The Journal of San Diego History
SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY
Fall 1980, Volume 26, Number 4
Thomas L. Scharf, Editor
By Richard Griswold del Castillo
DURING AN INTERVIEW FOR Sunset Magazine in 1911, the Americans fighting with the Magonista army in Mexicali revealed the vulnerability of the P.L.M’s revolutionary image: “We are fighting,” said Captain Leclare, “‘por tierra y libertad’. That means ‘for land and liberty'”. “Mostly land,” chimed in a compatriot.1
The Partido Liberal Mexicano’s invasion of Baja California in 1911 discredited the Magonista cause at a crucial time in the Mexican revolution. For about a year, between the time of Francisco I. Madero’s Plan de San Luis Potosí in 1910 and Porfirio Díaz’s resignation from office in 1911, both Madero and Ricardo Flores Magón offered Mexicanos a choice in revolutionary leadership. Madero’s ultimate victory and accession to the presidency and Magón’s simultaneous defeat and imprisonment in the United States were by no means certainties during the spring of 1911. The Magonista decision to invade Baja California and the party’s support of an insurgent army composed largely of North Americans undermined the Mexican people’s confidence in the Liberal Party.
Lowell Blaisdell, in his book, The Desert Revolution, has argued that the Magonista rebellion failed because the P.L.M. leadership allowed its forces to be labeled as a filibustering expedition by the federal government. The party defeated itself by engaging in counterproductive deception and internal strife.2
Juan Gomez-Quiñones in his study of Ricardo Flores Magón’s ideological development during this period agrees that the decision to invade Baja California was a political mistake. He finds that the P.L.M.’s military failure was due primarily to lack of organization and the Mexican government’s propaganda.3 Over the years, historians in Mexico, such as Velasco Ceballos, Enrique Aldrete and Pablo Martinez have debated whether or not the invasion was supported by North American annexationist interests.4 Recent Mexican scholarship has tended to interpret the invasion as a well intentioned but mismanaged attempt to carry out the goals of the Liberal Party. Few seriously maintain that American capitalists or politicians were behind the Magonista military campaigns.5
This essay looks more closely at the reasons why the P.L.M. failed to attract a significant number of Mexicano volunteers. Neither Blaisdell nor Gomez-Quiñones has dealt with this issue, yet the non-Mexican character of the P.L.M. army supported the Mexican government’s charge that Flores Magón headed a filibustering expedition. Consequently the Liberal Party lost its political appeal in Mexico.
The invasion began auspiciously enough. In December 1910, only a month after Francisco Madero and a small group of supporters had crossed into Mexico from Texas, Flores Magón sent a group of followers to the Imperial Valley to prepare for revolution. Meanwhile, John Kenneth Turner, a socialist author who had written Barbarous Mexico criticizing the Díaz regime, purchased arms and ammunition in Los Angeles and shipped them ” to Mexicali.6 On January 27, 1911 Flores Magón sent José Maria Leyva and Simon Berthold to the border where they crossed to a camp at Laguna Salada. Under the command of Leyva, a group of about 30 men attacked and captured Mexicali on January 28. At this time the majority of troops were Mexicanos. After a few weeks the army grew to about 150 men, about half of them Anglo-American volunteers, mostly members of the International Workingmen of the World and Socialists.7 From the beginning there was strife between the Mexicano and non-Mexicano factions. In March a serious split developed when the Anglo-Americans accused General Leyva of incompetence because he had not marched on Ensenada. As a result of infighting, General Leyva left the army and departed for Texas to join Madero’s forces.8 This left the Magonistas under the dual command of General Vasquez Salinas and Lieutenant Caryl Ap Rhys Pryce, a Welsh soldier of fortune who had fought with the British colonial armies in India and South Africa. General Salinas, a long time supporter of Magón, soon found himself at odds with Pryce’s troops. They simply ignored his commands. The “gringos,” as the Mexicans called the North Americans, liberally referred to Salinas and the Mexicanos as “greasers.” Soon Anglo and Mexicano insurectos were fighting duels in the streets over insults imagined and real. Distrust and suspicion pervaded the small army.9
Conflict between the two groups lessened when Lieutenant Pryce, with most of the Americans left to join another P.L.M. force under John Mosby at Tecate in April.10 From there the joint forces were ordered by Flores Magón to march on Ensenada. Perhaps because several weeks earlier Mosby had been wounded in an abortive attempt to capture El Alamo on the road to Ensenada, Pryce convinced Mosby to capture Tijuana.
