" ... I am going towards a practical anarchism to avoid the error committed by many "dogmatists" who have placed themselves outside the masses and have in effect turned a sharp blade into an instrument of blunt wood ..."[10]
Despite this emphasis on the practical and active rather than the theoretical, Praxedis did make a very important and lasting contribution to revolutionary journalism as his few, surviving writings show. These articles, mainly written for 'Punto Rojo' and 'Regeneracion' for 1909 and 1910 respectively, sprinkled as they are with poetic imagery, show a very clear insight into the ills of an authoritarian society, and offer a libertarian alternative that could be adopted to overcome these ills. Several themes preoccupy these articles, the most prominent being racialism, womens' emancipation, rational education and most importantly, the necessity for revolution.
As a Mexican worker in the United States Praxedis saw at first hand the prejudice practised by the American bosses and general public against all migrant workers in general, and Mexican workers in particular. Of all ethnic working groups in the U.S., the Mexicans were the most poorly paid. In many towns they were forbidden altogether from public places, and after the revolution of 1908 mine owners in Texas and Oklahoma reduced the wages of Mexicans to prevent them from giving financial aid to the P.L.M.
" ... Racial prejudice and nationality" he wrote "clearly managed by the capitalists and tyrants prevent peoples loving side by side in a fraternal manner ...
"... A river, a mountain chain, a line of small monuments suffice to maintain foreigners and make enemies of two peoples, both living in mistrust and envy of one another because of the acts of past generations. Each nationality pretends to be above the other in some kind of way, and the dominating classes, the keepers of education and the wealth of rations, feed the proletariat with the belief of stupid superiority and pride in order to make impossible the union of workers of all nations who are separately fighting to free themselves from Capital ...
"... If all the workers of the different American nations had direct participation in all questions of social importance which effect one or more proletarian groups these questions would be resolved promptly and happily by the workers themselves" [11]
Racialism was not only practised against groups of workers but also against individual workers. One such case was the lynching of a Mexican worker in Texas for the supposed murder of an American woman. Praxedis wrote in disgust of this incident;
"Where ?
In the model nation, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, in the Land still overshadowed by the hanging of John Brown in the U.S.A., in a Texas village called Rock Springs.
When?
Today, in the 10th year of the century, in the epoch of aircraft of the wireless, of the telegraph, of Peace Congresses and of Humanitarian Societies.
Who?
A crowd of white "men" to use the name they like: white men white white.
These men who burnt alive a man were not cannibals, they were not natives from Equatorial Africa, they were not were not wild men from Mayaya. they were not Spanish inquisitors, nor were they troglodytes not were they illiterate, naked men from the jungles; instead they were the descendants of Washington, of Franklin. ,of Lincoln, it was a well-dressed crowd, educated and proud of its virtues, they were citizens of the United States white 'men.'
Progress, civilisation, culture, humanitarianism. All lies over the calcified bones of Antonio Rodriguez. All fantasies asphyxiated in the pestilential smoke of the Rock Springs bonfire.
There are schools in each town and on each ranch in Texas; through these schools passed the boys who became the 'men' of the lynching crowd, it was in these schools that their intellect was formed, it was these schools that produced those who set fire to a loving man and said, some days later, that justice had been done.
In these schools men are educated to go beyond wild beasts." [12]
Together with the elimination of racial prejudice, the emancipation of women, was for Praxedis, as in dispensable as revolution itself. Speaking at a public meeting devoted to this subject in Los Angeles only a few weeks before his death, he pointed out quite clearly that the main obstacle to the true liberation of women was the bible, that taught the impurity of women, and custom that has translated this into the inferiority of women;
"The child and the woman have always been the elected victims of barbarism, and only in some countries have women enjoyed a few privileges that have placed her above man socially, such as the primitive clans where matriarchy existed. But today women do not yet occupy the true place in society that they should, as women, have . . .
.... Religion, whatever its name, however it presents itself, is the most terrible enemy of women. Under the pretext of consolation it annihilates her consciousness; in the name of a sterile love, it takes her away from love, fountains of human life and happiness; with rough phantoms sketched in unhealthy poetry she is separated from the real, strong and immense poetry of a free existence.
Religion is the auxiliary of domestic and national despots, its mission is one of taming; caresses or the whip, the cage or chains, all these are employed to obtain the same results. Women are enslaved as a first step, because the woman is the mother of the child and the child becomes a man . .
... 'Feminism' serves as a base for opposing the enemies of womens' emancipation. But there is certainly no attraction in say a woman policeman, in a woman removed from her soft sex to grasp the whip of the oppressor...
