Augusto Pinochet

Chile: Autonomy and Persistence Against Prisons: Words from compañera Mónica Caballero

Posted on 2024/06/19 by darknights

June 8, 2024

Almost a month ago I was transferred to the prison where I will have to serve my sentence, the CPF of Santiago. This prison has a rather atypical structure in comparison to other prisons in this territory, since in some areas it maintains the foundations of the old convent that fulfilled the “correctional work for bad women”, from there different modules and sections have been built. Among the sections that were built to segregate specific groups of women prisoners are the following: Special High Security Section (SEAS), New Hope and Direct Custody.

SEAS was created mainly to house prisoners for crimes of political violence in the 90’s. In those years, those prisoners belonged to political/military/subversive groups (FPMR, MIR, Mapu-Lautaro1). With the release of the political prisoners, little by little, those with a history of escapes and/or refractory to the prison regime and leaders of trafficking gangs began to occupy the High Security Prison. It was not until 2010 that the women prisoners for political violence returned to the SEAS, the first “Bomb Case2” allowed the first anti-authoritarian women to take up the thread of struggle left by the first political prisoners. Over the years the SEAS continued with the same dynamic, until a few years ago where this section is used to keep prisoners while another permanent space is enabled for them.

Upon my arrival at this prison, I was informed that the SEAS would return to the place of yesteryear, so if or if I had to be in it. All this came to nothing because today there is a group of approximately 60 women brought from the San Miguel prison, these women live in deplorable conditions.

Another of these special modules is “Nueva Esperanza”, which has only and exclusively women for crimes against humanity, all these prisoners were responsible for some of the many atrocities that occurred during the dictatorship, I am referring to torture, disappearances, permanent kidnappings, murders, etc. Most of these women are former members of the F.F.A.A.*** and of the security forces. Although I do not know the living conditions of the torturers, since special care is taken in everything that surrounds them, but even so I would dare to say that they live in a place more like a rest home than a prison.

Finally, there is the module that I am currently in, Direct Custody. This section was born out of the need to segregate prisoners for violent and high-profile crimes, and over the years this has been maintained to some extent. This section has also been used to keep very specific cases of women for political violence, among these was a former militant of the FPMR and now me.

Since I entered this prison, both my comrades and I have requested through the different bureaucratic instances of the gendarmerie the authorization to continue my university studies, which I started in 2022 in San Miguel prison. This has not been authorized.

A little more than two years ago, I became the first inmate in Santiago to start university studies while I was in preventive prison. A matter that was not without problems, which one by one were solved thanks to the set of solidary wills that made that until today I am studying my third year as a student in the career of Law.

In this prison I have not been able to resume my studies because according to the information provided by the gendarmerie staff, the only thing missing is the authorization of the Regional Director, who can take as much time as he deems convenient to simply manage the continuity of something that has been going on for years.

It seems incredible that the facilities are not given and that obstacles are put in the way of something that seems to be as basic and essential as studying, we cannot ignore that the power structures are capable of breaking their own rules over and over again, according to their convenience.
What is it that the high command of the gendarmerie fears in order to give course to the authorization that does not allow me to study? Do they have direct orders from the Ministry of Justice or another organism? Or is it that they are apprehensive that if they give the authorization the prison population knows that there is no legal impediment that does not allow them to have higher education while in prison? Or perhaps they are exhausting all instances to prevent a prisoner (which they call common, but they maintain quite “uncommon” regimes) to have legal knowledge? Whatever the answer is, I demand that they comply with their own laws and allow me to maintain my university studies.

For this I appeal to all forms of solidarity that can pressure the regional and national directorate of gendarmerie to give course to the relevant authorizations so that I can continue my studies.

With all this I reaffirm that for greater degrees of autonomy the only option for those of us who choose the path of denial against domination is the persistent struggle, which would remain within these walls if it were not for the dozens of hands of solidarity.

Mónica Caballero Sepúlveda
Anarchist Prisoner
May 2024.

Source: Informativo Anarquista

DN Notes

1. – Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (in Spanish: Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, FPMR). Marxist-Leninist guerrilla organisation, the military wing of the Communist Party of Chile, created with the goal of a violent overthrow of the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

– The Revolutionary Left Movement (Spanish: Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, MIR) is a Chilean far-left Marxist-Leninist communist party and former urban guerrilla organization.

