This is a well-researched narrative history of Ricardo Flores Magón and the anarquista wing of the Mexican Liberal party (PLM) that documents the role of PLM activists in such notable episodes as the Cananea and Río Blanco strikes in 1906-1907, the abortive PLM revolts of 1906-1908, and the Baja California filibustering expedition of 1911. Seeking to emphasize the movement’s substantive achievements, its author takes issue with Rodney Anderson and other scholars who claim that the PLM had only a limited and indirect role in the labor unrest of 1906-1907. Similarly, to rehabilitate the tarnished image of the PLM in the Baja California adventure, the author argues that the widespread popular belief that this was an opportunistic scheme to create a socialist republic derived in part from a successful public relations campaign waged by powerful business interests in the United States to isolate and weaken the authentic revolutionaries of the PLM.
Sympathetic to its subject, El magonismo is thoroughly documented, drawing heavily from primary materials in the Archivo General de la Nación, Archivo General de Relaciones Exteriores, and other national, regional, and local archives. By also making good use of abundant secondary materials, this work contributes substantially to the historiography of the Flores Magón brothers and the PLM, pulling together and synthesizing diverse primary and secondary sources. Lacking, however, are many new and substantive revelations or insights. Lengthy block quotations and partial or complete reproduction of documents occupy about one-third of the 203 pages of text. These blemishes in no way compromise the book’s usefulness as a comprehensive overview of the Magonista movement for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students of Mexican history.
