The Return of Comrade Ricardo Flores Magón - 9781935408437

In this long-awaited book, Claudio Lomnitz tells a groundbreaking story about theexperiences and ideology of American and Mexican revolutionary collaborators of the Mexicananarchist Ricardo Flores Magón. Drawing on extensive research in Mexico and the United States,Lomnitz explores the rich, complicated, and virtually unknown lives of Flores Magón and his comradesdevoted to the "Mexican Cause." This anthropological history of anarchy, cooperation, andbetrayal seeks to capture the experience of dedicated militants who themselves struggled tounderstand their role and place at the margins of the Mexican revolution. For them, the revolutionwas untranslatable, a pure but deaf subversion: La revolución es la revolución --"The Revolution is the Revolution." For Lomnitz, the experiences of Flores Magón and hiscomrades reveal the meaning of this phrase.

The Return of ComradeRicardo Flores Magón tracks the lives of John Kenneth Turner, Ethel Duffy, ElizabethTrowbridge, Ricardo Flores Magón, Lázaro Gutiérrez de Lara, and others, to illuminate the reciprocalrelationship between personal and collective ideology and action. It is an epic and tragic tale,never before told, about camaraderie and disillusionment in the first transnational grassrootspolitical movement to span the U.S.-Mexican border. The Return of Comrade Ricardo FloresMagón will change not only how we think about the Mexican Revolution but also how weunderstand revolutionary action and passion.