Peace!, by Ricardo Flores Magón (1911)
Article from ‘Regeneración’, English Section, June 10, 1911, Los Angeles, edited by William C. Owen
More distant than ever is the day of peace. The Madero-Diaz pact has served solely to demonstrate two facts — that Madero is not the leader of the revolution, and that the people are not satisfied with a mere change of tyrants.
The people want something that is exceedingly definite — the abolition of hunger; and inasmuch as the electoral ballot is not made of flour but of paper it seeks something more substantial: Bread.
That, in a word, is the aspiration of the toilers.
As for the bourgeoisie, it is split up into various factions: Reyists, Maderists, Obregonists, “Cientificos,” Figueroists, Orozcists, and so on ad infinitum.
Clericalism, for its part, lifts up its head and presents itself boldly as the Catholic National Party.
Chaos has come; the much wished for chaos, from which there will issue something good for the poor people of Mexico.
Those who hoped that this revolution would be an opera bouffe revolt, ending in the enthronement of a new tyrant, are panic-stricken. “Anarchy reigns in Mexico,” say these poor-spirited ones, who do not know that Anarchy is order based on mutual aid.
What is happening in Mexico at the present moment is that passions of all kinds have broken loose; passions good and passions bad; the bad passions of the petty chiefs who are seeking to gain power that they, in their turn, may oppress; the good passions of the liberty lovers who seek to put an end to privilege, that they may establish equality on the firm basis of the economic emancipation of the proletariat.
(From the Spanish of Ricardo Flores Magon.)