Claudia López Benaiges was murdered on September 11, 1998, after being shot in the back by cops on a barricade in the La Pincoya neighborhood of Santiago, in the context of mobilizations commemorating the Coup d’État in Chile. López was an active feminist, anarchist militant and poet, in addition to studying Spanish pedagogy and dance.
Poem by Claudia López
The celestial litanies that fill the nights of the worlds, they incessantly question the anxious daughters of uncertainty. They explode dazzlingly like bodies that stretch through the walls, that burst forth through the whispers of light, that confront the airy and torrid abysses. The dark bodies of insurrectionary anxiety, of the subversive desire of the lunar chains, that poured onto the earth, they seek their names, those they do not yet have, that lie buried in the roots of the jungles.
Greetings to all those present, I would like to begin by thanking you for your attendance to the activity, and also to thank all those who made and make this event possible, once again demonstrating their faithful support and loyal commitment.
Support networks and gestures of solidarity are necessary and indispensable in the frontal attack against all that is established and authority.
My arrest occurs in the context of a new commemoration of the day of the young combatant, a new 29th where the night becomes an accomplice of the insurgent youth that armed with courage they confront the enemy face to face, seeking to keep intact the rebellious and combative memory through anonymous action, and it is precisely in this action where the statements, theories and convictions make sense, that is why I believe it is essential to keep alive this black memory and make it a permanent exercise.
It is in this context that every bullet, bomb or attack carries with it the hatred and rage accumulated over centuries of slavery and inequality, which cry out for vengeance.
I knew very well that anyone who rebels against the tyrant, who tries to alter the established order and who decides to take the path of direct confrontation is always very close to imprisonment or death. That is why when I was kidnapped by the sikarios of power, I immediately accepted my destiny and decided to go ahead without hesitation or regrets, in fact the decision was already taken since I assumed an anarchic and irreducible position. When I threw myself into freedom.
On Tuesday, March 28, around 30 hooded students unfurled a banner and set up barricades and confrontations with Molotov cocktails against the presence of carabineros (COP), on the eve of the “day of the young combatant”. Three of them were arrested, two were taken into custody by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and finally released without precautionary measures.
Banners read: “Because of you we remain rebellious and conscious. Luisa Toledo present” and “Free Gunei”.
Today again we hope you can feel the warmth of our words. We thank you for inviting us to share our feelings and reflections. Autumn has arrived and with it comes that mixture of nostalgia, rage, regret… among other emotions that well up in every young combatant and that day by day leads us to embrace our ideas and act coherently with them. If we are gathered here today, we agree that we must continue to nurture this historical and combative memory that we share among different warriors antagonistic to the system. Generations of fighters have made the streets and towns barricades of confrontation against the police, remembering Eduardo, Rafael, Paulina, Norma, Pablo, Araceli… And all those young fighters who committed their lives to fight against the dictatorship. More than 30 years have passed since their bodies perished but not their convictions, their ideas, their love for freedom. All these young people seeded rebellion and today we continue to learn from their successes and mistakes, every autumn we meet again, to observe ourselves, to contrast our realities, to analyze the disastrous context in which we live and although our present is very bitter we continue to resist. From different trenches our spirit continues committed to this struggle, for decades this flame has not been extinguished and every time a young rebel throws himself with his actions into the infinite abyss of the anarchic, subversive, nihil or insurrectional struggle it means that we correspond to those warriors who left us.
We cannot fail to remember through these words our everlasting compañera Luisa. Within these walls we always strengthen our fortitude with numerous memories and/or scenarios that our comrades live or have faced. Luisa is that weychafe woman who inspired and incited many young rebels to continue fighting, she moved us with her words as well as many times she was there with us in the midst of burning tires. In here our thoughts live a chaotic back and forth, but what has made us unbreakable has been the seed that people like Luisa have left us. Only in us is the way to not undermine, we decay, but we must continue standing. The seeds that Luisa left us are an inexhaustible source, as well as those left to us by her family who have never given up their struggle. Today we are transforming the prison into our barricade. The confrontation here is constant, not only with the prisoners, because sometimes the worst policemen are those who wear the cap in their hearts. Luisa urged us to learn from each of our experiences, to not leave or abandon each other, to leave superficial differences aside, because a huge machine is trying to crush us. In prison everything that we detest and repudiate is gathered and intertwined. In spite of everything we continue to use every tool at our disposal, attentive to every breaking point to slip away and break the isolation and silence. Every morning we remind ourselves of who we are, we will not let confinement rot our roots and rob us of our essence. We remember all our fallen comrades with love and rage. Permanently their spirit emerges wildly against every wretched institution, against every wretched authoritarian. None of you is forgotten, neither those who left us nor those who today are held captive in prisons around the globe. We embrace each one of you, as well as each family who lost their child in combat, each one of them lives in our restless minds and hands. Neither jail nor death will stop the permanent confrontation. In memory of all the fallen and their families.
Luisa Toledo’s persistence in the beautiful exercise of remembrance was probably one of the triggering factors that made us know and commemorate today the murder of Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo by the police and at the same time that this day became the moment in which we evoke all the fallen young combatants.
