Victory draws near, the fight is at an end. The last battles are already being fought and in these solemn moments, standing and respectfully uncovered before the Nation, we await the decisive hour, the precise moment in which the peoples sink or are saved, depending on the use they make of the conquered sovereignty, that sovereignty for so long taken from our people, and that which with the triumph of the Revolution will return unharmed, as it has been preserved and we have defended it here, in the mountains that have been its sole and our stronghold. It will return dignified and strengthened never to be tainted by imposture or chained by tyranny again.
Such a beautiful conquest has cost the Mexican people a terrible sacrifice, and it is a duty, an imperative duty for everyone, to ensure that this sacrifice is not sterile; for our part, we are willing not to leave an obstacle in front of us, whatever the nature and whatever the circumstances may arise, until we have built the national future on a solid basis, until we have achieved that our country, the road and clean the horizon, march serene towards the great tomorrow that awaits you.
Fully convinced that the cause we are defending is just, fully aware of our duties and willing not to abandon the great work that we have undertaken for a moment, we will arrive resolved to the end, accepting before civilization and before history, the responsibilities of this act of supreme vindication.
Our enemies, the eternal enemies of regenerative ideas, have used all the resources and resorted to all the procedures to fight the Revolution, both to defeat it in the armed struggle, and to distort it at its origin and divert it from its ends.
However, the facts speak highly of the strength and origin of this movement.
More than thirty years of dictatorship seemed to have exhausted the energies and put an end to the civility of our race, and despite this long period of slavery and enervation, the Revolution of 1910 broke out, like an immense cry for justice that will always live in the soul of the nations as freedom lives in the hearts of peoples to vivify them, to redeem them, to raise them from the abjection to which the human species cannot be condemned.
We were among the first to take part in that movement, and the fact that we continued in arms after the expulsion of Porfirio Díaz and the exaltation of Madero to power, reveals the purity of our principles and the perfect knowledge of the cause with which we fight and it shows that they did not bring us petty interests, nor bastard ambitions, not even the tinsel of glory, no; We did not seek or seek the poor satisfaction of personal growth, we did not long for the sad vanity of honors, nor do we want anything other than the true triumph of the cause, consisting of the implantation of principles, the realization of ideals, and resolution of the problems,
The fatal rupture of the Plan of San Luis Potosí motivated and justified our rebellion against that act that invalidated all commitments and disappointed all hopes; that nullified all efforts and sterilized all sacrifices and truncated, without remedy, that work of redemption so generously undertaken by those who gave without hesitation, as fertilizer for the earth, the blood of their veins.
The Ciudad Juárez Pact returned the victory to the enemies and the victim to their executioners; The caudillo of 1910 was the author of that bitter betrayal, and we went against him, because we repeated it: before the cause, people do not exist for us and we know enough about the situation to be fooled by the false triumph of a few revolutionaries turned into rulers. : Just as we fought Francisco I. Madero, we will fight others whose administration is not based on the principles for which we have fought.
Broken the Plan of San Luis, we picked up the flag and proclaimed the Plan of Ayala.
The fall of the past government could not have been more than a reason for us to redouble our efforts, because it was the most shameful act that can be recorded; that act of abominable perversity, that unspeakable act that has made the other countries that observe us turn their faces, indignant and scandalized, and has made us shudder with such deep indignation that all the means and all the forces together would not be enough to contain it As long as we have not punished the crime, as long as we do not execute the guilty.
All this with regard to the origin of the Revolution; As far as their ends are concerned, they are so clear and precise, so just and noble, that they constitute by themselves a supreme force; the only one that we count on to be invincible, the only one that makes these mountains impregnable in which freedoms have their stronghold.
The cause for which we fight, the principles and ideals that we defend, are already well known to our compatriots, since most of them have gathered around this banner of redemption, this holy lamp of law, baptized with the simple name of Plan of Villa de Ayala.
There are contained the most just aspirations of the people, raised the most pressing social needs, and proposed the most important economic and political reforms, without whose implementation, the country would inevitably roll into the abyss, sinking into the chaos of ignorance, misery and of slavery.
The opposition that has been made to the Ayala Plan is terrible, pretending, rather than fighting it with reasoning, to discredit it with insults, and for that, the mercenary press, which sells its decorum and rents its columns, has dropped a disgusting storm of mire, the one in which it feeds its impudence and drags its abjection. And yet the Revolution, unstoppable, is heading towards victory.
The Government, from Porfirio Díaz to Victoriano Huerta, has done nothing but support and proclaim the war of the ahitos and the privileged against the oppressed and the miserable; It has only violated popular sovereignty, making power a perk; ignoring the laws of evolution, trying to stop societies, and violating the most rudimentary principles of equity, taking from man the most sacred rights that nature gave him.
I have there explained our attitude, I have explained the enigma of our indomitable rebellion and there I have proposed, once again, the colossal problem that currently worries not only our fellow citizens, but also many foreigners. To solve this problem, it is only necessary to abide by the national will, let societies go free, and respect the interests of others and human attributes.
