The formative urban labor movement during the last third of the nineteenth century developed out of long-standing urban working-class unrest, industrialization, and revolutionary ideology. Because it was a prelude to similar and more famous developments during the violent years of the early twentieth century, analysis of its causes, nature, and significance is essential for understanding an important phase of Mexican history and a critical aspect of the Mexican Revolution. After the imposition of Spanish rule in 1521 preindustrial lower-class unrest consistently existed and sometimes comprised an all-important characteristic of postconquest Mexico City society. The riots, or tumultos, of 1624 and 1692 capped urban lower-class crowd anger and carried with them all the classic attributes that made the prerevolutionary preindustrial crowd possible in other societies. In 1624 a crisis within the colonial elite, between the civil authority led by the viceroy and the Church led by the archbishop, caused the viceroy’s excommunication and a breakdown in the usually unified Mexico City authority structure. In addition, the populace of Mexico City experienced a critical food shortage, rising food prices, and alleged government corruption in the distribution of food. Following the excommunication, a racial, cultural, and occupational cross section of Mexico City’s lower classes attacked and burned the viceroy’s palace. The crowd supported the king but shouted its defiance of “bad government.”
Unrest continued and flared up again in 1692. Once again food scarcity, rising prices, and alleged government corruption resulted in violence. The triggering event and the breakdown of law enforcement came about when the crowd outside the government granary, the
alhóndiga, already angry and irritated by long waits and meager food supplies heard that an Indian woman had been whipped to death by one of the authorities. The crowd marched to the palaces of the archbishop and the viceroy, only to be turned away by guards. Finally enraged to the point of violence, a racial, cultural, and occupational cross section of Mexico City’s working class once again attacked and laid seige to the viceroy’s palace with whatever weapons they could find. This time the crowd’s shouting, while still supportive of the king and critical of “bad government,” attacked the Spanish economic and social elite: “Death to the
gachupines who eat all of our maize!” The angry crowd attacked the viceroy’s palace, several government buildings, selected places of business, the marketplace, and the Cortés family mansion. Before order could be restored, guards killed scores of persons.
Historian Chester Lyle Gutherie has identified three reasons for urban working-class unrest in preindustrial, preideological Mexico City: “great social inequality, the precarious economic status of the largest part of the population … [and] administrative weakness” which allowed the crowds to get out of control. These conditions had not changed by the late nineteenth century, when they were compounded by the creation of a modern urban factory labor force and revolutionary working-class ideologies.
1Mexican industrialization, which began during the second half of the nineteenth century, encouraged the parallel appearance of an urban labor movement. Industrialization resulted in a sudden concentration of new workers from the countryside in a few urban areas—especially in the Mexico City area where industrial concentration was particularly heavy with eighty-three factories during the 1860’s.
2 Chronic economic and political instability compounded the generally intolerable living conditions suffered by the new city dwellers as did the almost impossible working conditions in the new factories. The working class, virtually in self-defense, began to organize, and the anarchists played an important role in that process from the very beginning.
The background to one of Mexico’s first large-scale labor disputes serves to illustrate the socioeconomic origins of the nineteenth-century urban labor movement. A descriptive example can be found in the strike proclamation that appears in
Chapter 1 of this study. It cited long working hours, poor wages, insufficient rest periods, and generally unsatisfactory working conditions. It also revealed increasing working-class belligerency and frustration because of the failure of normal political processes to remedy the situation.
3The difficult urban-industrial environment profoundly affected the nature of the emerging labor movement. It encouraged a strong radical-revolutionary bent, while corrupt local and unstable national government increased worker belligerency and distrust of formalized political institutions. This distrust of government increased in intensity when anarchist ideologues in the persons of Rhodakanaty’s former students and a considerable number of artisan organizers, joined later by Spanish émigrés, added their voices to the labor movement.
In early 1866, while Rhodakanaty and Zalacosta attempted to start their agrarian communal movement at Chalco, Villanueva and Villavicencio reinstituted a mutualist organization which had expired several years earlier. This association, La Sociedad Artística Industrial, became critically important to the developing labor movement and its ideology during the next few years because of its domination by artisans who declared themselves dedicated to the study and discussion of the works of Proudhon and Fourier. Beginning in 1866 and during 1867, the Sociedad membership began the radical activity of proselytizing workers in the Mexico City area and recruiting them into “resistance” and mutualist societies. Under Villanueva’s leadership, Mexico entered its first stage of intensive labor organizing.
4Following the fall of Maximilian, Epifanio Romero, the founder of the original Sociedad, returned to Mexico City late in 1867 with other liberals close to Juárez and attempted to have the organization placed under the aegis of the government. The Sociedad, under the direction of Villanueva, attracted the attention and apprehension of the leading liberals because, in the absence of a central council of workers, it provided the primary source of labor organization and agitation. When Villanueva refused to accede to Romero, a power struggle between the anarchist-led radicals and the liberal-led moderados began for control of the Sociedad. The liberals challenged Villanueva’s chairmanship in a series of debates and organizational elections. In the initial encounters between the rival factions, Villanueva retained control of the organization.
