Anarchisms & The Mexican Working Class, 1860

In the great central area of Mexico, anarchism revived and grew within the crucible of growing Porfirian weakness in 1909. An enfeebled government allowed underground workers’ groups to operate that only a few years earlier had experienced ruthless suppression. Shortly before the revolution, a Catalan political exile, Amadeo Ferrés, initiated clandestine meetings of artisans and other urban workers. A devout libertarian socialist, Ferrés resolutely carried the doctrine of anarchosyndicalism to the Mexican working class. In undertaking such an ambitious project, Ferrés joined many other Spanish anarchists who set out to proselytize Spanish America in the early twentieth century, with the declared goal to eventually convert the workers of the world to anarchist ideology. Anarchosyndicalism was to be their mode of organization. Ferrés reflected these aspirations in his Mexican activities. Shortly after the formation of the anarchosyndicalist Casa del Obrero, he wrote, “Workers, laborers, proletariat of the world, we are transforming conditioned and unresponsive beings into thinking and autonomous individuals.”¹ Because of his leading role in the teaching of libertarian dicturns, his admiring contemporaries sometimes referred to him as the “apostle.”

Ferrés possessed sterling qualifications for his monumental task. Well educated and persuasive, he had an intimate knowledge of Spanish anarchist concepts of organization and tactics beginning to produce impressive successes in his homeland. During the last months of the Díaz regime, he began the seemingly hopeless task of organizing an independent anarchosyndicalist Mexican labor movement, free of government influences, by arranging small secret meetings of workers from the typographic industry in Mexico City.²

Beyond the degenerating social, economic, and political situation and the general labor unrest, Ferrés succeeded in his efforts with the tipógrafos because of a dynamic personality and oratorical and essayist skills which fascinated his followers. His ideology echoed the anarchist concept of the “free man,” “natural law,” and the work ethic. In order to avoid personal corruption, man “should always be thrifty” and “work for his own sustenance.” Ferrés’ version of natural man explicitly declared that man should work as a part of nature, respecting and attempting to preserve his natural environment. Ferrés predicted that when man reached the highest levels of perfection human society would function as though the world comprised a “single build·ing.” Ferrés regarded the nation-state as an agent for the “defense of privileges enjoyed by a leisure class,” and a gross, corrupt violation of his objective. He urged his followers to join him in order to achieve “regeneration, emancipation, redemption, and manumission and to escape degeneration.”

Ferrés claimed that the Mexican worker became more sophisticated as the means of production changed and that the transformation of the economy toward the factory system placed ultimate power within the grasp of the working class. In order to correct all the abuses and resultant ills of society caused by the corruption of government, capital, and clergy, the workers—the only producers—must assert their power. Workers transformed all material things intended for human use, and, Ferrés concluded, the production of material objects was the principal factor in human progress in both the technological and spiritual realms.⁴

He postulated the necessity “to awaken the workers, to uplift them.” With “rational education” the worker becomes enlightened; he becomes a “responsible being.” With each elevation of the worker’s consciousness, the projects for which he will permit his labor to be used become increasingly beneficial to mankind. The worker, with his upgraded morality, would then “make history rather than be a victim of it.” The producer’s high standards and morality would be the impulse for a new and better civilization.

The workers would be “titans of good will.” They would produce those things necessary for the good of humanity and not mere frills, while lacking essentials. Thus, the bourgeois and his government represented the corrupt enemy because they produced for their own advantage, sought profits which they hoarded, failed to respect nature, and limited production of necessities while the mass of humanity sank into depravity. The worker had to “struggle for the revindication of his class” (lucha reinvindicadora), not for revenge against the bourgeoisie, but for survival; “without the principle of mutual aid we are condemned to oblivion.”⁵

Only when the worker understood the meaning of “union and fraternity” would he comprehend his importance and that of his work. Ferrés claimed that unity through the workers’ syndicate provided the individual worker with the strength to resist “the greed, viciousness, prejudice, and venal influences of the bourgeoisie and its despots.” The “rationally educated” worker, as a “titan of good will,” would be willing to sacrifice himself for the organization and advancement of his brothers. Ferrés reckoned that the working class “sabio” must abandon all personal ambition, all egotism, and dedicate himself to the organization of the working class. That would liberate all mankind.

Ferrés repeatedly warned his adherents of the absolute need to separate working-class organizations from politics. They must always guard, he insisted, against politicians “claiming to be noble and devout adherents to the principles of workers’ rights but only hoping to enlist working-class support in pursuit of their private political ambitions.”⁶

In 1911, after Francisco Madero’s insurgent forces captured Ciudad Juárez and just one week before President Díaz resigned, the typographic workers of Mexico City, led by a nucleus of anarchists, organized the Confederación Tipográfico de México. A short time later the indifference of the interim regime of Francisco León de la Barra permitted the tipógrafos to hold a general meeting of their Confederación in order to begin an organizing campaign on behalf of the Mexican labor movement. Addressed first by Ferrés and then by firebrand anarchist Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, the tipógrafos voted to create a sociedad de resistencia out of the confederation in order to take the lead in the organization of the Mexican working class.⁷ Once again, as occurred during the nineteenth century before the Díaz dictatorship imposed severe discipline and sophisticated labor management policies, working-class radicalism made headway against a backdrop of national political confusion and social and economic instability.

