Ricardo Flores Magón station

Neighbouring stations

• 3Line 3Tlatelolco ← Ricardo Flores Magón → Guerrero

The story behind the icon

The station icon represents the silhouette of Ricardo Flores Magón. The station takes its name from a nearby avenue of the same name. Ricardo Flores Magón was born on 16 September 1873 in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca; the son of a humble family of liberal tradition, he was the second of three brothers. At the age of 8 he moved with his family to Mexico City, where he studied at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and began a law degree at the Escuela Nacional de Jurisprudencia, which he did not finish.

In 1893, after taking an active part in student protests, he began contributing to the newspaper El Demócrata, where he was harshly critical of President Porfirio Díaz. On 7 August 1900 he founded, with his brothers, the newspaper Regeneración, which became an instrument for fighting the Porfirian regime and whose campaign led to his imprisonment. In 1902, on leaving prison, he contributed to El Hijo del Ahuizote and was arrested again. In 1904, exiled in the United States, he resumed publication of Regeneración. In 1906 he founded, together with his brother Enrique, the Mexican Liberal Party, which exerted great influence over the working class and the agrarian movement, since its founding manifesto not only criticised the government's dictatorship but demanded an eight-hour working day, a compulsory day of rest on Sundays and the distribution of land to peasants.

At the head of the Liberal Party, the Flores Magón brothers organised the strikes at Cananea and Río Blanco, triggers of the revolution. This party was the main driving force of that movement, having begun guerrilla action as early as 1907. With the general outbreak of the revolution in 1910 to overthrow the dictator Porfirio Díaz, the following year they promoted the insurrection in Baja California and tried unsuccessfully to found an anarchist republic, but lacking support they were defeated by government troops and had to fall back into the United States. In 1916 he was arrested in Edendale, accused of depositing indecent material in the United States mail, in reference to articles he had published criticising the policies of Venustiano Carranza.

In 1918 he published a revolutionary manifesto addressed to anarchists worldwide, for which the American authorities sentenced him to 20 years in the penitentiary at McNeil Island, Washington, on charges of sabotaging the war effort of the United States, then engaged in the First World War. Gravely ill, he was transferred to the military prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, where he died on 21 November 1922. Once he was dead, the very State he had fought began to recognise him as the great forerunner of the Mexican Revolution; his remains were moved to the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in Mexico City.