People of America – Ricardo Flores Magón (1911)

From ‘Regeneración’, English section, edited by Ethel Duffy Turner, March 11, 1911, Los Angeles

Your silence at the present moment is a crime, because it is a crime to remain indifferent when you know that an outrageous act is going to be committed. Your Government, obeying the perfidious insinuations of your executioners, the capitalists, is giving its hand to aid the bloody tyrant of the southern republic in order to save him from certain destruction. You have nothing to gain in this crazy enterprise; you are not going to be happier because thousands of good Mexicans perish, mowed down by your soldiers. Crime can never be a source of happiness.

Raise your hand to your heart, blind people; consult your conscience, people drugged by the dollar and by business; stop thinking of the false tranquillity that you are going to get by saving; throw away the idea of making millions, since only by means of crime can anyone become a millionaire.

Think of your future. All the world is throwing in your face the outrageous acts of your government. The Filipinos believe that you are their executioner. The Porto Ricans curse the hour that Americans planted their feet on their soil; the Columbians stoned your citizens in the streets of Bogota; the Turks insulted your consuls; in the entire world you are noted as covetous, cruel, as an abuser of your strength. Your masters are the ones who abuse and you are the ones who suffer the contempt, the hatred, the universal aversion. Central America detests you cordially, South America repels you, all on account of the leeches who drink your blood, of the vampires who work you to death in the factories, the shops, the mines and the fields, and who wish to exploit the workers of the whole world.

What Are You Going to Do Now?

The soldiers of your masters march in great haste to the Mexican border. The war ships are sailing fully equipped to the waters of Mexico. The money that they have extracted from your pockets by means of taxes they are employing to buy war supplies to kill the majority of the people of my race, to kill my brothers who never have harmed you, whom you do not even know, against whom you can’t feel hatred because they have never tried to enslave you; on the other hand they are revolutionists, fighting as you haven’t realized, to solve the same problem that you have not yet succeeded in solving. My brothers are giving the example of what ought to be done to assure economic liberty, the base of all liberties, the base of fraternity, the base of equality.

You Can’t Plead Ignorance.

The existing conditions in Mexico are well known to you. You know well that the people there are victims of all kinds of infamy; you know well that slavery in its most hideous form is the rule in the case of work done in the field; you know well that the Mexican worker only earns a few cents daily for working from sun to sun; you have seen in the magazines, in books, in daily papers photographs which can’t leave any doubt in your minds in regard to the misery and the tyranny which weigh upon the necks of the unfortunate Mexican race. You have seen all that, and for that reason you can’t say that you are ignorant of what happens in Mexico, you can’t lend your aid to the conspiracy of the capitalists to crush a movement so noble as the one which the Mexican people have undertaken against their oppressors of wealth and of government.

You Ought to Protest.

As civilized people, as you call yourselves, you ought to protest against the intervention of your government in Mexican affairs. You should refuse to give a single cent for the war. But if you remain indifferent, soon you will suffer the consequences, because Japan is spying on the movements of your government, and when you have started out to conquer us, the yellow race will make you slaves. You will be the ones who will lose in this game of finance, which is nothing more nor less than a move for conquest.

RICARDO FLORES MAGON.