Two of the tipógrafos in attendance, José López Dónez and Rafael Quintero, later emerged as important leaders of the labor movement during the revolution. Trained by Ferrés, both became outspoken adherents of his doctrine.⁸ They and their fellow printers developed a heavy sense of mission with a self-image as apostles leading the less-enlightened workers to salvation.⁹ Ferrés stressed the importance of the tipógrafos as a catalyst for the organization of the entire Mexican working class. López Dónez echoed that belief and the conviction that “the tipógrafos are the apostles, those called upon to instruct the others.”¹⁰ Quintero, later a principal leader of the Casa del Obrero Mundial, revealed the same line of thought when he described the tipógrafos’ sociedad de resistencia : “… the brotherhood to which we belong is destined to be the most important one for the [future of the] civilized world.” The assumption of intellectual superiority and the sense of mission among the highly literate tipógrafos is understandable when viewed within the context of the 84 percent rate of public illiteracy reported by the Mexican census of 1910. Despite their vision of self-importance, López Dónez and Quintero rejected the role of “leaders,” as did Ferrés. They claimed only the duty of asserting themselves in order to bring about a “free and just society” with “neither god nor master.”¹¹

The best educated men among the tipógrafos found Ferrés’ teachings especially attractive. These men, called the obreros intelectuales, included, besides López Dónez and Quintero, several others who later assumed important roles in the Casa del Obrero : Federico de la Colina, Enrique H. Arce, Fernando Rodarte, Lorenzo Macías, Pedro Ortega, and Alfredo Pérez. The obreros intelectuales dominated the confederation of typographers. Ferrés called them the “tireless ones.”¹²

Ferrés, like Rhodakanaty before him, favored much more conservative tactics than some of his more zealous followers. He employed the strategy of forming a small group of adherents who in turn were to organize and educate other industrial and agrarian workers until the masses composed a completely unified and mobilized body. During the early years, Ferrés wanted their activities to focus on working-class education and on the formation of legal, industry-wide syndicates involving massive numbers of workers. He anticipated that the syndicates would have tremendous power and the eventual ability to seize control of the means of production, but initially they would devote their efforts to uplifting the workers, providing mutual aid benefits, and defending urban labor against blatant injustices committed by employers. The libertarian anarchosyndicalist society was to be the product of careful preparation and a social evolution involving several decades.

After its formation, the Confederación de Tipógrafos grew rapidly. In two months it had a total of almost five hundred members, with an average weekly increment of between fifteen and twenty new members. Within a short time most of the publishing houses of Mexico City were organized, and affiliates of the Confederación had been formed in the farthest reaches of the nation, including Monterrey, Tepic, Guadalajara, and Oaxaca.¹³ Throughout the revolutionary period, 1910–1917, the provincial branches remained much less radical than the larger central group in Mexico City.

Four months after its inauguration, the confederation, led by the obreros intelectuales and Ferrés, began publication of its newspaper, El Tipógrafo Mexicano, as an educational device for the organization of the working class. From the very first issue, October 8, 1911, Ferrés and the tipógrafos revealed a communications approach identical to that used by the radical leaders of the 1870’s who published such newspapers as El Socialista, El Hijo del Trabajo, and El Obrero Internacional. They had the same objective in mind : the mobilization of the urban working class. The paper reflected Ferrés’ moderate tactical approach and filled its pages with essays by a wide spectrum of European intellectuals, including Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy. The obreros intelectuales also authored articles urging syndicalism, “rational education,” and “the uplifting of the working class.” Too philosophical and written in a manner far above the comprehension of the average, barely literate worker, El Tipógrafo Mexicano never realized its potential with the rank-and-file. Two thousand copies were published every half month, with a total cash expenditure per edition of thirty pesos.¹⁴ The established press of Mexico City, in the spirit of liberality that swept the country at the time, generally welcomed the sober new publication. In addition, representatives of the tipógrafos served as guest speakers and distributed copies of El Tipógrafo Mexicano at workers’ organizing meetings.¹⁵

The editors of El Tipógrafo soon became well-known and highly respected spokesmen for the organizing workers of Mexico City. Beginning in 1911, letters poured in from neighboring and far away provincial cities calling upon them to assist in the formation of workers’ societies.¹⁶ López Dónez, whose devotion to anarchism survived long after the fall of the Casa del Obrero Mundial, enjoyed a reputation as a popular writer and made a great number of personal appearances. These activities included serving as the featured speaker at the inaugural meetings of Mexico City unions and attendance at organizing rallies throughout the country.¹⁷ The obreros intelectuales of the tipógrafos assisted in the formation of a number of unions in 1911 and 1912, the most important being the radical stoneworkers’ union (Unión de Canteros Mexicanos). The canteros organized around the demand for “better pay and the means to regenerate the workers.” Radicals from the canteros, shortly after their organization, took a leading part in further working-class organizing through the secret anarchist group Luz, which founded the Casa del Obrero. For a short time the tipógrafos assisted the enthusiastic canteros in the publication of their radical newspaper, La Voz del Oprimidlo.¹⁸

The Confederación de Tipógrafos grew and formed affiliates in other cities. As a result, the organization changed its name in July 1912 to the Confederación Nacional de Artes Gráficas in order to reflect its new national status. The secretary of the canteros, Severino Rodríguez Villafuerte, addressed the tipógrafos at the first meeting of the new Artes Gráficas and declared, in recognition of the crucial role they played in the organization of the Mexican labor force, that the tipógrafos and the canteros “were throwing off the heavy farce, the block of granite, that had been placed on the back of the productive class by the bourgeois octopus.”¹⁹

The Confederación Nacional de Artes Gráficas was organized according to Ferrés’ design. An elected board of directors, dominated by the obreros intelectuales and headed by a general secretary (secretarío de interior), directed its activities. The general secretary supervised organizing efforts, called and chaired meetings, delivered special addresses to the delegates assembled from all over the nation, was responsible for minutes of the meetings and for treasury and public relations, and administered the election of delegates from the affiliated shops. Amadeo Ferrés served as the first secretario de interior of the Artes Gráficas.²⁰

Under Ferrés’ administration, the Artes Gráficas enjoyed considerable success, aside from the impressive growth in numbers. During 1912, general sessions of the Artes Gráficas met in the Rinconada de la Soledad in downtown Mexico City one evening each week, with a separate special-issues conclave held each Friday evening from seven until nine. The meetings, open to the general public, generally attracted a considerable crowd. Ferrés usually presided, and he and the obreros intelectuales used the opportunity to express their views on popular issues. The tipógrafos’ treasury fared very well during the first few years. In August 1911 it totaled 249 pesos. By October it grew to 340 pesos and in November swelled to 497 pesos. It continued to grow and in March 1913 rose to 966 pesos. Dues payments remained very low, and in 1914, after considerable inflation and generalized unemployment, journeymen printers paid only 50 centavos per month and apprentices 25 centavos.²¹

In many ways the Artes Gráficas functioned as a syndicate. National in scope, organized industry-wide, and well disciplined, it was viewed by its members as an instrument of struggle on behalf of the working class. Through its emissaries and El Tipógrafo Mexicano, it did “ideological combat with capitalism.” The self-proclaimed image of struggle with capitalism forced the Artes Gráficas to confront the question of violent tactics and strikes.