Following Romero’s initial failure to wrest control of the Sociedad from Villanueva, he and Juan Cano, another supporter of Juárez, founded the Conservatorio Artístico Industrial as a rival group in the late summer of 1867. Juárez was named honorary president of the Conservatorio, and another prominent politician, Francisco Mejia, honorary vice-president. The Conservatorio subsequently received a one-thousand-peso donation from one of the president’s officers, Colonel Miguel Rodríguez. Opponents of the Conservatorio considered the cash donation, ostensibly given for the construction of a new school, evidence of government sponsorship. Their suspicions gained credence when the liberal-dominated Mexican Congress, in an obvious show of support for the newly formed Conservatorio, voted it an annual subsidy of 1,200 pesos.
5With these successes behind him, Cano, as the new leader of the
moderados, managed to gain enough support to defeat Villanueva in the December 1867 organizational election and he temporarily gained control of the Sociedad. The rival societies then united under the original name of La Sociedad Artística Industrial with Cano as president. Finally, the group received as a personal gift from President Juárez the old church of San Pedro y San Pablo as a meeting place.
6 But other factors also played key roles in determining the outcome of Villanueva’s early struggle against the pro-Juárez faction led by Cano. In January 1868, Villanueva succeeded in organizing the textile factory La Fama Montañesa in Tlalpan, an advance he augmented by the formation of the Unión Mutua de Tejedores del Distrito del Tlalpan, comprised of new organized workers at the factories of La Fama Montañesa, Contreras, La Abeja, and Tizapán.
7On July 8, 1868, the workers at La Fama Montañesa expressed a newly found sense of power and unity when they launched the first successful strike in Mexican history. Their demands consisted mainly of a call for better working conditions and shorter hours for female employees.
8 This victory resulted in enormous prestige for Villanueva and his restoration as president of the Sociedad. Villanueva now had more than enough influence among the lower-class workers and artisans to defeat Cano.
In the aftermath of the successful strike Villanueva directed a flurry of organizing activity. Several new associations espousing Proudhonism appeared during the months of July and August 1868, including La Unión de Tejedores de Miraflores, La Asociación Socialista de Tipógrafos Mexicanos, La Sociedad Mutua del Ramo de Carpintería, and La Unión Mutua de Canteros. In addition workers reorganized the previously defeated and disbanded mutualist societies in the factories of San Ildefonso and La Colmena. Villanueva now found himself surrounded by new associates—all Mexico City artisans who later aided in the advancement of cooperativist doctrines—Benito Castro, Pedro Ordóñez, Agapito Silva, and Ricardo Velatti.
9 All except Silva later became active members of the central anarchist group, La Social.
10Villanueva continued his drive to organize the urban working class. He planned for a general labor congress to meet in 1868, but the idea failed because of a lack of funds. He then proposed convening a permanent assembly composed of three delegates from each mutualist society, but the idea again failed for the same reason. Finally, in 1869, he formed a group of radical urban labor militants named the Círculo Proletario and comprised of the above-named cooperativists and Zalacosta, joined by newcomers José María González, Juan de Mata Rivera, Evarista Meza, and Rafael Pérez de León. They coordinated urban labor organizing activities, especially in the textile mills, and disseminated their socialist ideology. Late in 1869 receipt of a newsletter from the First International Workingmen’s Association circulated by the Geneva Congress in 1866 rekindled Villanueva’s enthusiasm for a central workers’ council. The three-year delay before it reached Mexico indicates the isolation from Europe of that country’s socialist movement. On January 10, 1870, Villanueva and his associates sent out a call asking for the formation of a “Centro General de los Trabajadores Organizados in order to more effectively defend the interests of labor.”
On September 16, 1870, the
centro met for the first time and called itself the Gran Círculo de Obreros de México. The pro-Villanueva faction immediately established its dominance in the organization, and Zalacosta delivered a speech denouncing the liberals and Cano. The latter, however, refused to be discouraged; he addressed a letter to Juárez in which he expressed his feelings regarding the relationship of the government to the affairs of the Círculo : “My eternal thanks for the demonstrations of generosity which you have shown so many times to my brothers, the artisans. … I only hope for just and prudent laws, for peace, for work, the advancement of the arts, the protection of commerce, and the development of agriculture. I salute you in the name of our beloved [artisan] family and conclude with these inspired words—peace, union, protection, and labor.”
