From Behind the Bars – Librado Rivera (1923)

From ‘Behind the Bars’, New York Anarchist Red Cross Society, January 1924, republished in ‘Under the Yoke of the State‘, 2003, by the Dawn Collective and Kate Sharpley Library

Dear Comrade,

I am referring to your kind letter of October 8th, and which I read with the same interest I have read all yours. Yes, dear comrade, at last my sentence of years was commuted by the President of this country on condition of my extradition to Mexico, where I long to go.

I only asked that my deportation be made effective at the earliest possible date. The question is that I am still here in the hated bastille, in spite that my commutation was granted on the 2nd of this month. The thought comes to mind that if I were willing to remain in this country, then perhaps the government had already deported me.

One thing is true, that I was hard to be reformed and molded at the capitalist style. My continued unjust imprisonment only served to reaffirm my old convictions and ideals of justice, which I have cherished since long ago. I feel myself more rebel against the present organized system of injustices than when I was the first day of my confinement in this American Bastille.

Tremendous injustices and wrongs wilfully done are clearly seen; they exist and are at sight and have existed centuries before; they are engraved in my mind since my youth and cannot be crossed out with the threatening club in the hand of any hangman.

Justice equal for all is what we need, and human kind shall have it at any cost some day in the relative short future, when everything be the common property for the free use and benefit of every human being and not for the benefit of a handful of millionaires, actual owners of the world.

I hope these dreams of happiness for all will come to be a fact some day in order the enjoy a true brotherhood and permanent peace all over the world. I close as always with my best wishes and comradely love for you,

Librado Rivera

14 October 1923