While the Artes Gráficas discouraged strikes and other precipitant actions which invited government repression, the tipógrafos immersed themselves in the turbulent milieu of the Mexican Revolution. Restless workers demanded immediate solutions. As a result, first the Confederación de Tipógrafos and then the Artes Gráficas supported a number of strikes when the tactical situation seemed to merit them. The management of La Prensa capitulated in 1911 during a dispute involving overtime pay when the linotypist members of the Artes Gráficas joined the other employees in a threatened walkout. The El Modelo printing house also gave in during 1911 in the face of an imminent strike over the same issue.²² The prestamped mailing envelope factory El Libro Mercantil was struck and closed down for three weeks in 1912 over the same and additional issues. The Artes Gráficas membership manned picket lines and distributed 617 pesos in strike-relief funds during the shutdown. A special nationwide fund collected for the El Libro strikers eased their plight. It garnered a total of 266 pesos in about two weeks with the Artes Gráficas branch in Sonora contributing 20 pesos to the effort. Finally, a linotypist strike in Torreón closed down the printing industry in that city late in 1912 and, despite the fact the fact that the Torreón workers were not affiliated with the Artes Gráficas, an assembly of three hundred members endorsed their efforts and approved the directors’ decision to send 100 pesos in strike-relief funds because the Torreón strikers were “compañeros.” During the opening years of the emergence of the Casa del Obrero these activities made the Artes Gráficas the principal bulwark of urban working-class militancy.²³

Membership in the Artes Gráficas included conservatives who opposed strikes and related activities and radicals who wanted immediate action. López Dónez, ever true to the long-range planning and teachings of his mentor, Ferrés, opposed “prejudicial tactics” which “hurt the workers more than the capitalists” and “provoked violations of honor and unfaithfulness.”²⁴ The more radical elements in the Artes Gráficas argued that “strikes, without doubt, are effective and are absolutely necessary as practical experience for the inevitable, definitive, and not too distant social revolution.”²⁵ Quintero and other disciples of Ferrés among the obreros intelectuales became increasingly impatient. But the radicals were in the minority until the late summer of 1914 when the Artes Gráficas, led by Quintero and the obreros intelectuales, joined the militant and revolutionary Casa del Obrero Mundial. The Casa, an anarchosyndicalist working-class organization, many times endorsed in its proclamations the dictum, “all means necessary for the victory of the revolutionary working class.”

Moncaleano came to Mexico from Cuba inspired by news of the Madero-led revolution, the work of the Confederación de Tipógrafos, and the agrarian uprising in defense of village integrity led by Emiliano Zapata. He went directly to Mexico City accompanied by three Cuban compañeros and his dynamic wife, Bianca de Moncaleano. After establishing some contacts, he attended meetings of the Artes Gráficas for several weeks and then solicited support from that group in order to establish a combination workers’ central and Escuela Racionalista. Ferrés and the majority of the obreros intelectuales, despite their sympathy, decided against the venture because it involved an open and premature ideological conflict with both Church and state. The tipógrafos preferred not to antagonize the authorities. In addition, they already had more requests for aid from Mexican labor groups than they could handle. The tipógrafos praised Moncaleano for his efforts but turned him down as an unknown outsider. He eventually attracted a number of obreros intelectuales, including the important Casa del Obrero Mundial figures Anastasio S. Marín, Lorenzo Macías, Enrique H. Arce, and Ferrés, to his cause.

Undaunted by his initial failure, Moncaleano attended meetings of the small orthodox Marxist Partido Obrero Socialista, which only numbered about twenty regular members. He first questioned and then attacked the party’s hope of success via the electoral route and managed to recruit its more radical members into the small group he formed. Moncaleano then visited the Unión de Canteros, where he gained four new supporters. These recruits to anarchy included some of the most prominent future leaders of the Casa del Obrero Mundial: Luis Méndez, Eloy Armenia, Pioquinto Roldán, and Jacinto Huitrón.²⁷

Moncaleano’s group numbered only eight members—Rodolfo García Ramírez, Eloy Armenta, Jacinto Huitrón, Pioquinto Roldán, Luis Méndez, Ciro Z. Esquivei, and J. Trinidad Juárez—when they began holding secret sessions in his home and in the homes of the other members.²⁸ After his well-known meeting with the Artes Gráficas membership, Moncaleano resorted to secrecy because Madero government authorities warned him to cease all political activities or face expulsion as a troublesome foreigner. Dedicated to the Escuela Racionalista as the means by which to uplift the masses, Moncaleano and his supporters decided at one of their first meetings, June 29,1912, to create such a learning center. Symbolically, they named their group Luz (light—meaning hope and enlightenment).²⁹

They tried to publish a newspaper, Luz, Peródico Obrero Libertario, but it proved too expensive and time consuming and failed after three issues.³⁰ Without Artes Gráficas’ financial backing, such efforts could not hope to succeed. Luz, however, was a remarkable newspaper. Moncaleano used it to publicize the hopeless cause of Flores Magón and the Partido Liberal Mexicano, the anarchist program of which he enthusiastically endorsed and whose leader he deeply admired. More importantly for the soon to be born Casa del Obrero, Moncaleano’s group published through Luz their Manifiesto Anarquista del Grupo Luz. It carried ten points that can be summarized :

Finally, the Unión de Canteros decided to support Moncaleano’s efforts. With a donation that left the canteros’ treasury empty, he published a series of Ferrer Guardia essays in pamphlet form. Distributed to union and artisan groups, the tracts outlined the Escuela Racionalista—a preschool program for younger children, a workers’ library, and the development of a complete educational system operated in cooperation with the workers’ syndicates. Ferrer Guardia described the Escuela Racionalista as free of government influence and “devoid of dark theology and politics, both of which impede real learning.”