11 Pledging his support to the president, Cano asked for his reaction to the newly formed Círculo. Juárez replied: “Señor don Juan Cano: Esteemed Sir, It is with pleasure that I reply to your letter of yesterday. I wish to convey to you my belief that the artisans should organize their association in whatever manner they may deem convenient in order to achieve perfection in their respective crafts and skills.”
12 Juárez supported his liberal colleagues Romero and Cano and he continued to encourage the artisans to organize in the manner of the Conservatorio. He did not acknowledge in his response the recruitment of common factory workers—a task already undertaken by the Círculo radicals.
In spite of the moderation of Romero and Cano, the Círculo, stimulated by its anarchist faction, continued to advance its program among the common laborers. On March 20,1871, in an attempt to give the organizing drive better direction, La Social again reconvened. The membership included Rhodakanaty, Zalacosta, Castro, Velatti, and Ordonez. In a manifesto they declared: “… we want the abolition of all systems of government and liberty for all the manual laborers and intellectuals of the universe.”
13Elected president of the Círculo in early 1871, Villanueva continued the intense campaign to win new adherents. On July 9, 1871,
El Socialista, the first Mexican newspaper that can be described as socialist, began publication in Mexico City. Several of its writers held membership in La Social and frequently expressed their anarchist ideology. The paper joined the Círculo, became its “official organ,” and duly received the customary three delegates. La Social also joined the Círculo and sent Velatti, Ordóñez, and Castro as representatives. Most of the other recently formed mutualist organizations in Mexico City and its environs belonged to the Círculo, which resulted in increased intermingling of anarchists and working men and of their ideas.
14 Individuals who wished to could join the Círculo, provided they were workers and did not belong to any political party. Employers “on good terms with their employees”—usually artisans who had expanded their trade—could be admitted to associate membership. The Círculo was thus made accessible to almost any sympathizer who cared to join in its activities.
15The Círculo’s decision not to admit members of political parties expressed a significant anarchist influence : political boycott and the refusal to recognize the legitimacy of governments larger than the local community, or
municipio libre. This attitude was given double emphasis by the Círculo’s insistence that “the struggle for the complete emancipation of the working class has to be conducted by the workers themselves, using as their ultimate weapon the social revolution, which will bring about the socialist world of splendor, justice, and truth.”
16 Laborers, while demanding a law guaranteeing the betterment of working conditions, themselves reserved “the right to bring about socialism by means of the social revolution.” The Círculo directed its insistence that workers must bear the obligation of improving their lot not only at the laborers but also at parliamentary liberals and their working-class supporters, whom anarchist-oriented radicals regarded as likely traitors.
17During 1871 the Círculo’s first group of elected officers indicated the strength of Villanueva and the radical contingent : president, Villanueva; vice-president, Romero; first secretary, Mata Rivera; second secretary, Castro; third secretary, Alejandro Herrera; fourth secretary, Pérez de León; and treasurer, Francisco de Paula González.
18 Of these men only Romero represented the progovernment group opposed to Villanueva and what constituted an anarchist-radical coalition. Mata Rivera, a Utopian socialist by ideology but no revolutionary, always tried to remain neutral; Castro and Pérez de León actively worked with La Social.
19Elsewhere in the country, workers influenced by ideas emanating from Mexico City began forming mutualist “resistance” societies and cooperatives. In San Luis Potosí, the Asociación Potosina de Obreros comprised three new mutualist groups and established contact with the Círculo in Mexico City. In Toluca, workers formed a mutualist society and, on November 8, 1871, affiliated with the Círculo.
20 These events reflected a growing labor movement and acceptance of anarchist ideology in the hinterlands. The mutualist “resistance” societies which affiliated with the Círculo differed from the traditional mutalist societies, which stressed religious beliefs and concerned themselves primarily with workers’ loans, burials, and disability compensation. During this period of growth in the early 1870’s, the historic red-and-black flag of anarchism, the
roji-negra, became the official symbol of the Mexican labor movement.
An era in the development of the Mexican labor movement ended with the deaths of President Juárez, on July 18, 1872, and Villanueva, a short time later. The Juárez government had not actively tried to dominate the Círculo; but when Romero replaced Villanueva as president of the Círculo, the situation began to change. The first step took place on September 16, 1872, when the Círculo amended its bylaws to permit the monthly acceptance of 200 pesos from the new president, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada.
21 By November 1873, the salon of the Sociedad Unionista de Sombrereros, an organization led by Cano and Romero, became the regular meeting place for the group.
