Thursday, November 1rst, 2012. New York City – Day of the Dead altar in honor of Ricardo Flores Magón at the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH) in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.
Ricardo Flores Magón was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas. He has been considered an important participant in the social movement that sparked the Mexican Revolution.
Ricardo Flores Magón was born in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca, in 1873, to a poor family. His parents were Teodoro Flores and Margarita Magón. He attended elementary and high school then went on to Law School in 1893. But he did not become an attorney, instead he became a journalist with “El Demócrata”, an opposition newspaper. In 1900, along with his brother Jesús, he founded “Regeneración”, a very radical and antigovernment paper that ended him in jail. After he was released from jail in 1902, he joined another opposition newspaper, “El Hijo del Ahuizóte.” He was arrested again and in 1904, he was forced to escape to San Antonio, Texas, where he start to publish “Regeneración” again with the help of his brother Enrique. The persecution continues and they fled to St. Louis, Missouri in 1905, and continue publishing their newspaper. In this city, they founded the Mexican Liberal Party in 1906. In January of 1911, they directed the uprising of Baja California, and seized the towns of Mexicali and Tijuana. Francisco I. Madero, leader of the revolutionary movement against the Porfirio Díaz’ dictatorship, attempted to bring the “Magonistas” to his side, but Ricardo Flores Magón, leader of the rebels, rejected him arguing that Madero was part of a “revolution of the rich.”
A manifesto signed by Ricardo Flores Magón and Librado Rivera, addressed to all the anarchists of the world in 1918, was used by the North American government as a excuse to jail both. Librado was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Ricardo Flores Magón was sentenced to 20 years. He was sent to the prison at McNeil Island, in the State of Washington. He got very ill and was moved to the federal prison of Leavenworth, Kansas, where he died in 1922.
Ricardo wrote two revolutionary plays: “Tierra y Libertad” (“Land and Freedom”) and “Verdugos y Víctimas” (Executioners and Victims), works of very intensive social criticism and impressive realism. He wrote many essays, fiction and reports.
The Ricardo Flores Magón Academy in the United States of America says, “It is tempting for a school with a high Mexican population to name the school after Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata – arguably the two most identifiable figures in Mexican history. However, we believe that it is important for the school to not only be named after someone of historical significance, but someone that used his intellect to succeed. Ricardo Flores Magón was a man that used his mind from an early age, attending the university, studying law, becoming a noted journalist. Magón used the power of literacy – spoken and written – to save the Mexican people from the oppressive dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz and is recognized as the key figure that started the Mexican Revolution to liberate the Mexican people. Magón’s struggles and beliefs led him to a life of both enlightenment and imprisonment, but throughout his life he remained true to his beliefs and used civil disobedience rather than violence to express his ideas and viewpoints.”
Day of the Dead (Día de Muertos)
The festival that became the modern Day of the Dead fell in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar, about the beginning of August, and was celebrated for an entire month.
The ritual of Day of the Dead had been practiced for over 3000 years until the Spaniards decided to impose their Christian beliefs. The celebration takes place on November 1, in connection with the Catholic holidays of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day (November 2).
People go to cemeteries to be with the souls of the departed and build private altars containing the favorite foods and beverages, as well as photos and memorabilia, of the departed. The intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so the souls will hear the prayers and the comments of the living directed to them. Some families build altars or small shrines in their homes.
Families usually clean and decorate graves; most visit the cemeteries where their loved ones are buried and decorate their graves with ofrendas (offerings), which often include orange Mexican marigolds (Tagetes erecta) called cempasúchil (originally named cempoaxochitl, Nahuatl for “twenty flowers”). In modern Mexico, this name is sometimes replaced with the term Flor de Muerto (Flower of the Dead).
500 years after the European invaders tried to eradicate it, Mexicans still celebrate Day of the Dead.
Mexicans in New York City celebrate Day of the Dead.
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