Tijuana in 1911 had little economic, political or geographical significance. It was a tiny hamlet of about 100 people, most of them Anglo-American and Mexican merchants catering to tourists from nearby San Diego. Isolated from the other towns in Baja California, its only means of rapid communication with Ensenada was a telegraph line which ran from San Diego; a horse drawn stage departed from Tecate twice a week and a steamer periodically sailed from San Diego harbor.11
Even before the capture of Tijuana on May 9, the Magonistas had been branded as filibusteros by the Díaz government. Telegrams from Federal commanders in Mexico City, Baja California and northern Mexico, beginning on March 27, consistently described them as an expedition of North American adventurers.12 Before the actual fighting, most of Tijuana’s population fled across the border fearing the worst. As refugees they scattered throughout southern San Diego County with the largest group concentrated near the Little Landers’ Colony (now San Ysidro) where local residents donated tents, money, medical supplies and food.13
The battle of Tijuana lasted about 16 hours and resulted in 32 dead and 24 wounded.14 The only prisoner, Mario Alonzo, was court-martialed by the Magonistas and released in the United States. The remainder of the Federal defenders fled in disorder to Ensenada. During the fighting the Subprefect of Tijuana, José Maria Larroque, was killed along with Sam Woods, who had been the temporary commander of Mosby’s men.
By coincidence the P.L.M. attack on Tijuana took place on the same day that Madero’s forcès began their assault on Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua. If one of the objectives of the Magonistas had been to create publicity, they must have been disappointed, as week after week the American and Mexican press gave front page coverage to the bloody and chaotic struggle for Juárez and relegated P.L.M. activities to the back pages.
As Pryce’s troops, numbering about 220 men, occupied the nearly deserted town, the non-Mexicano character of the army began to receive wider publicity. A Dr. C.H. Powers wrote to the San Diego Union expressing embarrassment over the “… knowledge that these atrocious crimes are committed by our countrymen on Mexican soil.”15 General Pryce told reporters that only 20 percent of the rebels were Mexican nationals; Captain C.W. Hopkins estimated that only 5 percent were Mexicanos.16 Whether we accept contemporary accounts, Blaisdell and Gerhard’s estimate of 10 percent or Martinez’s report of 50 percent, the fact remains that the Magonistas were mostly non-Mexicano.17
Why had Magón placed the P.L.M.’s future in the hands of such a controversial army? First, it was consistent with Magón’s own ideological position as an internationalist and anarchist. In Flores Magón’s view, the struggle in Mexico had nothing to do with Mexican nationalism but rather it was the opening salvo in an international battle between the working class and the capitalists. In this struggle, the nationalities of the workers were unimportant. He answered critics by arguing that “In the ranks of Liberals are men who are not of our nationality but are our ideological brothers. . . they sacrifice themselves to destroy the chains of our slavery.”18 Secondly, Magón and the Liberal party had little choice in the matter. General Pryce had presented them with a fait accompli. It might be argued that Magón should have replaced Pryce with a Mexican commander or at least ordered that the commissioned officers be Mexican nationals. But given the Magonista experience in Mexicali, this tactic was probably ruled out. Anglo-American racial attitudes made it unlikely that they would serve in an army commanded by Mexcanos. Further there were few if any Mexicanos whom Flores Magón could trust with the job. His experience with Leyva, Juan Sarabia, Jesus Gonzales and his brother Jesus Flores Magón, all former Liberal Party leaders who had deserted to Madero, made it unlikely that he would entrust the army to another friend or relative.