22At the end of the critical year 1872, the opposing forces within the Círculo stood in clear contrast. One group, greatly influenced by Rhodakanaty, Villanueva, et al., responded to anarchist and revolutionary arguments because of its alienation due to social conditions. Lacking a majority, the anarchists exercised considerable influence upon the rank-and-file membership by constantly pushing for the organization of the working class and questioning the role of the government. The election of La Social members Castro and Pérez de León to the Círculo directorate demonstrated their strength. In addition, Rhodakanaty, Velatti, and Ordónez continued as prominent spokesmen for the Círculo in El Socialista. At the other extreme within the Círculo, the moderates led by Romero and Cano advocated cooperation with the Lerdo regime and a program of remedial parliamentary legislation. The great bulk of the organization’s membership, caught between conflicting ideologies, vacillated between Romero’s idea of order and progress and the revolutionary militancy of the anarchists and radicals. While electing Romero to the presidency of the Círculo, many members joined “sociedades de resistencia” organized by anarchists.
Important strikes occurred during the latter half of 1872. The most serious one began on August 1 in a future trouble spot, the formerly English-owned mine, Real del Monte, near Pachuca in the state of Hidalgo.
23 The English owners, plagued by historic cycles of insolvency and depression in the industry, provoked the strike by announcing a reduction in the workers’ salary from two pesos to one peso per day, effective July 15.
24 The Círculo became involved, at least to the extent of offering moral support and sending some contributions to the strikers. The mine workers demanded the reinstitution of their original salary and, in addition, a reduction in working time from eighteen to sixteen hours per day. Although the miners met with severe repression and did not realize their strike objectives, their action set off a wave of protests in the regular press of Mexico City, which demanded that the Lerdo government take vigorous action against the “new and dangerous tactic of striking.” Briefly encouraged by their limited success and perhaps by inflammatory articles in
El Socialista, the miners formed a “resistance society.” The government, reinforced by the public outcry against the strikers, reacted by secretly deporting many of the participants to Campeche and Yucatán.
25The workers at La Fama Montañesa factory, which still suffered from the economic effects of an unstable and regionally limited market, experienced a similar fate. After a walkout that began on September 9, army troops forced the strikers back to work. At that time the workers apparently could not elicit aid from the Mexico City Gran Círculo or form a permanent organization for “the protection of their interests” vis-à-vis the employers.
26During the period 1872–1875, while continuing as a forceful minority within the Gran Círculo principally through the delegates sent by mutualist societies under their control, the anarchists regrouped. Seeking to dominate as many groups as possible, they once again established hegemony in the Sociedad Artística Industrial.
27 They apparently hoped, beyond the obvious desire to continue their activities from within as many of the established and legitimate bases of the labor movement as they possibly could, to utilize the greater resources of the Sociedad Artística in order to push their program further, especially Bakuninist cooperativism. The Sociedad Artística became their base of operations, and they temporarily dissolved La Social.
They founded a newspaper,
El Obrero Internacional, “the official organ of the Sociedad Artística Industrial,” and it became an important part of the campaign to create a viable cooperativist movement. Velatti described the vision : “… we poor dreamers for the happiness and material benefit of our brothers do not doubt for a moment that the cooperative system will be better for them than mutualism. It will save them from the charity ward, from misery, from the venomous claw of hunger, and from the greed of capitalism, which today, more than ever before, is the greatest and most fierce enemy of labor.”
28Moved by the harsh realities of the new urban working class, Mexican anarchist ideology abandoned mutualism for Bakunin’s cooperativism, or collectivism. By organizing production and living groups that marketed their goods in common, and bought from similar groups, the cooperativists felt that the working man’s interests would be protected against the more powerful elements present in the capitalist society. The anarchists regarded mutualist societies as inadequate because they did not provide a comprehensive program for the transformation of society away from capitalism. They also argued that capitalist “speculators” and their “defenders,” the government, remained unchallenged by the mutualists, who made no attempt to ameliorate the differences between the rich and poor, the powerful and weak.
Nineteenth-century Mexican cooperativists adopted a simple and direct approach to the development of their system. It entailed groups of artisans and/or common workers unified for the protection of their products and interests. In 1876, José María González explained the system: “When they have collected enough money they should start cooperative stores stocked with … [their products]. The other associations will then produce the goods sold in the stores. In this manner the worker becomes independent of the capitalist, and the value returned to him for his labor is increased.”
29 Anarchist ideology conceived cooperativism as a growing movement that would soon embrace everyone. Mexican libertarian socialist labor leaders urged the workers to form a system of equalitarian communities consistent with both contemporary anarchocollectivist theory and many of the workers’ recent peasant experience in the free villages. The communities would be economically self-sufficient and capable of existing separately from, while geopolitically still within, a capitalist society governed by a nation-state.
30 They saw the government as the stumbling block in achieving social perfection. González believed that collectivism was a means of eliminating the need for government and the social injustice it defended.
Velatti saw cooperatives as aggressive workers’ units fighting capitalism :
Brothers, the workers of the entire universe are tired of slavery and of being the victims of the limitless ambitions of the capitalists.
They are working to be free and to establish their emancipation from the hated domination that today robs them of the fruits of their labor, from the enemy of the worker—capital.