– The Lautaro Youth Movement (Spanish: Movimiento Juvenil Lautaro, or MJL) also known as MAPU Lautaro was a left-wing armed organization in Chile. During the military junta in Chile some members of the Popular Unitary Action Movement formed the Movimiento Juvenil Lautaro to pursue guerrilla warfare. The MJL was named after Lautaro, leader of the indigenous resistance in Chile. MAPU Lautaro continued its armed struggle even after the return of democracy to Chile and democratic elections.

2. ‘Caso Bombas’ 2010: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/caso-bombas

3. The Chilean Armed Forces.

$hile: “Words from the confinement, necessary letters” by Marcelo Villarroel

Posted on 2024/01/06 by darknights

On December 16, 2009 I was expelled from Argentina after 21 months of confinement in different units of the province of Neuquén to be at the disposal of the Chilean state and it has been 14 years since then.

In 2014 I was sentenced to 14 years for two bank robberies. Strictly speaking, I am serving this sentence in its entirety, from beginning to end, without any benefit and it ends today December 16, 2023 and still the state keeps me behind bars.

According to the gendarmes, I must serve 12 more years of imprisonment to be able to apply for some intrapenitentiary benefit only in 2036. According to their retroactive modifications of the illegal Chilean law, in 2056 I will definitively expire my sentences, all of them from events that occurred more than 30 years ago.

A madness of numbers and years typical of Pinochet’s military justice shamefully in force and still today endorsed by recent rulings of the Court of Appeals of Rancagua, of Santiago, of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court of this amnesiac country governed today by the Communist Party, the Broad Front and all the progressive and social-democratic scum always at the service of the interests of the great god of capital.

In this context, a few days ago, Mónica and Francisco, anarchist comrades of action who received the full revenge of the state, were condemned by the capital’s democratic inquisition, particularly Francisco to whom the domination imposed 86 years, becoming today the revolutionary prisoner in the Chilean prisons with the highest sentence and whom we must know how to accompany from the daily practice without pauses since the road will evidently be longer. Always from the complicit affinity and never from the victimization!

On the other hand, in the occupied wallmapu, in the same week, the racist Chilean justice declares Peñi Luis Tranamil Nahuel, who these days is about to receive a hefty sentence, as well as Peñi Nelson Queupil, who faces an imminent sentence, both walking the path of the weichan, are in Chilean prisons, fists raised, living the onslaught of the state offensive of occupation. Continue reading “$hile: “Words from the confinement, necessary letters” by Marcelo Villarroel” →

Italy: Juan Sorroche and Marco Marino – Words of solidarity of anarchist prisoners in AS2 in Terni prison in response to the words of anarchist prisoners, subversives, fighting from Chilean prisons (August 21, 2023)

Posted on 2023/09/01 - 2023/09/01 by darknights

WORDS OF SOLIDARITY FROM ANARCHIST PRISONERS OF AS2 TERNI IN RESPONSE TO THE WORDS OF ANARCHIST PRISONERS, SUBVERSIVES, IN STRUGGLE FROM CHILEAN PRISONS

“Your struggle is ours, every gesture against this world has your imprint… because we are one pack that never forgets its own and its own, regardless, of where we are” – Public letter by Marcelo Villarroel, September 14, 2019

– Internationalist solidarity for the end of the sentence and freedom of comrade Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda, arrested in Argentina in 2008 after nearly 16 years in prison. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Pinochet’s military “coup” in Chile, wanted and created by North American imperialism as in Ukraine today, the comrade is sentenced by Pinochet’s legacy military justice. Today this legal aberration is applied, which coexists comfortably with the consensus democracy of the Chilean state, now ruled by the Boric left. Democracy and reactionary fascism are two sides of the same coin, tools of the Imperialist-State.

– Solidarity in the face of the beginning of the trial against comrades Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar [the judicial hearing, the main trial phase, began on July 18], the vengeance of state rule does not stop against those who go on the offensive by attacking its untouchability and impunity.

– Solidarity with Comrade Juan Aliste Vega, also convicted by Pinochet’s military justice, and Comrade Joaquin Garcia Chancks.

– Solidarity for the downgrading of anarchist Alfredo Cospito from 41 bis. Against 41 bis, out everyone, and for the abolition of life imprisonment.

