Activism

“Before most boys could conceptualize the cause, Revueltas was in a labor camp.”

• 1928: Age 14 - Already politically active in Mexico City. Joins the Mexican Communist Party (PCM)

• 1929–1930: Arrested for protest activity (including demonstrations at the Zócalo) and imprisoned at Islas Marías, a remote Pacific penal colony. 

• 1932: July to November - Second Round at Islas Marías for organizing a strike

• 1934: Third Round at Islas Marías, again for organizing strikes

"...the Stalinist meat grinder was already underway... we know that atrocious history in which we were naive accomplices for so many years and which shames our communist morality today, just as the history of well-born Catholics does."

• Expelled from the PCM for openly criticizing party bureaucracy, dogmatism, and authoritarianism

• Rejects institutionalized Marxism in favor of moral and humanist radicalism

“The tracks led forward. The state pulled the brakes on worker's rights.”

• Imprisoned once more for participating in and supporting the nationwide railway workers’ strike

• Aligns himself publicly with labor militancy against state repression

“...it is the beginning itself that escapes me...here is something that has not begun, the end of the thread is slipping away. Things could start today for example, at this very moment.”

• 1968: Arrested as an “intellectual author” of the student movement

  • Tlatelolco Massacre: State violence against protesting students (hundreds killed and disappeared)

  • Revueltas and other leaders evade authorities for a time, still actively organizing, writing, and speaking behind the scenes

  • Arrested and imprisoned at Lecumberri Palace, Mexico’s most notorious prison (1968–1971)