Expropriation by Ricardo Flores Magón — Read

The night before all peons had reunited. That was not possible to bear; the bosses had never been more insolent, neither so demanding. It was necessary for that treatment to end. The man who had been talking with them a week before, was right: the owners were the first bandits that, with the excuse to civilize them they had reached the point of war, taking their land from the Indians, their ancestors, to make them peons. What a life they had dragged for centuries! They had to accept corn and beans full of bugs, to eat - they, the ones who harvested fresh and abundant crops! Did a head of cattle die in the field? That was the only time they would taste meat, spoiled by then; the same for which the boss would make them pay higher than market prices. Were these pretty women among them slaves? The boss and his sons had the right to rape them. If a slave complained? He would go straight to the army to defend the same system which tyrannize him!

Just eight days before, a man had been with them, and nobody knew from where he had come; neither was it later known, where or when he had left. He was young; his hands, hard and strong, did not leave a doubt that he was a worker; but because of that strange fire in his eyes, one could tell something was burning inside that brow, sunburned from the outdoor and market with a frown giving him an air of an intelligent and reflective man. This man had spoken to them in this manner: "Brothers of misery, hold your heads high. We are equal human beings to the rest of humans habitating this earth. Our origin is humble, and the land, this old land, which we have irrigated with our sweat, is our mother, and because of this, we have the right to be nourished from her, to give us wood for her forests, and water from her resources, without distinction, but with only one condition: that we fertilize her by loving her. The ones who claim to be owners of the earth are the real descendants of those bandits who, with blood and fire, stole from our ancestors, four centuries ago, when these incendiary actions occurred, killings galore, and savage rapers of minors, which History describes with the name ‘Conquest of Mexico. ' This land is ours, comrades; let us take her for us, and for all of our descendants!"