Partido Liberal Mexicano
Partido Liberal Mexicano
Symbolizing the growing discontent before the Mexican Revolution in 1910, the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) was formed in 1906 in opposition to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, who had controlled Mexican politics since 1876. The party's origins began in 1901 when Camilio Arriaga, a member of a wealthy family, organized an initial meeting of Díaz opponents in San Luis Potosí. The more radical working class intellectuals, Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón, who with their newspaper Regeneración critiqued Díaz, attended this meeting and later became the PLM's principal leaders. Faced with government repression, Arriaga and the Flores Magón brothers fled to Texas in 1904. There in 1906 they officially established the PLM and issued the party's manifesto, calling for the overthrow of the Díaz government, demanding presidential term limits and labor rights.
The PLM gained notoriety because it helped the working class in major strikes in Cananea (1906) and Rio Blanco (1907). However, the party broke up during the revolution. Both the Mexican and the U.S. government cracked down on the PLM. Arrested in 1918, Ricardo Flores Magón died in a U.S. prison in 1923. Also, other party leaders like Arriaga, differed from the Flores Magon brothers' increasingly radical orientation. Still, the PLM's ideology influenced the Mexican Revolution. Díaz Soto y Gama, one of the party's founding members, went on to join the Zapatistas, whose struggle for peasants' rights and land distribution became a major accomplishment of the revolution. The PLM's support for labor was established in article 123 of the 1917 constitution.
See alsoDíaz, Porfirio; Flores Magón, Ricardo; Río Blanco Strike; San Luis Potosí; Zapata, Emiliano.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gómez-Quiñones, Juan. Sembradores, Ricardo Flores Magón Y El Partido Liberal Mexicano: A Eulogy and Critique. Los Angeles, Aztlán Publications, 1973.
Knight, Alan. The Mexican Revolution. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Byron Crites