– Solidarity with comrade Anna Beniamino and Alfredo Cospito convicted in a political trial on the abnormal charge of Article 285 c. p. p., massacre against the security of the state, or commonly called political massacre, this is the first time a massacre without massacre against the internal enemy has been used in this way in Italy. Article 285 c. p. c., massacre against the security of the state, has not been applied to the massacres that have been perpetrated in this country, Piazza Fontana, the Bologna station, Piazza della Loggia, since the 1970s of the so-called strategy of tension, massacres carried out by the Italian state, but, like Pinochet’s “coup”, wanted and created by North American imperialism in its struggle to keep the world under its control. Continue reading “Italy: Juan Sorroche and Marco Marino – Words of solidarity of anarchist prisoners in AS2 in Terni prison in response to the words of anarchist prisoners, subversives, fighting from Chilean prisons (August 21, 2023)” →

Providencia, Chile: Claim of the explosive attack against Fundación Paz Ciudadana by the Brígadas Anárquicas Luis Ramírez Olaechea (May 22, 2023)

Posted on 2023/05/25 by darknights

Claim of the explosive attack against Fundación Paz Ciudadana by the Brígadas Anárquicas Luis Ramírez Olaechea (Providencia, Chile, May 22, 2023)

Claim of the explosive attack on Fundación Paz Ciudadana

Those who have been here, in the minority and diffuse practice, know that failing an attack is part of the many probabilities that arise in the bravery of the street, when we believe that everything is going well, we are surprised that something escapes from what was arranged and planned.

Deciding on an electrical system to detonate an explosive charge is not a whimsical decision, it is the result of studying the objectives, our forces and our resources for action. With a quick entry and withdrawal from the environment we prioritize the safety of our comrades, understanding that the materials at our disposal come and go, while the life and freedom of our brothers and sisters is the most valuable component of the arsenal.

These bitter situations are softened when we know from practice that although the State, police and prosecutors are careful to protect their territories, neighborhoods, institutions and infrastructures, the attack is still possible in contexts of control and passivity. The attack does not come to life in fervent virtual slogans, it is a threat when it bursts into the streets.

In the face of a mistake we could remain comfortably silent but we are proud to persist in action, charged with memory and militant solidarity. We take the words of the comrades in Bolivia, “Long live all the efforts of the anarchic struggle!” because to advance vertiginously along the paths of confrontation is a victory for our revolutionary horizons. We continue, we know that nothing is over and everything continues, and that our only defeat will be not to try.

On the objective

On April 2, 1992, a gang dressed in suits and ties burst into a large house located on the corner of Valenzuela Castillo and Marchant Pereira streets in the Providencia district in broad daylight to found what we know today as the Fundación Paz Ciudadana (Citizen Peace Foundation). No newspaper or television channel dared to treat them as high-risk criminals, despite the fact that among the attendees that afternoon were Agustín Edwards (great financier of the socio-political destabilization in the 70’s) and other prominent figures of Chilean political corruption such as Carlos Alberto Délano, as well as Nicolás Ibáñez and Nicolás Ibáñez, as well as Nicolás Ibáñez, a well-known ultra-right-wing businessman, who when he ran D&S boasted a life-size bust of Pinochet in the middle of his living room, and other members of Chile’s most powerful business groups such as Bernardo Matte and Guillermo Luksic.

Fundación Paz Ciudadana emerged when the longed-for social peace of the agreed transition was cracking and a hard blow was dealt to one of the country’s wealthiest families. A split of the Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez kidnapped Cristián Edwards, Agustín’s son. After this event, the need for an anti-crime plan and a new Penal Code became urgent, since it could not be allowed the audacity of stalking the magnates of this estate. Continue reading “Providencia, Chile: Claim of the explosive attack against Fundación Paz Ciudadana by the Brígadas Anárquicas Luis Ramírez Olaechea (May 22, 2023)” →

Chile: Necessary words. 15 years in prison. Text by comrade Marcelo Villarroel

Posted on 2023/03/18 by darknights

I have been in prison for 15 uninterrupted years. 22 months in Patagonia, territory occupied by the Argentine state where I was detained and the other 13 years and 2 months in the maximum and high security sections of Santiago and Rancagua where I am today at the time of writing these letters.

Necessary letters as an inevitable reference of the passage of time and its implications.

As an inescapable trace of an oiled memory Kon la gazolina ke has lit thousands of barricades and vindictive fires demanding the release of anarchist and subversive prisoners through the years of struggle and resistance inside Chilean prisons.

I have been living for 15 years in high and maximum security confinement regimes in which sensory deprivation tends to be normalized as well as the hostilities of the environment, the structure and the internal order of the whole prison daily where the goal is to break your will and make you a citizen prisoner respectful of all its repressive and authoritarian internal order built to break the indomitable spirit of those of us who walk standing up, dignified and without fear within the prison reality through which we have had to pass.

