After more than a decade, the publication Refractario comes to an end, and with it we close the door to this project.
We have delayed these final words and the necessary closure of this project, thinking about resuming it or giving it new formats, but it is imperative to leave some words next to the door before closing. A project built with so much effort and affection deserves a decent closure.
In July 2012 we started this counter-informative project. We generated a materiality in paper that lasted eight issues (from 2012 to 2014), and we also published 5 special issues. Undoubtedly, the heart of our project was the website. In it converged various dimensions of the anti-prison field: news, contingencies, calls, propaganda, reflections, material of interest, memory and practical information.
Throughout 11 years, the project operated, far exceeding the initial objectives. We maintained the rhythm of publication, the space for reflection and positioning at different junctures, while on the other hand the feedback from comrades who translated texts, sent communiqués and fed informal discussions within the anarchist movement made Refractario a useful, current and active tool.
Throughout this period we rejoiced with the release of several comrades from prison, accompanied the trial of many and maintained strong solidarity agitation with several who are still behind bars. Several campaigns managed to internationalize thanks to projects like this one, which allowed us to inform, disseminate and position the urgency in other latitudes. The intention was always to become a space to find accurate information, as well as to open the discussion on so many issues that in these years have strained the anti-authoritarian environments linked to prison, trials and repression.
At the end of January 2006, the counter-information web page “Palabras de Guerra” (Words of War) said goodbye to the virtual world at that time. We highlight some of the reasons that led to its closure, as expressed in its farewell communiqué:
– Excessive volume of information, in most cases superfluous, a reflection of the Western society of excess.
– Accelerated publication rhythms, confronted with natural rhythms.
– An immediatism that generates the need to be constantly informed.
– The emergence of a revolutionary subject whose militancy is based primarily on the Internet.
(The full text is still available here)
This criticism and caution has always accompanied us in the various virtual counter-information projects in which we have participated, supported, collaborated or raised. But clearly in the last few years we have faced a real centrifuge regarding the same points already raised by the comrades years ago.
The pandemic was the materialization of an erosion that had been going on for almost a year regarding the use of our website. The massive use of social networks, in particular the Instagram platform to the detriment of web pages for information and “debate” within the anarchist movement was exponentially cemented, strengthened and robust.
Due to the nature of the platform and its publication formats, the arguments presented by the comrades of ‘Palabras de Guerra’ have reached ridiculous and absurd levels. We find ourselves with an impossible to digest amount of information that is changing not only day by day, but hour by hour. At the same time, the need to get into that pulse makes us maintain a frenetic rhythm of publication where what is relevant is lost in a sea of information that we ourselves create.
It is this same dynamic that prevents further reflection, debate and even by its design (use of texts converted into images as a template) makes it impossible to translate and transcribe texts, in some cases even leading to the elaboration of shorter texts to fit its limited length. The modality denies any archive or search possibility of material published in the past, but there it is, working and in one way or another “connecting” a lot of compañerxs. Announcements, urgent news, headlines and some communiqués are now disseminated almost exclusively through these channels. For example, we tried to venture into this format from Refractario, but we were unsuccessful, precisely because of the impossibility of developing reflections or sharing texts that go beyond those limitations. They were simply not compatible.
We understand that these problems affect not only our project, but also several web pages and counter-informative projects that have closed or become obsolete. The scarcity or absence of physical newspapers also gives us a clue to the problem. If this went hand in hand with the proliferation of physical spaces, real meetings, debates, it would not be as worrying as the decaying scenario in which anarchic environments find themselves. The repetition of slogans, the absence of response to repressive onslaughts, the indifference to what happens outside the circle of acquaintances, the identity and lifestyle as a struggle, is complemented by the image/aesthetics of hoods and fire as an end in itself. To strengthen internationalism, to elaborate reflections, perspectives of struggle, to project new offensives, to weave networks of conspiracy, to educate ourselves politically in a permanent way are indispensable elements at the time of arming ourselves in the social war, aspects that are drowned in reformist petitions, complaints, poses of thugs and a scarce space for political deepening.
We leave on record our current vision of the post-revolt anarchic environment and the practical disuse in which our page has fallen -among other projects-, so that perhaps in other years, in another territory, it may serve as a learning experience. This scenario does not demotivate us in any sense, but we believe that it is necessary to evaluate the present with a sense of reality in order to deepen and qualify the paths of negation of this world. Where do we inform ourselves, where do we open debates, how do we converse among comrades who do not know each other, where do we reflect, where do we mark the initiative and not the situation?
Today Refractario comes to an end. But this was not the first anti-prison project and it will certainly not be the last. Today we decided to give this project a burial and not leave it open or adrift. The page will remain as long as the virtuality allows for those who want to review the abundant archive that exists there. In the backpack of the experience remain all the communications and networks forged of international character, the exposed and heated debates that allowed the anarchist world to be positioned and nourished.
Our contribution sought to escape from the uncritical solidarity, to skip the spaces of charity and reject the misinformation that usually abounds in the reality of prisoners (When was he imprisoned, what is he accused of, how much was he sentenced to, where is he, is he out yet? ), raising that perspective that considers the prisoners of the social war as those comrades that we are missing in the street, therefore we reject any heroic or untouchable figure, talking with them, dialoguing, raising proposals or discussing.
Before concluding, we do not forget the urgency that means the fulfillment of sentences emanating from the military justice by comrade Marcelo Villarroel, the long sentence that comrade Juan Aliste is serving, the isolation regime faced by the anarchist comrade Alfredo Cospito in Italy or the recent sentence to life imprisonment concealed against the anarchist comrade Francisco Solar, who assumed the attacks against the powerful and repressors.
Finally we call to strengthen all counter-information projects that stubbornly manage to endure over time, such as Informativo Anarquista, only with the support and nourishment of all of us, they become useful tools.
Nothing is over, everything continues.
“We do not give up on our fellow prisoners. Our offensive solidarity is revenge for their captivity. This does not mean an identification with their visions. The prisoners are not sacred idols or symbols of the struggle, but they are the ones who are missing at our side” -Conspiracy of Cells of Fire-.
“Life is constant struggle, it is overcoming monotony and the static” -Mauricio Morales
-Refractario – February 2024
Source: Publicacion Refractario