It is difficult to separate the small and strong figure of Luisa from March 29th, I see in her resilience forged in the immense pain for the loss of her children, as the substrate that has nourished the path of the generations of young fighters of yesterday, today and tomorrow, who continue and will continue to confront domination in its different forms.
Comrades like the mother of the Vergara Toledo brothers leave us multiple teachings, which can be felt in practice, in their example. An example that shows us that no matter how many blows you receive, you can always get up and that scars heal better among comrades and that they are worthy of pride.
With our pains and our dead we continue in the persistent combative memory.
No one is forgotten
Vergara Toledo Brothers
Luisa Toledo Pte!
The Wound is still bleeding and the fuse is still burning. A new March 29th. Text of the anarchist prisoner Aldo Hernandez.
Metal against metal, heavy blows at the entrance of the building where that night I slept with my beloved daughter and my brother, the reaction I had before their machine guns and imminent violence to which we would be subjected was to wake up and dress my daughter and tell her that the police were coming for me, I managed to tell her that I loved her forever and ever, to be strong and be calm. I stood in front of her in the face of their weapons and arrogance.
Damn cowards, they investigated me for more than a year, followed me, placed cameras, photographed me, listened to me …while they were on my heels and preferred to expose a minor to the violent raid that we lived that early morning of December 22, 2022. Despicable beings that only because of their fear did not stop me before, they were clear that this individual would not receive them in a good way, but on the contrary, with all the courage that those of us who carry the confrontation to power and its servants carry, that courage that runs through our veins, that the enemies will never be able to understand. In the pure style of the fascism of the D.I.N.A or the C.N.I. they came to me, I cannot forgive and even less forget that they subjected my daughter to a “subtle interrogation”. I hate them every second a little more, remember that my body is the one that is imprisoned today, my ideas and projects continue to travel illegally through the streets of this territory with the desire to concretize in action what I have reflected with different comrades and sisters and brothers.
I send hugs in this month marked with our blood in the history of which I am also a part. Encouragement and strength to those who make memory a daily exercise to nourish us. On certain dates the streets are ours and we can give way to the possibility of attack against the different police, those who carry in their history and uniforms the blood and pain that we have been forced to feel for the loss of beautiful loved ones.
FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS TO THE LAIRS OF THE ENEMY. SHOT BY SHOT AND BLASTS TO THEIR UNIFORMS. YOUNG COMBATANTS OF YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW WILL CONTINUE TO BE PRESENT, IN THE STREETS WITNESS OF OUR COURAGE AND INSURRECTIONAL CONVICTION. MARCH 29TH NOBODY IS FORGOTTEN.
My warmest greetings and complicity to the beautiful and historic population of La Victoria, to the beloved Villa Francia where the words of Luisa Toledo and Manuel Vergara are echoes that resound loudly in every passage and avenue forever, to the brothers and sisters of Lo Hermida and Peñalolen who create scenarios of confrontations, to La Pincoya that does not forget its subversive and rebellious character.
Aldo Hernández Valdés Anarchist Prisoner Extermination and isolation center “La Gonzalina”. Rancagua-$hile March 2023
ES: Ni un minuto de silencio, toda una vida de combate A 23 años del asesinato de Claudia López
Desde los rincones más inquietos de la memoria nos autoconvocamos, tanto compañerxs que conocimos a Claudia desde una fraternidad rebelde como también quienes, sin conocerla, nos reconocemos en su experiencia de vida y de lucha, para continuar con el combate al olvido, aportando a no dejar que la historia se escriba por si sola, a sumarnos a aquel torrente de recuerdos que ha decantado en praxis y resistencia, multiplicándose y expandiéndose a través de bibliotecas, centros sociales, actividades, okupas, combates callejeros, acciones, lienzos, afiches, murales y panfletos.
Esta vez desde nuestra mirada, desde nuestro recuerdo, con rabia y dolor, con nuestras derrotas parciales pero también con las victorias a cuestas, pretendemos levantar, lejos de las verdades incuestionables, un ejercicio/praxis de memoria y volver a recorrer los pasos que llevaron ese 11 de septiembre de 1998 a la compañera Claudia López, la chica Claudia, con sus 25 años, a caminar hasta la población La Pincoya donde dejo su vida en la calle, asesinada por balas policiales. Tiros avalados por un Estado siempre al servicio del capital y los poderosos. De estos hechos y de esta realidad no hay duda alguna, a pesar de las infamias periodísticas o maniobras jurídico-policiales.
Que la chica haya estado esa noche en la Pincoya no obedece a la casualidad o algún momentáneo impulso rebelde sino a una decisión y a un camino trazado desde hace años en luchas y enfrentamientos callejeros, tanto en universidades como en distintas poblaciones, de igual forma en su activa participación en coordinaciones combativas, aunando fuerzas entre distintas experiencias autónomas y de luchas antiestatales.
