Ricardo Flores Magón Archive
Written: 1911.
Source: Regeneración, 14 January, 1911.
Transcription and Markup: Christopher Hill
Translation: Christopher Hill
The latest news from the committee’s representative in the city of El Paso, Texas, confirms the rumors that circulated about the fate of the secretary of the Organizing Committee of the Liberal Party, Praxedis G. Guerrero, in the mountains of Chihuahua. Guerrero is dead, says the delegate of the committee. On the glorious day of Janos, Praxedis G. Guerrero, the young libertarian, said goodbye to life.
Praxedis is dead and I still don't want to believe it. I have collected data, I have taken in information, I have analyzed this data, I have subjected this information to the most severe criticism, and everything tells me that Praxedis no longer exists, that he is already dead; but contrary to what my reason infers, my emotions rise up in tears, crying out: no, Praxedis is not dead, my dear brother lives... I see him everywhere and at all hours; sometimes I think I find him working in the office in his favorite places, and when I remember his eternal absence, I feel a lump in my throat. The brother, so good, so generous, has left us.
I remember his words, as loud as his thoughts. I remember when he confided: I don't think I will survive this Revolution, the hero told me with a frequency that filled me with anguish. I also believed that I would have to die soon. He was so bold!
Pradexis worked tirelessly. I never heard from his lips a complaint occasioned by the fatigue of his heavy labor. He was always seen bent over his work desk writing, writing, writing those luminous articles with which the revolutionary literature of Mexico is honored; articles dripping with sincerity, articles made beautiful by their structure and their depth. He often told me: how poor is language; there are no terms that translate thought exactly; Thought loses much of its freshness and beauty when put on paper. And yet, that extraordinary man knew how to form true works of art with the crude materials of language . A devoted and modest man, he wanted nothing for himself. Several times we urged him to buy a suit. He never accepted it. Everything for the cause, he said smiling.
Once, seeing that he was losing weight rapidly, I advised him to eat better , since he lived with a small portion of beans: he could not bear, he told me, to treat himself to better dishes when millions of human beings currently do not have a piece of bread to put in the mouth. And all this he said with the sincerity of the apostle, with the simplicity of a true saint.
There was no pretense in him. His high, luminous forehead was the reflection of all his thoughts. Praxedis belonged to one of the wealthy families in the State of Guanajuato. Together with his brothers he inherited a hacienda. With the products of that hacienda he could have lived in leisure, comfortably; but above all he was a libertarian. What right did he have to take from the farmworkers the product of their labor? With what right did he have to hold in his hands the land that the workers irrigated with their sweat? Praxedis renounced his inheritance and went on to join his brothers, the workers, to earn with his own hands a piece of bread to put in his mouth without the remorse of owing it to the exploitation of his fellow men.
Praxedis was almost a child when, after having renounced luxury, riches, the almost bestial satisfactions of the bourgeoisie, he gave himself up to manual labor. He did not enter the proletarian ranks as a loser in the struggle for existence, but as a gladiator who enlisted in the proletariat to put his effort and his great mind at the service of the oppressed. He was not a destitute man who was forced to take up a pick and a shovel to survive, but the apostle of a great idea who voluntarily renounced the joys of life to propagate what he believed by example.
And “El Imparcial” calls this great man a bandit; In large font, that infamous rag, when accounting for the events of Janos, says that "the fearsome bandit Guerrero" found his death there. Bandit? So, what is the definition of a good man? Oh, rest in peace, dear brother: Perhaps I am destined to be your avenger.
When talking about Praxedis G. Guerrero, it is not possible to fail to mention that other hero who fell through the bullets of the henchmen in the glorious action of Palomas in the summer of 1908... Do you remember him? His name was Francisco Manrique, another young man from Guanajuato who also renounced his inheritance so as not to exploit his peers.
Praxedis and Francisco, a beautiful pair of dreamers, were inseparable comrades whom only death could separate; but only for a short time... In the beautiful article that Praxedis wrote about the Palomas action, he says, referring to Francisco Manrique: “I knew Pancho since I was a child. At school we sat on the same bench. Later, in adolescence, we journeyed together through exploitation and misery, and later our ideals and efforts came together in the Revolution. We were brothers as few brothers can be. Nobody entered into his beautiful private world as much as me; He was a profoundly good young man, despite his character being as brave as a stormy sea."
Praxedis was the soul of the libertarian movement. Without hesitation, I can say that Praxedis was the purest, most intelligent, most self-sacrificing, bravest man that the cause of the dispossessed ever had, and the void he leaves may not ever be filled. Where to find a man without ambition of any kind, all brain and heart, brave and active like him? The proletariat has perhaps not realized the enormous loss it has suffered. Without hyperbole, it can be said that it is not just Mexico that has lost the best of its sons, but humanity itself that has suffered this loss, because Praxedis was a libertarian.
And I still can not believe the terrible reality. Sometimes it seems to me that a merciful telegram is going to arrive, reporting that Praxedis is alive. The brutal truth cannot annihilate in the bottom of my heart a remnant of hope that burns like an oil lamp about to go out. My tortured spirit believes that it will still find him in his favorite places, and In the office, where he and I together dreamt so much of the beautiful dawn of social emancipation, the martyr, bent over his work table, writing, writing, writing.
Ricardo Flores Magón