… Our rights as workers do not exist, we are robbed of them and left in misery.
Will you continue to be the object of such exploitation?
Will you submit to the continued imposition of so many outrages?
No! A thousand times no!
… Those workers who do not join the new associations are, as a result of their fear or their ambition, making a pact for misery.
The association, in order to succeed, must be based upon the unity of its members.
The association is the primary weapon of the worker against the abuses of the powerful.
… In order to gain power you must unite! Now!
31
Throughout the 1870’s the anarchists conducted a sustained and vigorous campaign for a collectivist society. They enjoyed at least some success. In 1872, Velatti converted one mutualist group, the Sociedad Progresista de Carpinteros, to cooperativism. At this time the Círculo began a rather sustained attempt to build a system of cooperative workshops. A general effort to organize the mutualist societies into cooperatives began late in 1872. Juan de Mata Rivera, the sympathetic Utopian socialist, joined them as one of the leaders in the latter task. He read aloud from Fernando Garrido’s
Historia de las asociaciones obreras en Europa at a general meeting of the Círculo. The book espoused the virtues of collectivism.
32During a special holiday meeting of the Círculo on September 16, 1873, Velatti delivered the keynote address and urged the members to adopt cooperativism :
No more cofradías [traditional mutualist societies and guilds]; we are forming consumption cooperatives, which will also have social and international functions. Never doubt it, they will lift us up and cause the growth of [cooperative] workshops, factories, mills, and railroads.
Velatti cleared up any possible misconceptions regarding why he considered cooperation a necessary replacement for capitalism:
Capital, here we have the terrible enemy of the worker. The ruined ambitions, the tears, and the misery at your doorstep are not enough. Were it not for [the power of] the strike they would reduce salaries that are already too low. All over the valley [of Mexico] we see continuous strikes by workers, in different kinds of factories, who prefer a thousand times the suffering [resulting from the strikes] to that which they have to endure while they continue to increase the wealth of their bosses, who, being despots and tyrants, act like petty kings in order to fill their coffers from the sweat of those who have to work in order to take care of the basic necessities of life.
33
The anarchists did not recognize the Reforma per se as the beginning of the late-nineteenth-century ascension to power of a newly potent bourgeoisie, whose increased strength flowed from the changing mode of commodity production, that is, the factory system. Rather, they accepted contemporary popular belief and optimistically viewed the Reforma epoch as a progressive period of new hope for artisans and urban and rural workers. However, with the advent of strikes and modern class conflict during the 1860’s, the factory owners soon became the primary enemies and took their place alongside the traditional rivals of the militant artisans and workers, the conservative oligarchy, and earned the workers’ condemnation as “greedy capitalists.”
The anarchists, despite their failure to recognize the ultimate political implications of the Reforma, realistically conceived Mexican society. They verbalized their recognition of the Reforma as the ushering in of a new industrial era. They appreciated the potential of the Industrial Revolution. They complained about underdevelopment and the economic displacement resulting from the new factories. They stressed the need for an agrarian development program to be financed by regional agricultural credit banks in order to increase agricultural production and alleviate the hardships of the
campesinos. They welcomed an intensified rate of industrialization, but along very different lines than the capitalists. They attacked the poor social conditions and “backward” political institutions in Mexico, which they identified as the Church and the omnipresent and heavy-spending military. They recognized nationalist sentiment as a pride in being Mexican and called upon it in order to face up to the “insolent United States.”
The anarchists claimed that the capitalists’ system inhumanely placed the heaviest burdens upon the working class. As an alternative they proposed to supplant these methods with a libertarian socialist society based upon cooperatives. The anarchists’ campaign for cooperativism included organizing new urban labor associations, continuing activities in previously organized groups, and a steady flow of articles in working-class newspapers, such as El Hijo del Trabajo, El Obrero Internacional, and El Socialista. Their greatest success came in 1876 when they organized a working-class neighborhood in Mexico City, the Colonia Obrera de Buenavista, into a cooperative called the Asociación Cooperativa de Consumo de Obreros Colonos. José Muñuzuri, a Spanish émigré, a member of La Social, and the editor of El Hijo del Trabajo, became president. He commemorated the event in an editorial:
This group of men have united, using the most powerful weapon of a free people—association. They have said in unison—War on usury and misery! War on the miserable exploitation by a few!
… Only through the union of the working people, of the productive people, those that have always been the sport of the rulers, is happiness possible. No more misery, an end to poor conditions, unity in order to be strong, unity for happiness, unity in order to remedy and correct abuses and to abolish crime.
34
Continuing adverse working conditions contributed to the growth of the labor movement, anarchism, and radical ideas. By 1874 the Círculo’s membership had increased to an estimated eight thousand.