Even from the captivity I have seen and lived the oblivion and amnesia of the majorities, the comfort and the conveniences of many, the complicit silence and the artful attack of the press and the police, their politicians and all those who in some way or another have made us invisible, defamed and attacked us from the comfort of a computer, from their comfort zones, from their privileged positions as harmless citizens servile to the normality of what exists. Continue reading “Chile: Necessary words. 15 years in prison. Text by comrade Marcelo Villarroel” →

Greece: One-day hunger strike in response to the internationalist call for action in solidarity with Marcelo Villarroel

Posted on 2023/03/16 by darknights

One-day hunger strike in response to the internationalist call for action in solidarity with Marcelo Villarroel

“These are times of clarity and definitions”

“I am from the war, a classic son of the working class, of the city growing up in a population where the code of struggle was and is for survival in the always precarious material conditions, but with strong bonds of communal solidarity as a life practice… Respect for the mapu ñuke, the search for a harmonious relationship with the planet, the recovery of spaces and territories and their clean control to build an autonomous path with values that oppose the bourgeois way of teaching and the ideology of the great God of Capital, perpetuated with blood and fire by the Chilean national state, and all its death apparatus, are aspects that make it impossible for me to ignore the bonds with and deep feelings about the struggle for the liberation of wallmapu.

These are times of clarity and definitions. Autonomous, anti-authoritarian and anarchist subversive practices in this part of the world cannot ignore the territoriality of the conflict, nor can they remain only in general and tepid solidarity….

The mode of confrontation is our inalienable choice in prison and on the street, we are not victims of circumstances, but conscious warriors of a fight to the death for the Total Liberation of peoples, individuals and communities. This is where all our efforts are made and renewed. “¹

On March 15, Mapuche anarchist comrade Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda passed 15 years of captivity. The decisions of the Chilean state want him to serve 13 more years in prison, according to its junta laws (from Pinochet). Continue reading “Greece: One-day hunger strike in response to the internationalist call for action in solidarity with Marcelo Villarroel” →

Chile: Internationalist Call for Solidarity Action with Marcelo Villarroel

Posted on 2023/03/09 by darknights

Internationalist Call for Solidarity Action with Marcelo Villarroel 15 years after his detention and in the context of the permanent campaign for his release to the streets!

On March 15 and in the context of the admirable conviction of comrade Alfredo Cóspito’s struggle in Italian prisons, the preparation of the trial of comrades Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar, the anti-authoritarian subversive prisoner Marcelo Villarroel completes 15 years of imprisonment after being arrested in Argentina while fleeing from Chile in clandestinity for the case known as “Security”.

The antagonistic actions to power that the comrade chose as a way of life from a very young age made him a target of the powerful and their media who created a brutal and crude spectacle of persecution after the expropriation of that bank in the center of Santiago/ Chile and the consequent death of cop Moyano in October 2007.

The state kidnapping of Marcelo, which in concrete terms is a life imprisonment is based on the most rotten filth of the dictatorial legacies of Pinochet’s Military Justice even in 2023. Something that seems unthinkable 50 years after the military coup and the beginning of the civil-military dictatorship.

However, this parallel justice, which no one seems to see, hear or mention, is still intolerably in force and this was demonstrated on February 27th at the sentence review hearing held at the 7⁰ Jury of the 7⁰ Guarantee Court in Santiago, in which it was confirmed that Marcelo should be in prison until 2036.

Specifically, Marcelo could have applied for parole in December 2019, but with the modification of DL 321 in January 2019, it applies retroactively to him.

Having an anti-authoritarian comrade in captivity for years under sentences issued by military rulings only demonstrates the shameless trickery of an oligarchy that seeks to exterminate by means of prison any obstacle that interrupts the expansion of its domination.

15 years after Marcelo’s kidnapping, we call on all those who are like-minded, compañeros, individuals, spaces and collectives that build autonomous and anarchic subversive antagonism from the perspective of internationalism to a week of action and agitation in solidarity with the comrade from Monday the 13th to Monday the 20th of March for the Annulment of the of the Sentences of the Military Justice of Pinochet and for his immediate release to the street.

To use all the imagination from the insurrectionary complicity.

For the annulment of the sentences of the military justice now!

For the end of the prison society!

Subversive, anarchist, anti-speciesist and Mapuche prisoners out of the prisons now!

As long as there is misery there will be rebellion!!!

From different territories:
– Related Individuals
– Red Solidaria Antikarcelaria con Juan y Marcelo (RSAJM) [Anti-prison Solidarity Network with Juan and Marcelo]

March 2nd, 2023.