This does not explain why the Magonista movement was so popular with non-Mexicanos. Wars and revolutions throughout history have attracted soldiers of fortune; even Madero enlisted groups of Anglo-Americans to fight for the Anti-Reelectionista cause.19 The P.L.M. army, however, seemed to have more than its share of adventurers. Some local men and boys from San Diego, lured by the romance of revolution and helped by party recruiters, joined the expedition during the early days of the occupation. Most of them returned after a brief stay in Tijuana. Other more well-publicized adventurers made their way to the Magonista camp. These included escapees from the San Diego City jail, known criminals and United States Army deserters. Their well-publicized presence among the Liberals did not improve the Magonista stature in the eyes of Mexicanos.20
The International Workingmen of the World and the Socialist Party provided the largest contingent of non-Mexicanos. Their political goals were similar to those of Flores Magón and the Organizing Junta, although they differed over the role of the state in bringing about a working class utopia. The night of the battle for Tijuana, the renowned socialist agitator Emma Goldman gave an impassioned speech in Germania Hall in San Diego exhorting radicals to cross the border and join the struggle. Goldman and the other socialist speakers traveled up and down the West Coast trying to raise men and money for the P.L.M.21 John Kenneth Turner and his wife Ethel, who was editor of the English language section of Regeneración, traveled throughout the United States to cultivate support for the party. In San Diego E.E. Kirk and Kasper Bauer were socialists who helped form the San Diego Anti-Interference League, an organization devoted to preventing American intervention into the revolution. They were most active in providing counsel for the party’s legal maneuvers with the Mexican consulate in San Diego.
The I.W.W. supported the struggle by recruiting men from the ranks of militant labor. Well-known Wobblies like Joe Hill and Frank Little traveled to Tijuana to inspect the army. The union’s official newspaper, The Industrial Worker, ran eyewitness accounts of its members who were in Tijuana. Said one enthusiast: “. . .we have got a utopia down here. We do not work and we do not get pulled for vags (vagrants) either. We drill about half an hour daily so that we will be able to plug the Federals full of holes when they have recovered enough to show up again.”22 Another attraction was that the I.W.W., with Magón’s approval, was offering volunteers one dollar a day and 160 acres of Mexican farm land.23
It remains a mystery why Ricardo Flores Magón did not more actively recruit Mexicano volunteers. He was reluctant to travel to Mexico and lend his charisma to the recruitment effort. Many Mexicanos criticized Magón’s refusal to join his army in Baja California. At best it demonstrated his lukewarm commitment to armed struggle.24 Neither did Flores Magón use the official party newspaper, Regeneración, to enlist volunteers. Widely read in Los Angeles and circulating throughout the Southwest and northern Mexico, Regeneración would have been the logical vehicle to increase the Mexicano element in the army. Yet through most of the occupation of Tijuana, Regeneración was silent on the issue of recruits, addressing instead theoretical and abstract political questions and devoting an inordinate amount of energy and page space to attacks on Madero. The Baja expedition was mentioned in the pages of Regeneración and most certainly in the speeches Magón and the Junta gave in the Placita in Los Angeles. But it appears to have taken second or third place to issues of international working class solidarity and Madero’s opportunism.
That more Mexicanos did not join the insurectos, not only in Tijuana but elsewhere, may have been due to several causes. First, the P.L.M. ideology may have been too lofty and abstract, lacking in appeal to the mass of Mexicanos in the Southwest and Mexico. Second, even if the ideology had appealed to Mexicanos, the United States army troops stationed at the border may have prevented them from crossing or from receiving supplies. Third, little substantial help could have been expected from the Baja Californianos themselves. The total population of the Mexicali, Tecate, Algodones and Tijuana regions was only about 500 people, and most of them became refugees in the United States when the P.L.M. invaded. Fourth, the Mexicanos living in the Southwest may have lacked enthusiasm for a chancy military adventure in the Baja California deserts. Most of them were not from this region of Mexico and had little identification with it as their patria. And fifth, the bulk of Mexicanos in the United States may have believed rumors that the Magonista army was underwritten by North American capitalists.
