the Russian Revolution provided a model for Mexican revolutionaries. The appendices enhance this volume with 150 pages of valuable documents. The footnotes are better than average for works dealing with pre-twentieth-century Mexican social history. This volume, when read with a degree of critical enthusiasm, is a valuable asset to any scholar interested in the development of mass movements in Mexico.
The series of articles by José Valadés in La Protesta, the anarchist magazine published in Buenos Aires during the 1920’s, pioneered the study of nineteenth-century Mexican working-class movements. They are indispensable. Among these essential essays are “Sobre los orígenes del movimiento obrero en México,” June 1927; “Noticia para la bibliografía anarquista en México,” June 1927; and “Precursores del socialismo antiautoritario en México,” May 22, 1928. These early studies by Valadés, although far from complete, laid the basis for Díaz Ramírez’ work. His bibliography contains several works no longer available, some of which are of little value, but it is a landmark effort. The most complete collections of La Protesta are available at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and in the private library of Dieter Koniecki of Mexico City.
The revolutionary precursor period, 1900–1910, has been treated most imaginatively by James D. Cockcroft in his wide-ranging and thought-provoking
Intellectual Precursors of the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1913. A study which doubts most claims for revolutionary ideology in the pre-1910 working class is Rodney D. Anderson’s
Outcasts in Their Own Land: Mexican Industrial Workers, 1906–1911. The basis for an understanding of the precursors, Flores Magonistas, and the prerevolutionary working-class crisis has been prepared by excellent documentary collections, which include Isidro and Josefina Fabela,
Documentos de la revolución mexicana; and Manuel González Ramírez,
Fuentes para la historia de la revolución mexicana and
Epistolario y textos de Ricardo Flores Magón. Moisés González Navarro provides an essential understanding of an important segment of the prerevolutionary labor movement with
Las huelgas textiles en el porfiriato.The revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods have been treated by countless authors. Four books written by former anarchosyndicalist members of the Casa del Obrero Mundial are essential for an understanding of the working-class movement, despite the authors’ personal and emotional involvement. They are Luis Araiza, Historia del movimiento obrero mexicano; Jacinto Huitrón, Orígenes e historia del movimiento obrero en México; and Rosendo Salazar, Las pugnas de la gleba, 1907–1922 and Historia de las luchas proletarios de México, 1923 a 1936. Two works by professional historians are Barry Carr’s El movimiento obrero y la política en México, 1910–1929 and Ramón Eduardo Ruiz’ Labor and the Ambivalent Revolutionaries: Mexico, 1911–1923.
With the background information available in these works, the scholar will be equipped to recognize greater significance in Mexico’s working-class newspapers. This study was partially based upon a thorough examination of these newspapers, spanning a period of more than sixty-six years with respect to the anarchist, urban labor, and agrarian movements. One important area remains to be developed—additional details are needed regarding workers’ associations of the nineteenth century, the revolution, and their strike activities. Unfortunately, very few data are presently available in this regard because the archives of the Congreso, the Gran Círculo, La Social, the Liberal party, the Casa del Obrero Mundial, and the Confederación General de Trabajadores are still missing and the working-class press provides only limited coverage. When the archive of the new Centro de Estudios Históricos del Movimiento Obrero Mexicano has reached maturity, perhaps new light will be shed by the additional data that will then be available.