While on his recent travels, James Goltz of Mt Olive visited an exhibition at the Yuma Arizona prison museum. The exhibition included a photograph of Mother Jones and information about some of the Mexican revolutionaries which she had assisted. It also mentioned that Mother Jones had addressed a meeting of socialists in the Arizona area in 1909 and had brought a sum of some $4,000 raised by the US trade unions to help defend the Mexican revolutionaries imprisoned in the United States.
One of the constant if less well appreciated themes of the life of Mother Jones was her endless campaigning for the release of political revolutionaries especially the Mexicans imprisoned in U.S. jails. The revolutionaries opposed the anti-union authoritarian government of Mexican President Porfirio Diaz* whose autocratic regime from 1884 to 1911, promoted U.S. investment through low taxes, compliant courts, a lack of labour regulations and the banning of trade unions. These industrial ” Wall Street pirates and robber barons” as described by Mother Jones were extracting the oil and mineral wealth of Mexico using low cost labour to enrich themselves. The Cananea miners strike of 1906 had been broken by the Mexican army of Diaz in cooperation with the Arizona Rangers.
https://www.yumaprison.org/admission.html
The main Mexican opposition movement was the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM) , some of whose leaders such as Ricardo Magon, Antonio Villareal, Manuel Sarabia and Librado Rivera had fled to the U.S. to avoid execution and imprisonment. The PLM backed the Mexican trade unions and US trade unions including the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) had found common cause with this revolutionary movement in order to prevent Mexican labour from undercutting US union workers in the mines and mills, especially in Arizona.
Mother Jones took up the cause of the Mexicans. She organised many protests, addressed meetings raising substantial monies to pay for the defence of those who had been arrested by the US government and imprisoned for breaking America’s neutrality laws. She argued that these men fought for the cause of labour in the same way the American unions were doing and urged international labour solidarity. She even took their case to President William Howard Taft who did nothing. Interestingly, she compared the activities of the revolutionary Mexicans in America to the revolutionary Irish Fenian and republican movements of the Irish in America who were attempting to secure independence from England.
The Mexicans were eventually released from prison in Arizona in August 1910. Early in 1911, an uprising deposed President Portfirio Diaz and the new Mexican government led by Francisco Madero restored democracy and trade union rights. Mother Jones and officials from the United Mine Workers and WFM visited Mexico soon afterwards in October 1911 to congratulate the new government.
Later in 1921 she again returned twice to Mexico where she was treated as a hero ‘Madre Juanita” due to her work for democracy and trade union rights in a Mexico where competing armed factions remained volatile, She addressed the Pan-American Federation of Labor and visited friends such as Antonio Villarreal whom she had helped back in 1909 and who was now the Minister for Agriculture. Mother Jones enjoyed the adulation of Mexican workers and hospitality during her visit.
She had certainly earned the honour as a result of her endless campaigning for the rights of Mexicans imprisoned in the United States over several decades.
The following is an extract from a leaflet of a radical and a speech from 1908 about the Mexican situation which resonates politically today by Mother Jones.
(as quoted in Mother Jones Speaks by Philip S Foner.)
“Now it is the United States government seconding the murderous despotism of Russia and the irresponsible dictatorship of Mexico. The fight has become international; yet it centres in the United States. If these foreign vultures of oppression win now, then our liberty goes.
For Diaz and American capitalism are partners! Pierpont Morgan (a wealthy banker) goes to Russia and shakes hands with the czar; and now the czar comes to America demanding the surrender of political refugees. Mrs Diaz, when visiting in Texas is entertained by members of the Copper Queen syndicate, whose headquarters are at 95 John Street, New York, and Elihu Root, of New York (a Wall Street lawyer) is wined and dined by the tyrant dictator Diaz, when in New York”
Source of material.
Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. Elliott J.Gorn provides an account of Mother Jones efforts on behalf of the Mexicans.