35 It continued to grow, but its moderate leadership left it vulnerable to radical criticism. By 1876 the anarchist members of the Círculo began to make gains against the moderates. They objected to the acceptance of money from the government, to the formation of several “company unions” sponsored by factory owners in conjunction with the Círculo leadership, and to the Círculo’s refusal, through decisions of the leadership clique, to support a serious strike at La Fama Montañesa factory. They also strongly attacked
El Socialista for its increasingly conservative editorial stance.
36During the early 1870’s, belief in the need for a nationwide labor organization grew, and, at the end of 1875, steps commenced to convene a national workers’ congress.
37 The anarchists had long supported this idea, and Villanueva had worked toward it as early as 1869. Mata Rivera, editor of
El Socialista and friend of Rhodakanaty, presented the formal proposal for a national workers’ congress to the special junta designated by the Círculo to consider the project.
38 The junta apparently completed its work successfully, because the Congreso General Obrero de la República Mexicana, with Círculo support, met for the first time on March 5, 1876, in the salon of the Sociedad Artística Industrial with thirty-five delegates of the eventual total of seventy-three present.
39The first Congreso spent most of its time with the tedious details of organizing special committees and electing officers. Although the Círculo supported the Congreso, no members of its conservative faction won election to the directorate of the congress. José Muñuzuri enjoyed the distinction of being the only officer elected from the anarchist-oriented elements.
40 The more radical groups were represented by delegates from several organizations, including the Socieded Artística Industrial.
41 The fact that few delegates from the usually antagonistic radical and moderate factions in Mexico City’s working-class movement held offices in the congress probably resulted from an initial spirit of cooperation; however, since officers served one-month terms, both sides were frequently represented later.
42 The manifesto of the national Congreso contained clauses which indicate the continuing spread of “libertarian socialist” ideology in Mexico. It contained calls for “social guarantees” and cooperativist enterprises, “emancipating the workers from the capitalist yoke,” and “independence from individual and capitalist interest, in order to put an end to misery and its accompanying ills.”
43 These demands echoed almost word for word the rhetoric used on many previous occasions by Rhodakanaty, Velatti, and José María González.
La Social reorganized on May 7, 1876. In the inaugural speech Rhodakanaty explained the need for the society in order to help develop nascent cooperativist ideas, to create an international labor organization, and to fill the need for a “vanguard” revolutionary group.
44 La Social sent a five-member delegation to join the Congreso, an action which clearly indicated that La Social planned to influence the national labor organization’s policies to the greatest extent possible.
45Two women were among the representatives sent by La Social to the Congreso, and, in an open debate at a general session, the maverick socialist Mata Rivera opposed their being seated. In his statement he betrayed a traditional male hostility toward an active role for women in public affairs. Although he professed the utmost regard for Rhodakanaty and La Social, he charged that admitting female delegates violated precedent. Muñuzuri, as editor of
El Hijo del Trabajo, now the official organ of the Círculo, led the debate in support of the women. Thus, the editor of
El Socialista, a cooperativist and friend of Rhodakanaty but who also had close ties with the moderate Romero faction, opposed the editor of
El Hijo del Trabajo, the voice of the more militant elements, regarding the seating of female delegates. However, the issues separating them went far beyond this theme.
El Hijo del Trabajo criticized the moderates in the Círculo directorate and
El Socialista because of their willingness to take part in national politics and their failure to take a more favorable stance regarding the organization of a cooperativist movement. The debate waxed long and sharp. Mata Rivera, in his self-defense, revealed his feelings about what the role of the Círculo should be when he told the Congreso that the Círculo was “loyal to the principles of Santiago Villanueva, federalist, and opposed to power, regardless of the source.” He claimed that he and the Círculo’s directorate were not abdicating the defense of the working class but were striving “to abolish the salaried worker.” Finally, he concluded: “No more rich and poor, masters and servants, governments and governed, capitalists and workers! We are all men
debajo del mismo cielo y en frente del mismo trabajo justo y digno”46The assembly supported Muñuzuri, and for the first time in the history of the Mexican labor movement female delegates won seats in the national organization.
47 No doubt passions generated during the rivalries of several years affected the decision of the Congreso as much as did any ethical consideration of women’s rights; however, the admission of women had lasting consequences. Thereafter, negotiated labor contracts frequently contained protective clauses on behalf of female and child workers and women soon became important in the affairs of the Congreso. Carmen Huerta became its president in 1879 and again in 1880.
48 Later she organized large numbers of female workers in the Orizaba area. In addition to the gains made by the women, the anarchists had served notice of their widespread support within the Congreso and now constituted a force to be reckoned with.
During 1876 the anarchists continued to gain strength in the congress. Their continuing propaganda effort throughout the country slowly began to affect the balance of power in Mexico City. In addition, by June, only a month after the debate over female delegates, the representation of La Social in the Congreso had been increased with the appearance of Rhodakanaty, Juan B. Villareal, Evarista Meza, and Colín y López.