Of all these reasons, the last two appear to be the most important in explaining the P.L.M.’s lack of popularity with Mexicanos. Certainly Mexicans in the Southwest and Mexico had understood and acted upon lofty ideals and theoretical statements before Flores Magón. His views were essentially the same as Emiliano Zapata in the south. In fact the Zapatista slogan “Tierra y Libertad” was first used in the pages of Regeneración. The United States troops stationed along the international border were never a real factor in preventing determined men from crossing. General Tasker H. Bliss, commander of the Department of California, had fewer than 1700 men to patrol the border from Yuma to San Diego. The sparse population of Baja California was not a real factor given the proximity of more than 33,000 Mexican born immigrants in Southern California.25 The vast majority of them, however, were immigrants from central Mexico. Mexican revolutionary armies almost always drew their volunteers from the local areas where battles were fought, especially during the early years. Thus the Magonista recruitment drive for the Baja expedition operated with a severe handicap. Few Mexicanos thought Baja California worth dying for. The execution of several Mexican volunteers from California who were accused of being Maderista spies did little to spread enthusiasm among Mexicanos in the United States.
But the most important reason for the lack of Mexicano volunteers was the fact that there appeared to be convincing evidence that the P.L.M. invasion was made up of filibusteros.
To begin with, the newspapers, including Regeneración, had made it common knowledge among Mexicanos that North American capitalists had sizable investments in Baja California, particularly in the Mexicali and Colorado River delta regions. The most frequently cited example was the California-Mexican Land and Cattle Company owned by Harrison Gray Otis and his son Harry Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Otis and Chandler controlled 832,000 acres between the Colorado River delta and the Imperial Valley. The federal government under Díaz and later Madero argued that funds for the P.L.M. activities in this region came from the Chandler interests and others. This was despite evidence that Chandler spent thousands of dollars to protect his holdings from the insurgent army and that the Mexican federal army protected American interests against Magonista troops. Nevertheless Mexican government agents managed to arouse patriotic indignation by pointing to the “foreign” origin of the P.L.M. forces. In San Diego, Dr. Horacio E. López, Carlos Mendoza and the Mexican consul J. Díaz Prieto organized “The Defenders of the National Integrity”. This group distributed propaganda leaflets and held meetings to raise men and money to fight the Liberal party and reconquer Mexicali and Tijuana. By the end of May, 1911, they had collected 10,000 dollars from local Mexicans and were sending boatloads of volunteers to Ensenada.26 In Los Angeles, the Mexican consul Arturo M. Elías kept alive rumors that the P.L.M. had as its ultimate goal the establishment of an independent republic.27 One of the stories circulating was that the United States army had helped the Magonistas capture Tijuana. This made life uncomfortable for Americans living in Ensenada. Several were arrested as spies and others were run out of town.28
The Mexican government’s propaganda campaign might have floundered had not the Liberal army unwittingly provided dramatic evidence to substantiate the charge that they were filibusteros. To begin with there was the looting of Tijuana by San Diego tourists. The insurgents charged them one dollar admission to the stores and shops giving them permission to take as much as they could carry.29 Later the Magonistas began charging greatly reduced prices for merchandise and a dispute broke out between the tourists and the United States customs officials over the actual value of goods brought back.30 Five days after the capture of the town, a thousand people crossed the border in search of bargains and a glimpse of real revolucionarios. Although the San Diego papers reported that the behavior of the insurectos was exemplary and the destruction of capitalist stores was logically and ideologically defensible given the anarchist philosophy, the looting of Tijuana by Anglo-Americans was a supreme insult to Mexican nationalists.
