A Catastrophe by Ricardo Flores Magón — Read

"I do not kill myself so others can live," Pedro, the miner, said with a clear voice, when Juan, his co-worker, extended a newspaper in front of him called "Regeneración," full of details about the revolutionary movement of the Mexican proletarianism. "I have a family," he continued. "I would be an animal if I showed my belly to the bullets of the federals."

Juan received without surprise Pedro's observation: that is the way the others talk. Some would even try to hit him when he would say there were places where the peons had not recognized their masters and had taken ownership of the haciendas. Some days passed; Juan, after buying a good carbine with abundant bullets, went to the interior of the sierra, where he knew there were rebels. He didn't care to know what kind of flag they belonged to, or what ideals the revolutionists defended. If they were their own, that is, the ones with the red flag, they forced themselves to establish a new society, in which everyone would be his own owner, and never the hangman of the others, very good: he will unite with them, he will add with his own self to the number of fighters, as the number of brains to the magnificent work of redemption, as many guns as of capable brains to guide other brains, and fiery hearts, capable of inciting with the same fire of other hearts. However, if they were not from the same group, the ones who would move around the near area, it did not matter; anyway, he will unite, as if considered the duty of a liberator to mix among his brothers, unconscious, by way of clever conversations, about the rights of the proletariat.