The Mexican Revolution was a hugely radicalizing force for the U.S. left. Inspired U.S. revolutionaries, some of whom became combatants themselves, were forced to confront new realities and rethink old positions. A decade before the Russian Revolution, Mexican workers and peasants rose up outside of all parliamentary logic and confronted an empire. In response to defeats suffered by the Mexican Federal Army, the President Taft sent troops to Mexico in what was the first of many military interventions into the Mexican revolution in the Spring of 1911. The Socialist Party immediately denounced the move and issued this manifesto.

‘Withdraw the Troops!’ Proclamation by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America from International Socialist Review. Vol. 11 No. 19. April, 1911.

ON THE 7th day of March the startling news was flashed from one end of the country to the other that President Taft had ordered twenty thousand troops, one fourth of the regular army of the country, | to be mobilized and hurried to the Mexican border. At the same time several American warships were ordered to proceed at full speed to ports on both coasts of Mexico. The order was issued immediately after the adjournment of Congress. It was sudden and unexpected, and caused deep apprehension among the masses of the American people.

What is the object of this formidable military display? What is the meaning of this hurried movement of troops toward a friendly neighboring country? 

The earlier explanation that the extraordinary measure was intended as a mere war game, was so clumsy and palpably insincere that it was speedily abandoned and the semi-official explanation now vouchsafed to the people is that our army and navy are to prevent the smuggling of arms to the Mexican insurrectionists and, in case of emergency, to protect the endangered American interests. The explanation is such as to cause every peace and liberty loving American to hang his head with shame.

The people of our sister state of Mexico are in open and active revolt against their government. During his uninterrupted rule of thirty-six years Porfirio Diaz, the nominal president of Mexico, has been the evil genius of his country. He has reduced the republic to a despotism more barbarous than Russia, and has constituted himself the absolute autocrat of his people. He has ruthlessly destroyed the freedom of suffrage, speech, press and assembly, and has exiled, imprisoned and assassinated all patriots who strove to restore the liberties of the people. He has ravaged the country, plundered its resources and enslaved millions of its inhabitants. Since 1875, when Diaz became military dictator of Mexico, there has not been a single free and honest election in the country.

Porfirio Diaz has been able to maintain his infamous rule over fifteen million outraged subjects by aid of his soldiery, police and camarilla, and largely also through the powerful support of the American capitalist interests. Mexico, with its vast deposits of precious metals and other natural wealth, Mexico with its large supply of cheap and uncomplaining slave labor, Mexico with the arbitrary and lawless reign of the Dollar, has become the paradise of the American capitalists. It has been invaded by our Smelter Trust and Oil Trust, our Sugar Trust, Rubber Trust and Cordage Trust. The Wells-Fargo Express Company has acquired a monopoly of the Mexican express business, and the railroads, land and mines of the country are largely in the hands of American capitalists. The Rockefellers, Guggenheims and J. Pierpont Morgan, have vast holdings in Mexico; Henry W. Taft, brother of the President of the United States, is general counsel for the National Railways of Mexico, and hundreds of other American trust magnates are heavily interested in Mexican enterprises. The total amount of “American” holdings in Mexico is variously estimated at between a billion and a billion and a half dollars.

These American “investors” have always been the staunchest allies of Porfirio Diaz, his partners in pillage and crime, his confederates in the enslavement of the Mexican people.

A reign of iniquity and violence such as was maintained by Diaz and his Wall Street partners no nation, and be it ever so patient and meek, could endure for any length of time. The people of Mexico have for years been in a state of smothered and smouldering revolt. Their limit of patience was reached after the last Presidential election, when Francisco I. Madero, the man who had the courage to oppose his candidacy to that of Diaz, was cast into jail for “insulting the President,” the citizens were prevented from voting by violence, and the “election” of Diaz for the eighth term was brazenly proclaimed by his henchmen. Then the people of Mexico rebelled. In all parts of the country the citizens rose in arms, determined to reconquer their liberty or to die, even as our forefathers had done over a century ago under slighter provocation. The insurrection grew in strength and extension day by day; the Mexican people were solidly with the rebels, the Mexican army was wavering in its allegiance to the despot in the presidential chair; even the censored press dispatches reported repeated victories of the rebel forces—the throne of Diaz was tottering, freedom beckoned the people of Mexico after a generation of servitude. Then the President of the United States dispatched a large force of troops to the Mexican border.

The mission of the American army at the Mexican border and the American warships at the Mexican coasts, is to save the reign of Diaz and to quell the rising of the Mexican people.

Against this unspeakable outrage the Socialist Party of the United States, representing over six hundred thousand American citizens and voters, lodges its public and emphatic protest.

In the name of America’s revolutionary past and her best traditions of the present, we protest against the attempt to degrade our country by reducing it to the position of a cossack of a foreign tyrant.

In the name of liberty and progress we protest against the use of the army of our republic to suppress and enslave the people of a sister republic fighting for their freedom and manhood.

In the name of the workers of the United States we protest against the use of the men and money of this country for the protection of the so-called “American” interests in Mexico. We assert that neither the government nor the people of the United States have any property interests in Mexico; that the speculative Mexican ventures of a ring of American industrial freebooters gives us no warrant to interfere with the political destinies of the country, which they have invaded upon their individual responsibility.

AND WE CALL UPON ALL LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS OF THE SOCIALIST PARTY AND ALL LABOR UNIONS AND OTHER BODIES OF PROGRESSIVE CITIZENS TO HOLD PUBLIC MEETINGS AND DEMONSTRATIONS OF PROTEST AGAINST THE LATEST EXECUTIVE CRIME. LET THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE RESOUND FROM ONE END OF THE COUNTRY TO THE OTHER IN LOUD AND UNMISTAKABLE TONE: “WITHDRAW THE TROOPS FROM THE MEXICAN BORDER!”

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v11n10-apr-1911-ISR-gog-Corn-OCR.pdf