A lo largo de estos años mucho se ha comentado respecto a la militancia política de la compañera, ésta sin lugar a dudas no puede ser comprendida desde categorías únicas y determinantes, más aun cuando eran tiempos que a partir de un acertado cuestionamiento a un marxismo dogmático por parte de quienes apostaban por revitalizar una práctica ofensiva contra el poder y el capital, se genera un acercamiento entre tendencias de un marxismo revolucionario; el anticapitalismo y la autonomía, con el anarquismo. Es en ese espacio donde la Claudia se movía sin tranzar con medios tonos. Continue reading “Santiago, $hile: Jornada conmemorativa a 23 de la muerte de la compañera Claudia López ES/EN”→
I had the opportunity to speak with her only a few times, however I had the good fortune and the enriching possibility to listen to her on countless occasions.
I don’t think I was indifferent on any of those occasions. The power of her words and gestures, the intensity she brought to each of her statements and harangues motivated me enormously and still do. I remember them -in this encierro- and my hair still stands on end.
How lucky we all were to have been able to coincide in life with a person like Mrs. Luisa!
Another thing that never ceased to impress me was her permanent interest in updating herself, in knowing what was being discussed and proposed, and in knowing what were the motivations of the new generations of young fighters. This kept her fully up to date. It kept her in the struggle, rejecting any place of honor from where many feel they have the power to direct and delegitimize the new experiences. Mrs. Luisa is inseparable from the struggle because she herself is an expression of struggle.
The time I went to her house to invite her to the launching of a book – which was one of the few times I spoke with her – she was already ill and very weak, but in spite of that we talked for a long time asking me, with an interest that surprised me, every detail of our prison experience in Spain, which speaks and reaffirms her concern for every new event, especially for the situation of the prisoners, a reality that she lived directly with the imprisonment for several years of her granddaughter Sol.
I heard about her death on television and there they talked about the sad death of «Luisa Toledo, activist and human rights defender», evidently trying to hide what she really was and the annoyance she meant and will mean to the powers that be. Ms. Luisa was a vindicator and encourager of political violence, permanently affirming, explicitly, the urgent need to provide more forceful attacks. To go further, to carry out revenge against what she called: «the murderers and exploiters of the people», so that the denomination of «defender of human rights» I think it falls short (to say the least) accommodating only to those who profit from the struggle and the dead.
Finally, I send an affectionate embrace to all those close to him and his family, especially to Don Manuel and Ana.
“By all means, I believe the violence within us is just. It’s necessary. I believe that we can no longer try to turn the other cheek. Not only is this motto a lie, but it also isn’t good for anybody. It can’t be. We have to capable of defending ourselves by being beautifully violent. We must cover our faces and go out into the street to be against everything that represents the atrocious powers we fight against.”– Luisa Toledo Sepúlveda
Words from Prisons for Luisa Toledo Sepúlveda.
Our mother, grandmother and eternal comrade Luisa Toledo Sepúlveda has left. From the different centers of punishment and isolation where we have traveled for decades and years, maintaining upward the autonomous, subversive and anarchic resistance, we meet again at the hearth of our herd to eternally embrace “Luisa”, our subversive mother.
We are in pain, with our hearts broken, traveling between different generations of comrades to whom the words and actions of “grandmother” have marked the journey for years from children in the town, rebellious adolescents and young combatants.
Feel the power of her voice as the voice of her children who at the same time are all of us who have been undeniably marked with the certainty of her words of fire, of bullets, of roars, of conspiracy, of conscience, of beautifully violent memory, from the inalienable insistence to the frontal fight against the world of power and all authority.
Your children who resist in prisons, the fugitives who remain in struggle, from different territories of the planet where your name is heard as a synonym of Resistance, Memory and Subversion, today, we shout together and united very loud and clear that we continue unconditionally hoisting the banner of social war, the permanent gesture of the conflict in the struggle for total liberation.
We call on all rebels who worthily claim the frontal struggle against power through direct action to demonstrate in war with concrete gestures in memory of Luisa Toledo Sepúlveda.
We call to keep alive the fire of her voice, her fighting spirit, her wise words, her incessant practice always on the side of illegality in clear subversive complicity.
We hug you and we are with you. Manolo, Flaca, Sol, Alen.
We salute Villa Francia and all the accomplices.
We embrace the Peñi and Lamngen at war!!
We embrace you with eternal love in war, dear woman, mother, grandmother, comrade!!
Luisa Toledo Sepúlveda, you live in the anti-authoritarian, autonomous, subversive and anarchic struggle forever!!
As long as there is misery, there will be rebellion!!
Death to the state and long live anarchy!
Combatant youth: permanent insurrection!!
Until destroying the last bastion of prison society!
Towards total liberation!!
Pablo Bahamondes Ortiz, Jail company Stgo 1.
Monica Caballero Sepúlveda, San Miguel female prison.
Marcelo Villarroel Sepulveda, Juan Aliste Vega, Joaquin Garcia Chanks, Juan Flores Riquelme, Francisco Solar Domínguez, Rancagua company jail.
Tuesday July 6, 2021- Santiago, Rancagua. Territories dominated by the Chilean state.