The situation at Tijuana in May 1911, seemed to be a bad start for Flores Magón’s plans for the social reconstruction of the city. Immediately after Pryce’s army captured the town, the Junta had outlined its anarchist program: a four hour work day, expropriation of foreign owned lands, total individual freedom and social equality.31 Later the P.L.M. town government under Antonio P. Araujo instituted prohibition and a stricter control of looting and gambling.32
Then there was the issue of the flags. The San Diego Union reported that the United States and rebel flags flew side by side over the city and that in only one spot, General Pryce’s headquarters, did the rebel flag fly over the American. Pryce commented on this situation: “It seems a shame to see them that way doesn’t it? I’ll gamble that it won’t be three months till the stars and stripes float there alone-and over the rest of Lower California too.”33 This statement and others like it raised questions about the ultimate intentions of the Liberal army commander.
At times Pryce sounded like he was an obedient functionary of the party, declaring that he was merely implementing the Junta’s plan. His desertion from the P.L.M. cause in early June, 1911, led to speculation over his motives from the beginning. No doubt General Pryce had ample reason to become disenchanted with the Organizing Junta’s leadership and support. Throughout the month of May he had received only vague orders from the P.L.M. headquarters in Los Angeles. The Junta sent him no money, arms or ammunition and the funds raised by the army in Tijuana disappeared when sent north to Los Angeles. Evidently Flores Magón, perhaps embarrassed by the army in Tijuana, refused to support it with money or arms. He and the party plowed most of the money they received back into the publication of revolutionary propaganda. According to one Magonista officer, all the army in Tijuana received from the party were letters of congratulation.34 In an interview given after the Federal army recaptured Tijuana, Pryce told how difficult it had been to control desertions due to the lack of financial support: “They had no money and we didn’t have any ammunition and it was useless to move on to Ensenada. So when I found the jig was up, I wrote back to the boys in Tijuana and advised them to disband.”35
General Jack Mosby succeeded Pryce as leader of the Magonista army in Tijuana. Although personally loyal to Ricardo Flores Magón, his past history left some doubt as to the depth of his ideological commitment. Son of a former partner of P.T. Barnum, he had been a gun runner in the Cuban revolution, and a deserter from the United States Marines.36
But before Mosby’s rise to command, the Dick Ferris episode put a bizarre capstone to the propaganda campaign against the P.L.M.’s army in Baja California. Early in June 1911, Richard Wells Ferris, a former actor employed by the city of San Diego to promote the Panama-California Exposition, decided to use the confusion created by Pryce’s sudden departure from the Magonista army to generate publicity. Several months before this time, Ferris had created an international controversy by sending a telegram to President Porfirio Díaz in which he proposed that the Mexican government, since it was unable to defend Baja California, should give it to Ferris who would create an independent republic.37 This proposal, although it was clearly a hoax, was taken seriously by many Mexicans as further evidence of annexationist sentiment among some North Americans. During the month of May, Ferris and his pretty wife befriended P.L.M. troops who came to San Diego on leave. On one occasion he helped arrange for General Pryce’s release from United States custody after he had been detained for violation of the Neutrality Laws. When Pryce returned to his camp from jail, Ferris went ahead to orchestrate an elaborate victory celebration in Tijuana.38 As soon as Pryce left Tijuana, on June 1, never to return, Ferris declared himself general of the army and advised the soldiers to give up socialism and embrace capitalism. He designed a new flag with two bars and a white star which he sent to fly over the customs house. From his office in San Diego he proclaimed Baja California as the New Republic of Lower California. The Magonista troops quickly removed Ferris from command and the Junta publicly disavowed any connection with him. Nevertheless, damage to the P.L.M. image had already been done. Mexicanos, who tended to take intervention seriously, even if described as a publicity stunt, view this episode as a final proof that the P.L.M. was involved in an annexationist movement.39
Luis G. Lara, who sent Magón an open letter in the press, expressed Mexicano sentiment precisely: “You are fomenting a revolution which does not benefit any social class of my country.. . . You are letting Americans participate in the affair without remembering that all the individuals of that race feel contempt for us; they call us greasers, “cholos,” dirty Mexicans, etc….”40
Finally Ricardo Flores Magón’s refusal to join Francisco Madero’s Anti-Reelectionista movement after Díaz resigned from office, increased suspicions as to Magón’s real intentions in the revolution. Before the recapture of Tijuana by Madero’s forces in June 1911, the government had called upon the P.L.M. to join them in common cause, despite the fact that since February, Magón had been excoriating Madero as an opportunist, slave holder and tool of the capitalist class. Early in June Madero sent a peace commission composed of Magón’s brother, Lic. Jesus Flores Magón, José Maria Leyva, Juan Sarabia and Jesus Gonzales Monroy to meet with the Organizing Junta in Los Angeles. On the night of June 14 they met with Ricardo and his older brother Enrique in the party’s headquarters on Brooklyn Avenue in Los Angeles. Perhaps Magón was suspicious of the real motives behind the peace offer but more likely he refused to compromise his ideals to pressure by sordid political and military realities. After lengthy discussions the Junta decided to reject Madero’s offer and continue the fight. The next day Madero’s agents gave the United States authorities the information they needed to go ahead and arrest key members of the Junta. Thus isolated from the Anti-reelectionist movement, Magón lost a final chance to rescue the Liberal Party from its filibustering image. Within a few weeks Tijuana, the last military stronghold of the P.L.M. fell to the government forces.