49 These men represented a formidable contingent in the congress because of their reputations in the labor movement as persuasive agents for their cause.
By 1876 the divisions within the labor movement had become much more complex than the obvious conflict between the moderates and the anarchists. A three-way civil war among elements supporting the national presidential aspirations of Lerdo de Tejada, who sought reelection, Porfirio Díaz, and José María Iglesias revealed the differences. The anarchists opposed working-class participation in the struggle because, they argued, it amounted to no more than a clash between individuals vying for power. They complained that the fighting destroyed the national economy and cost the lives of the workers and
campesinos, who, they said, did all the fighting with nothing to gain regardless of the outcome.
50The leading moderates in the Círculo continued to support Lerdo during the struggle; other members favored Iglesias because of the legal technicalities that legitimized his candidacy.
51 Díaz enjoyed the greatest rank-and-file support because of his outstanding record as an officer in the liberal army of Juárez and because of the rather vague promises regarding social reform that he made to the workers in his plan of Tuxtepec.
52 His failure to fulfill those promises later contributed to the further exasperation of the working class and to increased support for the anarchists.
The situation became more complicated in June 1876 when Lerdo’s supporters, including the staff of
El Socialista, endorsed Lerdo and withdrew from the Círculo because Díaz sympathizers already dominated that group.
53 This event meant the eventual death of the original Círculo. Between 1876 and 1878 other groups of dissenters joined the extreme anarchists in a boycott of the Círculo because of its pro-Díaz sympathies. After their departure, the ranks of the Círculo declined further by the withdrawal of many former Díaz enthusiasts. Initially attracted to the new president by his promises of progressive reforms, they quickly became disillusioned by his delay in reopening
El Hijo del Trabajo after its shutdown by Lerdo in October 1876.
54 In 1877 and 1878, Díaz followed this offense by allowing the expulsion of some six hundred
campesino families from the Rancho de San Vicente in the state of San Luis Potosí by armed men from the Hacienda de las Bocas despite vehement and sustained protests from the working-class newspapers in Mexico City.
55 These actions, combined with his failure to make good on his promises to help the workers, resulted in a drastic reduction in the number of Díaz supporters in the labor movement. By 1878 the Círculo was a mere skeleton organization with few, if any, active members.
56José María González, an outspoken writer who expressed his anarchist viewpoint in articles that appeared regularly for years in
El Hijo del Trabajo, led an attack on the Círculo’s pro-Díaz leadership by accusing it of accepting gifts, money, and positions from the government. Francisco de Paula González, a vocal cooperativist and Muñuzuri’s replacement as editor of
El Hijo del Trabajo, used his newspaper as the primary propaganda vehicle for the publication of charges against the Círculo. In 1878 both men supported the formation of a rival labor organization, the Zacatecas Gran Círculo de Obreros.
57As soon as the new group established itself in Zacatecas, it began to solicit affiliation from other labor groups. It received messages of support from workers’ societies located throughout central Mexico. One of its more important endorsements came from the regional strong man in Zacatecas, General Trinidad García de la Cadena, who offered his protection. Another major expression of support for the Zacatecans came from the workers’ associations of Tlalpan, San Ildefonso, Contreras, Río Hondo, and La Colmena.
58The Zacatecas insurgents next formed a branch in Mexico City, commonly referred to as the Primer Sucursal. The anarchists soon dominated both the Congreso and the new Sucursal and succeeded in the election of La Social members to the two highest offices in each organization. In the Congreso, delegates elected Carmen Huerta president and José María González first secretary. In the new Sucursal, Juan B. Villareal, a Spanish émigré and cooperativist, won the presidency and Félix Riquelme became first secretary. At this point anarchist influence upon the Mexican working class reached a high point for the nineteenth century.
The remaining leaders of the almost moribund Círculo in Mexico City tried to discredit the Zacatecans with the rank-and-file workers by accusing them, with a degree of accuracy, of being partisan supporters of García de la Cadena for the presidency of the republic, but their charges fell upon deaf ears.
59 Most of the moderates supported García de la Cadena because of his sympathetic attitude toward the labor movement, but the militants of La Social and
El Hijo del Trabajo, who now dominated the Congreso and the Sucursal in Mexico City, resisted them and issued a proclamation protesting the involvement of some members of the Zacatecas group in the political campaign. The writers for
El Hijo del Trabajo attacked García de la Cadena for his political ambitions, in spite of his previous role as the savior of the Zacatecas Círculo when it had faced opposition from President Díaz.