... Liberation, equality, does not try to make man as woman, it gives the same opportunity to both the faces of the human species so that they both develop without obstacle, helping one another without demanding rights for one only, without impeding each other's place in nature. Men and women have to fight for this rational equality, to harmonise the individual happiness with the collective happiness. Without this there will be, perpetually in the home, the seeds of tyranny, the buds of slavery and social misery. If custom is a yoke then we must break the custom however sacred it appears, In breaking such customs civilisation advances. Some though will say it is a bridle, but such bridles have never liberated the people, never satisfied hunger nor redeemed slaves." [13]
By far the most important contribution Praxedis made to revolutionary propaganda was on the nature of, and the resistance to, tyranny. A resistance that could only be revolution;
"... Tyranny is a logical result of an illness in society and it's only remedy is revolution ..."[14]
After objectively analysing the nature of tyranny Praxedis concluded that;
"Tyrants and common criminals are equally subject to the natural laws of determinism, and even though their acts appal and anger us, we must agree with justice on the irresponsibility of one or the other; but without arriving at absolute judgments it can be said that tyranny is the most excusable of crimes because it cannot be committed by one individual acting alone. It only occurs when, at the same time, there are circumstances of great complexity outside the individual's will where there are powerful men waiting who are more apt and better gifted in qualities for evil. In effect, would a tyrant exercise power over a people who did not give him supporting elements? A common malefactor can commit his evil acts without the complicity of his victim; a despot though cannot exist or tyrannise without the co-operation of his followers and the most numerous part of them; tyranny is a crime of unconscious collectives against themselves and it must be attacked as a social illness by means of Revolution, considering the death of tyrants as only an incident in the struggle, nothing more than an incident, not an act of justice ... [15]
Praxedis also saw clearly that tyrannies were made, in part at least, through national gratitude. Many so-called 'heroes' and 'national saviours' have been hoisted into power by a grateful people, blinded to the true nature of both the individual and his followers. Of course when they realise what they have done it is too late. Praxedis gives the example of Agustin de Hurbide but history is full of examples, Mexico's own Madero or Castro to name only a few:
"Gratitude is the flower of servility, the libertarian despises it because it has the odour of a slaves' prison.
Admiration, which is a great recurring force of the masses gives support to gratitude which is a great forger of chains to perpetuate the yoke.
The people do not owe gratitude to their liberators just as they do not owe love to their tyrants."[16]
Tyranny as Praxedis saw it, could only be overthrown by revolution, a revolution that would, by necessity. be violent. There was no other way, reformism, pacifism or acceptance of tyranny as a necessary evil all being equally repugnant. He accepted revolutionary violence for what it was and nothing more, and died putting it into practice.
" . ., We are not looking for a subterfuge to gloss over the violence which unavoidably and by necessity will have to accompany the liberating movement. We deplore violence, it is repugnant to us, but confronted with an enslavement that will continue indefinitely, or the use of force, we choose the temporary horror of armed struggle without hate for the irresponsible tyrant ....
.... We undertake violent struggle without making it our ideal, without thinking of the execution of a tyrant as a supreme victory of justice.
Our violence is not justice, it is simply a necessity that fills itself at the expense of feeling and idealism, and on its own it is insufficient to assure for the people the conquest of progress. Our violence would have no purpose without the violence of despotism nor would it have any reason if the majority of the tyrant's victims were not consciously or unconsciously accomplices of today's unjust situation. When human aspirations are free to develop in the social milieu then the production and practice of violence would be wrong; but not it is a practical means of breaking old moulds that the evolution of pacifism would take hundreds of years to corrode.
The aim of revolution, as we have said many times before, is to guarantee for all the right to live by destroying the causes of misery, ignorance and despotism, scorning the humanitarian theorists' cry of sentimentality."[17]
- 10. Letter from Praxedis G. Guerrero to Manuel Sarabia, 28th May 1910, in Articulos de Combate p.124-125
- 11. Programa de la Liga Pan-Americana del Trabajo in Articulos de Combate p.124-125.
- 12. Blancos, blancos in ibid p.144-145.
- 13 La mujer in ibid pl37-143.
- 14. El objeto de la Revolucion in ibid p98.
- 15. El medio y el fin in ibid p132-133.
- 16. La inconveniencia de la gratitud in ibid p106.
- 17. El medio y el fin in ibid p132-133.
All material on this page from 'The anarchists and the Mexican Revolution Praxedis G. Guerrero 1882 - 1910' by Dave Poole. First published in 'Cienfugos Press Anarchist Review No 4', 1978