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Agnapostate
7th July 2010, 10:43
Are people familiar with the man or his theoretical work? I've read a bit here and there. From what I've gathered, he was a Mexican revolutionary figure (apparently an anarchist) and an associate of the Flores Magon brothers executed in Sonora in 1918 for being involved in anti-government agitation. I've downloaded his book The Mexican People: Their Struggle for Freedom (http://books.google.com/books?id=Gw8VAAAAYAAJ), which is freely viewable and downloadable on Google Books. I've found a 1914 review of it in Political Science Quarterly archived on JSTOR:


This volume, announced under joint authorship, is substantially the work of Sr. Gutierrez de Lara, a Mexican who knows the present social and political conditions of his country. The author, after a classical education, became a local judge in northern Mexico, where he had to decide cases brought by the large landholders for dispossessing the peons, who claimed to hold their titles under the Constitution of 1857. The law was against the peons and, as judge, Sr. Gutierrez de Lara had to decide against them, till at last he revolted and began giving decisions contrary to legal enactment. This brought him in conflict with the higher authorities and he was imprisoned many times and finally forced into exile.

This story of the authors life accounts for the character of the volume. He is a Socialist, and he writes his history of the struggles of the Mexican people during the past century from a frankly socialistic viewpoint. In his book, the writer sums up the whole Mexican struggle as being one for land. They are fighting today as they fought in the days of Hidalgo, of Morelos, of Guerrero, of Gomez Fariar, of Juarez, for land, for democracy. They will triumph (page 358).

I was debating a white supremacist a few weeks ago, and quoted a passage from that book. Interestingly enough, he was apparently familiar with who he was, or had at least Google searched him. He angrily called Gutierrez a "Communist and anarchist agitator under the employ of the Bolsheviks" and said that the statement I quoted from his book was "Communist lies designed to enflame the hatreds of the Mexican peasants against the ruling Spanards of Mexico."

So, anyone familiar with this fellow?

Agnapostate
8th July 2010, 12:06
No? :(

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 04:00
No, but I have a New Press translation of a Mexican classic on the Revolution that I haven't cracked open in a while. I'll go check it out and report back when my workload goes down a little.

The thing is the dude is tied into the Revolution and the Revolution in Mexico (the first of its kind in the world ajuuuuua) is a huge, complex, and varied thing so there are tons of little regional movements and forgotten/defeated struggles that people rise and sink a lot.

At least, that's to my informal folk-understanding of the period, so it might be totally wrong. So I'll go read up.

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 04:15
Couldn't find much, the dude was shot by military order, it seems.

Funny stuff in his opening arguments in his book. He claims the Mexicans are emphatically not Indians, but rather more akin to the Teutonics...and necessarily also superior to those lazy Southern European brutes, the Spanish.

So boilerplate period racism, right?

Now, at the same time, this book may well have been super popular and even informed Vasconselo's La Raza Cosmica, but I'm reading this with a grain of salt or three.

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 04:19
tbh this seems a little fascistic to me. his consciousness is for sure not international in ANY way, and his national liberation rhetoric doesn't have anything Left about it at all so far.

the guy is way into race theory justification of nat'l superiority, using the old Mexican Independence lie about "pride in the Aztecs" used as a unifying myth for Mexico.

e. lol "...that bewildering Saturnalia of crimes which constitutes Spain's gifts to the land of the Aztecs."

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 04:22
ok so i'm basically live-blogging reading this book at this point, should i keep it in one post or post as i hit interesting bits?

e. haha. so the guy goes on to start talking about the racial/culture characteristics that created the Mexican Master Class and immediately he shifts the scene to a Spain about to be conquered by the "hordes of Islam" and then says this, "When at last Constantinople fell, the last stronghold of ancient Rome had become an appenage of the all-conquering Mussulman."

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 04:34
More racial theory fun, on how the Spaniard was made inferior/incipiently bloodthirsty and brutal by his geographic and cultural position, while the rest of Europe, erh...well:

"On the other hand, England, France, and Germany, sheltered behind Spain, had been spared all direct contact with the Mussulman...Thus the conflict which impoverished and perverted Spain performed a genuine social service for Europe [in that they sent the scum of their societies to Jerusalem on crusade]."

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 04:44
Classic.

"[Spain] was to impart to the great continent of Latin-America its own characteristic lust of blood, despotism, and intolerance...[while Canada and the US,] owing to the small part played by the Latin peoples in the colonization of the United States and Canada was essentially a Saxon psychology, was to impart to the great continent of North America its own characteristic love of peace, justice, and industry."

"...Aztecs, Toltecs, Mayas of the south, not Indians at all, but highly civilized people of Aryan origin."

"Thus, summing up our comparison between the two colonial evolutions we have: in the north, Nature rich and abundant in her gifts; in the south, Nature arid and niggardly; in the north, vast fields for labour and a plentiful reward for labourer; in the south, labour without reward to the many, idleness and luxury to the few;[...]in the north, the peaceable habits of the Saxon and a spirit of cooperation; in the south, the lust of blood and selfish individualism which characterized the perverted Spanish psychology..."

Agnapostate
10th July 2010, 05:14
There are a lot of populist Mexican-Indian elements in that, and he's certainly a proponent of the Black Legend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend). What disappoints me is that some "Chicano" activists ostensibly promoting Indian unity insist on the Aztec-centric content even today.

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 05:20
Yeah. I mean, it's nothing particularly interesting. The dude was obv. some kinda militant, but not the right kind.

Agnapostate
10th July 2010, 05:30
I remember now where I first read about him too, in a book that I once borrowed a few years ago, Ringside seat to a revolution: an underground cultural history of El Paso and Jurez, 1893-1923 (http://books.google.com/books?id=hrd5AAAAMAAJ).

Franz Fanonipants
10th July 2010, 06:02
how is that book i've been meaning to check it out

Agnapostate
10th July 2010, 06:34
I remember it as an interesting history. I saw it again at an anti-war protest this year, and would have bought it, but I didn't have my wallet with me. I'll probably get it from Amazon, though the woman selling it on behalf of whatever progressive group she was with said they didn't sell it that well, for some reason.