The story of the Magonista capture and occupation of Tijuana in 1911 provides an almost perfect example of how the means of action can subvert the ends especially during time of revolution. The P.L.M.’s failure was not due primarily to its ideology. Indeed most of the party’s platform was later enacted into law in the Mexican constitution of 1917. The key to the failure rather was due to the party’s lack of pragmatic leadership. By allowing non-Mexicanos to control the army, Magón made it impossible for the majority of nationalists in Mexico and the United States to support his cause. The filibustering charges were believable because the P.L.M. army was not fully controlled by the party. Neither its generals nor the majority of its troops were firmly committed to the ideological and political goals of the party. The Dick Ferris episode and Magón’s vehement rejection of Madero obscured the party’s real revolutionary purpose.
Eventually Ricardo Flores Magón and the Partido Liberal Mexicano were vindicated, over the protests of the Baja Californianos. After his death in Leavenworth Penitentiary in 1922, Flores Magón’s idealism prevailed and a grateful Mexican nation, forgetting that it had once reviled him as a tool of North American interests, enshrined him as a precursor of the Mexican revolution. His body now rests alongside those of Madero, Obregon and Carranza in the Panteón de Hombres Ilustres in Mexico City, a fitting tribute to the power of his ideas over vacillating public opinion.
NOTES
1. Peter B. Kyne, “The Gringo as Insurecto, “Sunset Magazine, 27 (1911), p. 90.
2. Lowell Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1962), pp. 192-194.
3. Juan Gomez-Quiñones, Sembradores, Ricardo Flores Magón y el Partido Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique, Monograph No. 5., Aztlan Publications, Chicano Studies Center, U.C.L.A., 1973, p. 46.
4. Velasco R. Ceballos, se apoderará Estados Unidos de Baja California? (Mexico, D.F.: Imprenta Nacional, S.A., 1920); Enrique Aldrete, Baja California Heróica: Episodios de la invasion filibustera-Magonista de 1911 (Mexico: Frumentus, 1950); Pablo L. Martinez, A History of Lower California, trans. by Ethel Duffy Turner (Mexico D.F.: Av. Escuela Industrial No. 461, 1960).
5. See recent Mexican studies by Eduardo Blaquel, “El Anarcho-Magonismo,” Historia Mexicana, 51 (January-March, 1964), pp. 394-427 and Mario Gil, “Turner, Flores Magón y los filibusteros,” Historia Mexicana, 5, No. 4 (April-June, 1956), pp. 642-663.
6. Martinez, Lower California, pp. 467-468.
7. Richard Pourade, A History of San Diego: Cold in the Sun, V. 5 (San Diego: The Union Tribune Publishing Co., 1966), pp. 145-148.
8. The circumstances surrounding Leyva’s departure are unclear. A small patrol under his command had recently been defeated by Federal troops as he was returning from capturing Tecate (March 12, 1911). Earlier he had been accused of taking bribes and being a Maderista. See Martinez, Lower California, p. 473.