Moncaleano’s activities immediately aroused the ire of the Madero regime. Luz’s planned opening of the first rationalist school and workers’ central on September 8,1912, failed to materialize because of a police raid that resulted in the mass arrest of the membership and in Moncaleano’s immediate expulsion from the country. His principal assistants in the workers’ central-school project—Pioquinto Roldán, Jacinto Huitrón, and Alfonso Ortega—along with five other Luz members, were incarcerated in Belén prison. The anarchists won release two weeks later after leading a tumultuous protest demonstration which broke out behind prison walls on September 15 and continued for several days.³²

On September 22 a meeting of Luz members, the released prisoners, and their supporters commemorated the opening of the first center of the Casa del Obrero and Escuela Racionalista. In this modified program the Casa served as a workers’ central council to be used for organizing, cultural, and propaganda activities. The Casa leadership, comprised of Luz members, planned, coordinated, and carried out these efforts. The crowd of supporters in attendance at the Casa inaugural consisted largely of stoneworkers, typesetters, other members of organized labor, and some middle-class intellectuals. The speakers all paid tribute to Moncaleano as the Casa’s founding martyr. From its inception, the Casa held open public meetings on Sundays, conducted classes with open enrollments weekday nights, and even opened a small library of predominantly anarchist literature, the Biblioteca de la Casa del Obrero.³³

The free classes offered by Luz members attracted so many workers that Luz prepared an enlarged program. The Casa became a studies center that featured courses in modeling, personal hygiene, architecture, chemistry, arithmetic, physics, English, Spanish, music, literary composition, public speaking, and history. In addition, Luz members taught ideology in classes called “conferencias obreras para obreros” “unión instructiva para la mujer obrera” “ciencia, luz, y verdad” and “equalidad, libertad, y amor” All classes met weeknights from six to nine, with enrollments left open for the duration.

On Thursdays and Sundays during late 1912 and 1913, special daytime sessions discussed syndicalism, philosophy, and economics. On Sunday nights a festive game of casino provided a welcome diversion. A private group of citizens called the Independent Civic Confederation (Confederación Cívica Independiente) offered some of the classes, and the others were given by Luz members, including Pioquinto Roldán, Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama, Rafael Pérez Taylor, and Jacinto Huitrón.³⁴ The sizable attendance and the cooperation of nonaffiliated civic groups and intellectuals with the Casa educational program manifested the Mexican government’s miserable failure to provide public services in the field of education.

The Luz membership functioned within the Casa as a Bakuninist-type control group. By January 1913 its successes compared favorably to those experienced by its nineteenth-century precursor, La Social, which worked within the Sociedad Artística Industrial, the Gran Círculo de Obreros, and the Congreso Nacional de Obreros. At first, the Luz radicals focused their energies on the Casa educational program. They avoided criticism of a nervous Madero regime that had already expelled Moncaleano and summarily arrested his supporters.

The Casa became a national sensation and its initial successes in the capital city provoked enthusiasm in the outlying cities. In March a group in Monterrey formed calling itself Luz and began to publish a newspaper of the same name on April 1, 1913. Each edition involved five hundred copies with a total publishing cost of 6.50 pesos. Individual copies sold for 2 centavos. The Monterrey membership consisted principally of radical workers from the Carpenters Union (Unión de Carpinteros) and the stoneworkers.³⁵ They claimed loyalty “to the teachings of Ferrer Guardia,” the martyred Catalan.³⁶ The Monterrey group demonstrated a confusion of ideas and ideologies, but they were the first reflection of the growing influence of the Casa in the Mexican hinterlands.

For several months, Luz succeeded significantly in its task of building an educational and recruiting program for the Casa. As time passed, an increasing number of workers affiliated and many became highly politicized, active participants in the Casa program. As a result, in January 1913 the Luz control group enlarged its membership in order to incorporate the new adherents. Luz also changed its name to Lucha (struggle) and began an active program to organize anarcho-syndicalist unions on a national scale. These syndicates would have national representation in the Mexico City-based Casa and would be composed of self-governing autonomous locals at the factory or provincial level. The organization of local syndicates into regional casas or their maintenance as separated solitary unions depended upon the strength of anarchosyndicalism in the given geographic region. The change of name from Luz to Lucha and the ambitious new program indicated the growing militancy and confidence of the Casa’s directors.

From the Casa’s inception, it met with government competition and opposition. High-ranking Madero regime officials had little but scorn for the working-class anarchosyndicalists and never bothered to find out the substance of their ideas. To the contrary, they regarded the Casa leadership as little more than a gang of ruffians and troublemakers. Nonetheless, they saw the Casa’s radical influence on urban labor as a problem meriting police scrutiny and government participation in the labor movement.