60The ascension to power of Porfirio Díaz resulted in an alliance of such anti-Díaz labor groups as the anarchists, the former Lerdo supporters who would not accept the new president, and most of the moderates who initially rallied behind Díaz but soon became disenchanted and finally opposed him. These groups allied themselves in order to keep the labor movement free from the domination of the Díaz government. The Círculo of Zacatecas, and its Sucursal in Mexico City, served as an alternative to the Díaz-dominated Círculo in the capital. During the presidential campaign of 1880 the Círculo in Zacatecas declared its support for García de la Cadena. The anarchists anticipated this move and opposed it. The majority of delegates to the Congreso followed their lead, but at this time an increased sense of unity in the working-class organizations as a result of the effort to face up to the Díaz regime prevented the groups from breaking over the issue. The political advocacy was on the behalf of a democratic socialist opponent of a mutually hated government; and the candidate, García de la Cadena, was well liked by the working-class movement and even by the anarchists who, although they disapproved of anyone’s candidacy, respected him because of his radical and pro-working-class political position which he restated during the campaign.
61The depth of the anarchists’ disagreement with those who supported political involvement on the part of the Círculo of Zacatecas, the Congreso, or the Sucursal resulted in a mass meeting that took place on December 14,1879, at Columbus Park in Mexico City. The Congreso called for the meeting in order to install its newly elected officers, of whom José María González (vice-president) and José Rico (first secretary) were members of La Social. Some five thousand persons gathered replete with numerous red-and-black flags, some of which bore the inscription “La Social, Liga Internacional del Jura.” A large black banner bearing the inscription “La Social, Gran Liga Internacional” covered the front of the speaker’s platform. The meeting quickly turned into a debate among the leading figures over the issue of whether or not genuine “socialists” could take part in the activities of an organization, such as the Congreso, if it became active in politics.
Francisco de Paula González, the new editor of El
Hijo del Trabajo; Carmen Huerta; Alberto Santa Fe, an agrarian advocate; Fortino C. Dhiosdado, of La Social; and Mata Rivera delivered speeches sympathetic to the policies of La Social. The new president of the Congreso, Manuel Ray y Guzmán, then urged the members of La Social to continue to support the Congreso even if they could not accept the idea of political participation. The speakers finally agreed to allow the affiliated groups and their individual members to make their own decision, and they resolved “that the separation of La Social from the Congreso would be prejudicial to the cause of the Mexican proletariat.” The Congreso did not endorse García de la Cadena.
62Because the delegates to the Congreso constituted a strong link with the Mexican working class, the anarchists considered them to be an important vehicle for the continued development of their cause. One measure of their progress in this regard was indicated by the group’s support of the anarchist position of no political involvement. Political conditions made it imperative for them to be as closely involved as possible with the Congreso in case pro-Díaz elements tried to infiltrate and dominate the organization. But, more importantly, the La Social membership intended to develop the labor congress into a massive “umbrella-type” organization. They planned a group that would be similar in nature to the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo that emerged in twentieth-century Spain. La Social was to provide ideological and organizational impetus from within the Congreso.
63 During 1877 and 1878, La Social continued to organize, reaching the peak of its strength in 1879–1882. In 1878 the organization claimed to have sixty-two regional sections working in urban centers throughout the country.
64 The anarchists had become, by far, the strongest force in Mexican labor. During the early 1880’s they continued to dominate the Congreso which, in 1881, after its reorganization and official entry into the European-based anarchist International Workingmen’s Association, claimed one hundred affiliated societies and a total enrolled membership of 50, 236.
65The membership of the Congreso supported the anarchists between 1879 and 1882 in part because of the chaos and despair brought about by the civil war of 1876 and because some of them believed that the oppressive and disappointing policies of the Díaz regime fulfilled the anarchists’ dire prophecies regarding the ultimately evil nature of the national government. The anarchists also succeeded in spreading their ideology because of the chronically desperate socio-political conditions of the urban working class and because of a persistent and intensive proselytizing effort by grass-roots organizers. One of their chief weapons was the working-class press. Besides the continuous effort made in newspapers like El Hijo del Trabajo, El Obrero Internacional, and El Socialista, La Social published La Internacional during the last six months of 1878. Edited by Francisco Zalacosta, it carried anarchist-oriented articles written by La Social members Rhodakanaty, Félix Riquelme, José Rico, and Francisco Tijera. Each issue carried their twelve-point program, which called for, among other things, “a universal social republic, autonomous government by the municipality, feminine rights, workers’ falanges, abolition of salaries [workers’ control], and equality of property holdings.”
Savoring their new-found strength, the anarchists openly talked of a violent “struggle against the enemies of humanity.” Although artisans for the most part, anarchist leaders always tried to identify themselves with, and to act as “the official spokesmen” of, the lowest and most oppressed elements of the people.
66 They were consistent in their opposition to government and in their call for a reorganization of political and economic power through the development of a cooperativist social order.