On the other hand, and specifying as much as possible, we must make other clarifications to explain our behavior in the past, present and future
The Mexican nation is too rich. Its wealth, although virgin, that is to say, not yet exploited, consists of agriculture and mining; But that wealth, that inexhaustible wealth of gold, belonging to more than fifteen million inhabitants, is in the hands of a few thousand capitalists and a large part of them are not Mexican. By a refined and disastrous selfishness, the landowner, the landowner and the miner, exploit a small part of the land, the forest and the vein, taking advantage of their numerous products and conserving most of their entirely virgin properties, while a a picture of indescribable misery takes place throughout the Republic.
Moreover, the bourgeois not content with possessing great treasures of which no one participates, in his insatiable greed, steals the product of his work from the worker and the laborer, deprives the Indian of his small property and, not yet satisfied, insults him and he strikes, showing off the support provided by the courts, because the judge, the only hope of the weak, is also at the service of the scoundrel; and that economic imbalance, that social derangement, that flagrant violation of natural laws and human attributions, is sustained and proclaimed by the Government, which in turn supports and proclaims, going beyond its own dignity, the execrable soldiery.
The capitalist, the soldier and the ruler had lived in peace, undisturbed, neither in their privileges, nor in their properties, at the cost of the sacrifice of a slave and illiterate people, without wealth and without a future, who were condemned to work tirelessly and to die of hunger and exhaustion, since, spending all his energies in producing incalculable treasures, it was not given him to have even the essentials even to satisfy his most urgent needs.
Such an economic organization, such an administrative system, which amounted to a mass murder for the people, a collective suicide for the Nation and an insult, a shame for honest and conscientious men, could not be prolonged any longer and the Revolution arose, generated, like every movement of collectivities, by necessity. This is where the Plan de Ayala originated.
Before Don Francisco I. Madero took over the Presidency of the Republic, rather, as a result of the Treaties of Ciudad Juárez, it was believed in a possible rehabilitation of the weak against the strong, the resolution of pending problems and the abolition of the privilege and monopoly, without taking into account that that man was going to cement his government in the same vicious system and with the same corrupted elements with which the Tuxtepec caudillo, for more than six decades, extorted the nation. That was absurd, an aberration, and yet it was expected, because the good faith of the one who had defeated the dictator was trusted.
The disaster, the disappointment, did not wait. The fighters were then convinced that it was not possible to save their work or ensure its conquest within that morbid and moth-eaten organization, which necessarily had to have a crisis before finally collapsing: the fall of Francisco I. Madero and the exaltation of Victoriano Huerta , to the power.
In this case and agreeing that it is not possible to govern the country with this administrative system, without developing a policy entirely contrary to the interests of the majorities, and being, moreover, impossible to implement the principles because we fight, it is idle to say that the Revolution of the South and Center by improving economic conditions, necessarily has to reform the institutions beforehand, without which force is to repeat it, it would be impossible to carry out its promises.
There is the reason why we will not recognize any government that does not recognize us and, above all, that does not guarantee the triumph of our cause.
There can be elections as many times as you want; Like Huerta, other men can assault the presidential chair, using the armed force or the electoral farce, and the Mexican people can also be sure that we will not lower our flag or give up an instant in the fight, until, victorious , we can guarantee with our own head the advent of an era of peace based on justice and as a consequence economic freedom.
If, as those human beasts dressed in tinsel and ribbons have projected, that unbridled mob that bears inks in blood on their hands and conscience, carry out with the waning of the law, the disgusting masquerade that they call elections, go from now on, not only before the ours, but before all the peoples of the earth, the most energetic of our protests, as long as we can punish the bloody mockery that is made to the Constitution of 57.
Bear in mind, then, that we are not seeking the overthrow of the current government to assault public positions and loot national treasures, as has been happening with the impostors who manage to elevate the first magistrates; Let it be known, once and for all, that we are not fighting against Huerta alone, but against all the rulers and conservatives who are enemies of the reformist host, and above all, always remember that we do not seek honors, that we do not long for rewards, that we are simply going to fulfill the solemn commitment that we have contracted, giving bread to the disinherited and a free, calm and civilized homeland to the generations to come.
Mexicans: if this anomalous situation continues; if peace, being a national aspiration; It takes time to return to our soil and our homes, ours will be the fault and not anyone's. Let us unite in a titanic and definitive effort against the enemy of all; let us gather our elements, our energies and our wills and oppose them, like a formidable barricade, to our executioners; Let us answer with dignity, energetically, that insulting lash that Huerta has thrown over our heads; Let us reject that mocking and contemptuous laugh that the powerful man throws, from the sumptuous enclosures where his anger and arrogance stroll, on us, the disinherited, who die of hunger in the stream.
It is not necessary that we all fight on the battlefields, it is not necessary that we all contribute a contingent of blood to the contest, it is not necessary that we all make equal sacrifices in the Revolution; What is essential is that we all leave determined to defend the common interest and to rescue the part of sovereignty that is taken from us.
Call your consciences; meditate for a moment without hatred, without passions, without prejudices, and this truth, luminous as the sun, will inevitably emerge before you: the Revolution is the only thing that can save the Republic.
So help the Revolution. Bring your contingent, large or small, no matter how; but bring it. Do your duty and you will be worthy; defend your right and you will be strong, and if necessary sacrifice yourselves, that later the country will rise satisfied on its unshakable pedestal and will drop a handful of roses on your grave.
Reform, Freedom, Justice and Law.
Revolutionary Camp in Morelos,
October 20, 1913.
The General in Chief of the Liberation Army of the South and Center,
Emiliano Zapata.
Comments
Post a Comment