Anarchists disrupted its initial meetings by taking the floor to denounce the directors for their politics and brand the Gran Liga as a mere front for the government. Unfortunately for the Gran Liga, Madero had already lost most of his popularity among the Mexico City workers by late 1912 and, thus, a majority supported a Lucha-led anarchist takeover during the election of officers in January 1913. The newly elected Lucha directors then expelled the deposed former officials of the Gran Liga from the meeting hall. The meeting and its aftermath descended into a tangle of charges and countercharges, the liberals claiming that the whole affair resulted from a late meeting during which most of the voting members had gone home. Lucha had no interest in perpetuating its role in the Gran Liga and later withdrew. The liberals claimed that “agitators” disrupted and discredited their organization among the workers. The anarchosyndicalists from Lucha felt they had simply exposed the Gran Liga as a fraud. The majority of the workers either believed Lucha or, at the least, lost interest in the Gran Liga. They affiliated with the Casa.³⁷ The Gran Liga’s surviving conservative elements had no appreciable effect on the labor movement, despite building donations and continued funding from the government.

Lucha’s position stressed the uselessness and immorality of seeking government arbitration or assistance in disputes with employers. Claiming the greater effectiveness of “direct action” (acción directa) via strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations, Lucha anxiously awaited an opportunity to test its strategy. In the winter of 1913 the Mutualist-Cooperative Union of Restaurant Employees of the Federal District (Unión Mutua-Cooperativa de Dependientes de Restaurantes del D.F.) and the radical Free and Cosmopolitan Workers (Empleados Libres y Cosmopólitas) invited the Casa to help in a strike against the Café Inglés of Mexico City. Lucha decided that this highly publicized encounter provided the test the Casa needed in order to prove its tactics and gain new support. The combination strike-sit-in filled the restaurant to capacity and disrupted service. The management quickly yielded to the workers’ wage and hour demands.³⁸ The events at the Café Inglés gained the Casa its desired public success.

Other occasions for “direct action” soon followed. The most publicized incident took place at La Ciudad de Hamburgo, a clothing store owned by the foreign concern Struck and Company. The Casa accused store manager Gustavo Struck of working his employees twelve hours per day and paying “miserable wages”:

Don Gustavo was cruel and despotic. He worked his employees more than 12 hours [daily] and paid them miserable wages. It was necessary for them to be on their feet all of the time, especially those who waited on customers. He maintained a vigilant and harsh watch over the help. When approached with a question or asked for help, he either turned his back or ordered the employee back to his position with an irritated expression and harsh tone. His immediate assistants, also foreigners, were as ill-disposed as he.³⁹

When Struck dismissed an employee because of the latter’s union activity, he provoked the Lucha membership and they called for a protest demonstration by the Casa del Obrero. On February 2,1913, a crowd of two thousand, called out by the Casa and its local affiliate, the Sociedad Mutualista de Obreros Libres, the labor group responsible for the organization of Mexico City’s store clerks, gathered in the street in front of the Ciudad de Hamburgo. The situation became tense because Casa crowd tactics quite frequently led to the stoning of store windows and violent encounters with the police. A further complication was the delicate location of the Ciudad de Hamburgo on the Calle de Plateros near the Zócalo and the National Palace. Nervous army troops guarded the nearby government offices.

The Madero government acted quickly and, with expressions of “concern for justice,” appointed a special commission to investigate the dispute. The commission strongly rebuked the company and ordered the management to pay the striking clerks’ union 1,000 pesos’ compensation and accede to its demands.⁴⁰ These and other successes of acción directa helped Lucha recruit a number of new unions and several thousand additional workers into the Casa during January and February 1913. The newcomers included the workers’ groups involved in the Café Inglés and Ciudad de Hamburgo disputes—La Unión Mutua-Cooperativa de Dependientes de Restaurantes del D.F., for restaurant employees, and La Sociedad Mutualista de Empleados Libres and the Sociedad Cosmopólita de Dependientes, representing retail store employees in Mexico City. The demonstrations continued, and a short time later the weavers and clothmakers of Mexico City were successfully organized into the Federación Obrera de Tejedores and affiliated with the Casa.

Acción directa succeeded in making the Casa the omnipotent labor organization in Mexico by early 1913. Lucha proudly announced each success in its “official” Casa periodical named, appropriately enough, Lucha. Casa growth allowed expansion of its school library, which now contained the “best works” of Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre J. Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, Max Stirner, Luis Fabri, José Prat, Anselmo Lorenzo, and Enrique Malatesta.⁴¹

The pro-Madero newspaper Nuevo Era criticized anarchist themes published in Lucha in January 1913, but after expressing initial liberal hostility, it ignored the Casa press. By February, government officials and the liberal press demonstrated more concern with the imminent collapse of the Madero regime than with what they perceived as the growing threat of organized labor.

With the fall of Madero’s government and the assassination of both the president and his vice-president, José María Pino Suárez, the directors of the Casa del Obrero refrained from public comment with the justification of “no participación política.” Lucha members had been circumspect, after their early difficulties, in avoiding a confrontation with the Madero regime. They refrained from political criticism and stressed their “educational program.” This policy of restraint continued during the first days of Victoriano Huerta’s new military dictatorship. Fearing repression, Lucha protested that the Casa was an educational institution, albeit one that preached against the three “octopi” of clergy, government, and capital.

Slowly, however, the Lucha control group revealed more radical tactics and moved toward open opposition to Huerta. Directing its attention to the working class, Lucha indirectly attacked the Huerta regime, without naming it, by the declaration that “the working class is to blame for the deplorable state of affairs that allows a corrupt religion, state, and capitalism to govern them.” Capitalism, Lucha declared, would not fall easily even after full mobilization of the workers, for “it still has the government, clergy, the police, and the soldiers. Together these forces have converted free mankind into a slave of bastard ambitions.”⁴² Rafael Pérez Taylor, usually an orthodox socialist but one of the Escuela Racionalista’s most steadfast adherents, in an obvious allusion to Huerta and his army followers, offered a solution: “… all one has to do is enlighten the soldier in order for him to cease being one.”⁴³ Considering the Casa’s vulnerability, these attacks constituted a tactical belligerency that invited repression.