9. Kyne, Sunset, p. 266.
10. William Stanley whom Salinas had banished from Mexico took over the Mexicali troops after Salinas left.
11. Aldrete, Baja California Heróica, pp. 18-19.
12. The first telegram to describe the P.L.M. army as such was from Luis E. Torres in Hermosillo to army headquarters in Mexico City dated March 23, 1911. Martinez, Lower California, pp. 144-145. Martinez has published copies of the federal telegrams which were sent throughout the invasion.
13. For accounts of the refugees see The San Diego Union, May 11, 12, 13, 23 and Laurence Lee, “The Little Landers Colony of San Diego,” The Journal of San Diego History, 21, No. 1 (Winter 1975), pp. 26-51. Eventually the refugees numbered about 125 persons. A few bought town lots in the Little Landers Colony and became settlers.
14. The casualty figures are Blaisdell’s (p. 100) but accounts vary: Aldrete noted 40 P.L.M. wounded; The San Diego Union reported 24 dead and 11 wounded (May 12, 1911); and Hyman Weintraub estimated 40 killed, “The I.W.W. in Southern California 1905-1931” (unpublished Master’s Thesis, U.C.L.A., 1947).
15. Aldrete, Baja California Heróica, p. 64.
16. The San Diego Union, May 10, 12, 1911.
17. Peter Gerhard, “The Socialist Invasion of Baja California,” Pacific Historical Review, 15, No. 3 (Sept. 1946), pp. 295-304.
18. Blanquel, “El Anarcho-Magonismo,” p. 418.
19. A group calling itself The American Legion fought with Madero’s forces at Juárez. They were led by Col. Garabaldi, grandson of the Italian patriot. See The San Diego Union, May 13, 1911.
20. The San Diego Union, May 16, 17, 1911.
21. In 1911 Emma Goldman gave speeches in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, Seattle, Portland on the McNamara brothers’ trial and the P.L.M. revolution. See Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Ams Press, 1934), p. 480.
22. The Industrial Worker, June 8, 1911, p. 1 in Weintraub, p. 52.
23. Pourade, Cold in the Sun, p. 147.
24. An unsubstantiated report was that Magón visited the Tijuana customs house briefly on May 16, 1911. See The San Diego Union, May 17, 1911.
25. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 13th Census of the United States, 1910, Abstract (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 206.
26. Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution pp. 136-137. On May 26, due to protests by P.L.M. attorneys Kirk and Bauer, the United States authorities arrested leading members of the “The Defenders of the National Integrity” for violation of the Neutrality Acts. They were quickly released and allowed to continue their anti-Liberal campaign. See The San Diego Union May 26, 27, 1911.
27. Thomas Langum, “An unequal Struggle: The Case of Ricardo Flores Magón and the Mexican Liberals” (unpublished Master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 1971), p. 60.
28. The San Diego Union, May 18, 1911.
29. The San Diego Union, May 10, 1911.
30. Ibid., May 12, 1911: “That there was looting and that San Diego people took part in it, is the painful truth that is now made apparent.”
31. Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution pp. 124-125; Blanquel, p. 419.
32. Martinez, Lower California, p. 476.
33. The San Diego Union, May 14, 1911.
34. Investigation of Mexican Affairs, Senate Document No. 285, 66th Congress, 2nd Session, 2 Vols. (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919-1920), Vol. 2, pp. 2503-2504. Testimony of Melbourne: “To make a long story short, it disgusted us so much that we quit.”
35. Kyne, Sunset, p. 263.
36. Blaisdell, The Desert Revolution, p. 110.
37. Martinez, Lower California, p. 478.
38. The San Diego Union, May 20, 1911.
39. For a detailed account of the Dick Ferris episode see Blaisdell, pp. 142-162, Martinez, Lower California, pp. 478-480 and Pourade, Gold in the Sun, pp. 146-148.
40. Gil, “Flores Magón,” p. 660.