Lucha’s emerging ideology was clear. Speaking for the Casa, Pérez Taylor explained the majority view of the clergy : “We want to abolish the clergy because it consumes much and produces nothing, spending its life corrupting consciences and sowing discord.” Timoteo García summed it up: “… the bourgeoisie has converted a beautiful world into a vale of tears.”⁴⁴ In Lucha’s stronger attacks on the Mexican establishment, it identified the culprits as the Church, state, capitalism, large landowners, village strongmen (caciques), overseers (mayordomos), businessmen, tyrants, despots, oppressors, assassins, and enslavers—all of whom, Lucha claimed, supported and received support from the state.

Lucha offered the same solution earlier advocated by Ferrer Guardia, Ferrés, and Moncaleano: “The triumph of those opposed to all authority [ácratas] will represent for humanity the triumph of love and peace built on the ruins of hate, war, misery, and hunger.” The victory would be won, not through violence, but by the enlightenment of their “ignorant” working-class brothers. Once that higher consciousness had been achieved, Lucha predicted that massive and powerful syndicates would develop, a process deemed already underway. Lucha warned that the Casa would not accept help from government or from politicians, that no nonworker could join the Casa, and that no one in their group would ever serve as a “leader,” because it was immoral. Lucha reserved special scorn for the small Marxist-oriented Partido Obrero Socialista.⁴⁵ Unaffiliated groups, such as the Confederación de Artes Gráficas, began to view the impressive successes of Moncaleano’s successors in the control group Lucha and its growing umbrella organization, the Casa del Obrero, with increasing admiration.

In the next two months the Casa organized new syndicates among the restaurant workers, retail clerks, and weavers. Its growing strength caused the Casa to look confidently forward to Mexico’s first large May Day march since the nineteenth century. Elements of the small orthodox Marxist socialist Partido Socialista and other labor groups, including the tipógrafos, not affiliated with the Casa joined in a march of thousands across downtown Mexico City. Lucha seized the initiative in organizing the affair, and Eloy Armenia and Rafael Pérez Taylor joined the prominent Madero government representatives and Casa sympathizers, Isidro Fabela and Heriberto Jara, in addressing the crowd. The principal speakers and the bulk of the signs carried by the marchers emphasized the “bread-and-butter issues” of the eight-hour day and six-day work week.⁴⁶ Size estimates of the May Day celebration varied, with the largest figure set at thirty thousand. A sober estimate based on concurring eyewitness testimony provides a more likely figure of twenty thousand.⁴⁷

Despite the radicalism of Jara and Fabela, their participation caused a division in the ranks of both Lucha and the tipógrafos. Some Lucha members joined Ferrés, leader of the tipógrafos, in a boycott. Loyal to his Spanish anarchist heritage, Ferrés refused to take part because of the presence of politicians like Jara and Fabela, regardless of how radical they might be. The reasoning was clear: the danger of Casa “political involvement.” The intensely ideological Spaniards in the Casa usually expressed their refusal to participate in political activity more strongly than did the Mexicans. Madero’s early expulsion of Moncaleano and Huerta’s later removal of many Spanish leaders of Lucha would be fatal for the anarchosyndicalist principle of “no political participation” for the urban working class. In May 1913 working-class resentment toward Huerta rose to such an intensity that the Lucha majority considered the action worthwhile. Despite Lucha’s fears, Huerta, perhaps because of his tenuous political situation, proved exceedingly tolerant.

Simultaneous May Day demonstrations occurred in Río Blanco, Mérida, and Monterrey. Violence marred the episode at Río Blanco when the district military commander, General Velázquez, directed his troops to fire after the crowd ignored his order to disperse. The Mérida and Monterrey observances were relatively small and took place without incident. The Casa leadership group rejoiced at their support in Río Blanco and protested the repressive actions of the local military commander.⁴⁸ Following the May Day demonstration, Lucha amplified the name of its labor organization to include Mundial in recognition of a world-wide proletarian movement and affinity with the libertarian socialist International Association of Workers (Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores, AIT) headquartered in Amsterdam.

Several new syndicates joined the Casa during the euphoria of success that prevailed in Mexico City in the days immediately after May Day. On May 5 the tailors (sastres) of Mexico City formed a syndicate affiliated with the Casa.⁴⁹ The adoption of the classification of syndicate meant that they intended to deny the legitimacy of state rule, that they rejected political activity, and that they thought the government could eventually be overthrown by acción directa. Casa doctrine once again openly advocated the tactics of strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, street demonstrations, and boycotts. The sastres’ enthusiasm placed them into immediate conflict with one of Mexico City’s largest department stores, El Palacio de Hierro. They charged the paymaster (contador), José Burko, with dishonesty and insulting behavior and demanded his dismissal. When the management refused their demands, the sastres expressed their disgust with “bourgeois insolence” and went on strike. They picketed the store, organized a boycott, and crowded inside during business hours.⁵⁰ The final outcome of this dispute has not been preserved for posterity, but, more importantly, a significant artisan group was committed to the Casa.

On May 3 the weavers and textile workers (tejedores), a union that already belonged to the Casa, publicly adopted syndicalism. At the same time they struck and closed down the San Antonio de Abad, Miraflores, La Colmena, and Barron textile factories. An insight into the thinking of the strikers was revealed by a strike declaration which, in reference to one of the factory owners, stated the hope “to tumble that insolent Frenchman out of the clouds.” A few days later, on May 8, the quarry workers and stonecutters (canteros) of the Mexico City area joined forces as a Casa syndicate. On May 24 the carpenters, cabinetmakers, and wood engravers followed suit. Despite the presence of government undercover agents and at least one police raid of the Casa meeting hall, the strikes and meetings, during which increasingly outspoken criticisms of the Huerta regime were heard, continued until nearly the end of the month.⁵¹

During May, Lucha members began a series of clandestine meetings with nonlabor opponents of the Huerta regime in order to prepare antigovernment demonstrations in the capital. Among the planners for the demonstrations, scheduled for May 25, were Jesús Urueta and outspoken deputy Serapio Rendón. They met with some of the principal leaders of Mexican anarchosyndicalism and the braintrust of Lucha—Díaz Soto y Gama, Pérez Taylor, Pioquinto Roldán, Jacinto Huitrón, Eloy Armenta, José Colado, José Santos Chocano, and Miguel and Celestino Sorrondequi. The crowd in attendance, although smaller than that of May Day, totaled several thousand. Eight Lucha members addressed the assembly and condemned “military dictatorship and usurpation” without mentioning Huerta directly. They appealed for a “return of democracy.”

Despite Lucha’s caution in avoiding an overt call for the removal of Huerta, its activities exhausted the dictator’s patience. He could not allow unrest in Mexico City while fighting revolutionaries in the north and south. Huerta’s officers arrested about one dozen Casa leaders. Using article 33 of the Constitution as his legal basis, Huerta then deported several of the speakers at the May 25 rally as undesirable aliens, including Spanish-born Lucha members Eloy Armenta, José Colado, and the Sorrondequi brothers. José Santos Chocano, a Peruvian writer for Lucha, joined the Spaniards in flight. The deportations seriously weakened Lucha and the future development of the Mexican anarchosyndicalist working-class movement. Mexicans arrested included Anastasio S. Marín and two of the most militant workers, Luis Méndez and Jacinto Huitrón, whom the authorities held in Belén prison for over a month.⁵²

The intimidated remnants of Lucha petitioned Congress in the name of the Casa for the release of the imprisoned leaders and called for repeal of article 33. Pro-Huerta critics of the Casa rejected its appeal and described it as a “center of conspiracy” (foco de conspiración). Huitrón, Méndez, Pérez Taylor, Díaz Soto y Gama, and others denied involvement of the Casa in any political conspiracy. They claimed that “syndicalist by-laws” prohibited such activities. Serapio Rendon and Belisario Domínguez spoke on behalf of the arrested Casa leaders before Congress and condemned the Huerta regime’s methods, only to be kidnapped, executed, and buried in a soon-discovered grave. Prior to the discovery of the bodies, an adamant Congress demanded a full explanation and refused to adjourn. Huerta reacted by dissolving both houses.⁵³

With Lucha disrupted and demoralized, Casa urban labor organizing activities subsided until August of 1913 when the leadership of the tipógrafos’ Confederation of Graphic Arts, the obreros intelectuales, decided to bring their group into the Casa. Among the leaders who decided to bring the Artes Gráficas into the Casa were Amadeo Ferrés’ original disciples, Rafael Quintero, Federico de la Colina, Anastasio S. Marín, Pedro Ortega, and José Barragán Hernández. Some of the tipógrafos’ leaders already held individual membership in Lucha, but the entry of their syndicate into the Casa brought new, more prosperous, and somewhat more sophisticated members into the rank-and-file membership as well as into the Lucha leadership group. Lucha, the Casa, and tipógrafos now came under the dynamic leadership of Rafael Quintero. The merger was a major advance in the struggle for a strong anarchosyndicalist labor movement.

The entry of the Artes Gráficas into the Casa caused a breakup of the tipógrafos’ membership. The tipógrafos’ organization had been rife with disputes since the radical innovations of Amadeo Ferrés began in 1909. The divisiveness and the task of winning over the majority of the membership had exhausted Ferrés and, compounded by his illness, precipitated his resignation as their leader. In late 1913 the majority of tipógrafos voted to declare their organization a syndicate with all the revolutionary connotations of that label and to enter the Casa del Obrero Mundial. At that point the more conservative members objected to the commitment of their mutual aid funds to strikes and “resistance” activities which they considered “ill conceived.” A general meeting of the tipógrafos assembled, and when the majority voted to syndicalize and join the Casa, the minority formed a new, more conservative union called the Unión Cooperativa Linotipográfica. They rejected all appeals for unity and never did join the Casa or accept its revolutionary-anarchist precepts.⁵⁴ Some tipógrafos who did join the Casa had difficulty accepting the most revolutionary anarchosyndicalist dictums. One of these men, Rosendo Salazar, advocated Proudhonian cooperativism; he also supported the move to anarchosyndicalism and elicited the condemnation of the conservatives in the Artes Gráficas. However, his less than wholehearted acceptance of the antipolitical ideology of the anarchosyndicalists earned him their distrust.

The tipógrafos gave the Casa new life. Using their professional skills they published a newspaper, El Sindicalista. The newspaper’s name imitated the identical rubric of a contemporary anarchist periodical published in Spain. The principal administrators of the new “official” periodical of the Casa and Mexican anarchism included Quintero, Salazar, and Epigmenio H. Ocampo. Lucha members Santiago R. de la Vega and Díaz Soto y Gama and the sympathetic Pérez Taylor contributed regularly to its issues. Considering the difficult economic situation and the unstable political conditions which might have been conducive to far more radical appeals, El Sindicalista pursued neither extreme nor provocative policies. The periodical devoted most of its pages to anarchist philosophy, the defense of syndicalism through the defense of antipolitics, the workings of cooperatives within the Confederation of Graphic Arts, and the right of the workers to organize “in their own defense.” Many of the essays in El Sindicalista were reprints of articles that had appeared earlier in El Tipógrafo Mexicano.⁵⁵

An indigenous Mexican anarchism came of age in the pages of El Sindicalista. Edited by Rosendo Salazar and José López Dónez, El Sindicalista used the positivism of Agustín Aragón to prove the inevitability of libertarian socialism.⁵⁶ Aragón and the Lucha leadership believed that a new order of freedom and equality was coming in Mexico because of “the Natural Law of progress” and because man had now achieved the final stage of positivist human social development. One of the leading exponents of the cause then offered a definition : “Anarchism is an absolute absence of government, [a society with] neither God nor master [ni Dios, ni amo]…. in order for a sizable collectivity to achieve that condition, the highest degree of culture is essential; [a society] perfectly conscious of its actions fulfills the function of God, government, laws, and everything else within its naturally harmonious order. When it reaches that highest level of development it will be anarchistic [anárquico].”⁵⁷

Casa anarchosyndicalism took on clearer shape near the end of 1913 and the pages of El Sindicalista explained the process to the workers. Anarchists urged workers to join syndicates in order to escape their “exploited condition” because “unity will provide the strength to attack the problem with practicality.”⁵⁸ Trade guilds were organizing into syndicates and, consistent with artisan tradition, maintaining their independence from other trades. When workers of a given profession suffered unacceptable conditions, they could strike with the expectation that their fellow tradesmen in other syndicates nationwide would support them by means of Casa-directed tactics. The short-run objectives of the limited strikes emphasized improved working conditions and higher salaries. Anarchists perceived the general strike, involving all syndicates at once in order to disrupt the national economy, as working-class war on the state and capitalism.

Once the syndicates sufficiently developed they would be in a position, through the mechanism of the general strike, to paralyze and take over entire national industries and trades in order to operate a new “Industrial Republic,” without capitalists. Anarchists rejected the state, parliamentary legislation, and political activity because politicians, they believed, had vested interests in the already exising socioeconomic order which rested upon the exploitation of the working class : “… the politicians will never save the working class in spite of all their promises. Democratic politics is a painful lie [burda mentira].”⁵⁹ They also rejected the socialist state as being oppressive: “If authoritarian socialism has taken it upon itself to fan the historic process of class struggle by seizing political power for the proletariat, … libertarian socialism, before and after this process, will continue struggling so that the principle of authority will not impose on the individual conscience a new mode of slavery.”⁶⁰

The strike constituted the only real weapon held by the workers. Díaz Soto y Gama explained its utility: “… it is impossible for bourgeois society to survive without the labor of its slaves or the consumption [needs] of the exploited.”⁶¹ Partial or piecemeal strikes prepared the way for the great general strike which would end capitalism and its political system. One writer declared that in 1913 Mexican anarchosyndicalism had “barely begun to show its red petals.”

In October 1913 a divergent version of Mexican working-class anarchism emerged, Christian Communism, principally enunciated by Díaz Soto y Gama. In his view, Jesus Christ, “the vagabond carpenter from Galilee,” favored “equality” and opposed “slavery.” By positing the principles of “harmony, fraternity, and justice among the free and equal,” Christ was “the first libertarian socialist.”⁶² Díaz Soto y Gama, despite his religious zeal, expressed overt hostility to the established Roman Catholic church in Mexico. One of his partisans declared that “the true Christian must look … to the Bible and never to the falsifiers that have imbued prejudice into the thinking of the workers.”⁶³ Many anarchists joined Díaz Soto y Gama in his attacks on the Church; a few joined him in defense of religious faith. He and Pérez Taylor presented a series of Casa-sponsored classes and issued public denunciations of “the false ministers of God, those who have profaned the maxims of Christ.” To the Casa anarchosyndicalists, Christ was a very human proletarian revolutionary.⁶⁴

By the end of 1913 the pitiful economic condition of the Casa’s working-class membership forced a change in organizing and propaganda tactics. Without funds, El Sindicalista, the Casa newspaper, ceased publication and the harried anarchists instituted mass meetings as a means of recruitment. A popular group of orators known as the tribuna roja held sway. Leaders in the tribuna roja included Quintero, Díaz Soto y Gama, and nonanarchists Pérez Taylor and Aragón. They addressed massive crowds that overflowed into the street in front of Casa headquarters.

Surprisingly, general economic misery and Casa financial bankruptcy had a beneficial effect on the Casa’s recruiting efforts. The mass meetings succeeded in gaining new members to an unexpected degree and apparently reached the mass of average illiterate workers much more effectively than El Sindicalista and its literary predecessors. The tribuna roja era, beginning in late 1913 and ending in late May 1914, represented the most successful period of membership recruitment yet enjoyed by the Casa. The crowds, often excited and unruly, vigorously applauded attacks against the Church, capitalism, and the state.⁶⁵

Despite these successes, the Lucha leadership group felt a printed publication was essential in order to give the Casa’s message wider range. By May 1914 the Casa recovered sufficiently to attempt new programs. On May 1 and 15 a newspaper, Emancipación Obrera, began publication in an attempt to reach the greater Mexican working class. The editorial board, including Quintero, Marín, and Salazar, emphasized worker recruitment and education and blamed workers’ ignorance and lack of ideology as the major obstacles to organizing. The newspaper dedicated itself to the solution of the dilemma. As a part of this effort, the Casa reopened its school, the Rationalist Cultural Center (Centro de Cultura Racionalista). Pérez Taylor explained that “anarchist doctrines are so elevated that a maximum degree of culture is necessary in order to give them understanding.” The economically disadvantageous and politically conservative position of religiously oriented working-class women resulted in a rationalist course on “the equality of the sexes” taught by Paula Osorio.⁶⁶

The successful tactic of mass meetings, however, continued. A large May Day rally and several other meetings ensued during the month which protested the government raids of May 1913. The attacks on Huerta suddenly became bitter and provocative. The crowds grew larger and more threatening. The government responded decisively.

On May 27, Commander Ignacio Machorro, in a repetition of the action taken almost at the same time a year earlier, led a multitude of police on a raid of Casa headquarters. The police arrested between fifteen and twenty persons and destroyed the Casa offices, records, library, classrooms, and other facilities. Detained Lucha members included Barragán Hernández and Marín. Quintero, Méndez, Salazar, and Huitrón escaped arrest through the efforts of Federico de la Colina, who sequestered them in a house located in the barrio of Tepito. Normal Casa activities, including the publication of Emancipación Obrera, ceased as a result of suppression by the Huerta government until the arrival of the revolutionary Constitutionalist army two months later.⁶⁷