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.
Opening the tensions of dialogue, we present the following section of interviews with individuals, collectivities and related spaces that make up the anarchic body in different parts of the world.
The interviews are a valuable contribution to the observation in detail and depth; they come, in a certain way, to broaden the view to give us feedback among comrades and to debate with perspectives and projections, that although they may be different, they converge in the ideas and practices of freedom against all authority.
Without further ado, we have in this first venture of dialogues the comrades of Espacio Fénix.
1-How and when did Espacio Fénix arise, and what projects converge in the space?
Espacio Fénix was born in the middle of the pandemic, at the beginning of 2021, in the midst of a series of ridiculous mobility restrictions and increased police intervention under the excuse of controlling and preventing the spread of covid-19.
Thus, a group of compañerxs got together, seeking to open a crack, a fissure within the asphyxiating panorama that was regulating everything, imposing the rhythm of power and where many seemed to be accommodating or waiting for the authority to give us “permission” to resume our lives.
We embarked on the idea of opening a physical space where comrades could converge, where anarchic material could circulate and where new comradeships could be woven and articulated. Thus in May 2021 we opened the doors of the space, we began to set up its infrastructure and in July we held our first activity in memory of compañero Santiago Maldonado.
Claustrofobia Ediciones, the Biblioteca Antiautoritaria Sacco y Vanzetti and various anarchic individualities converge in the space.
2-The “Ciclos de Cine” (Film Cycles) is the tool you have used the most to carry out activities. What is the significance for you of the screening of films, documentaries, etc.?
We started with the film cycles in October 2021 and we have not stopped every Tuesday, month after month, grouping the films by specific themes, seeking to stress our ideas and nourish our arguments with content, it is the beauty of the feedback between colleagues with diverse experiences and views.
From the very beginning, we proposed the screening of films as an excuse to sit down and converse, because after each screening, the central part of the activity comes to life, which is the discussion about what has been screened. There the words run, without leaders, where everyone can expose their dislikes, their liking or the results and analysis that is made of what we have seen. With this gesture we also seek to break the logic of passive spectators, of consumers, very typical of socially imposed roles.
In this sense, we have screened diverse audiovisual material, industry films, documentaries made by compañerxs, films that we like or dislike, always aiming at the discussion and tension between compas.
We do not seek to fill the cultural gaps of authority, nor to be the free panorama for those who lack resources; we seek, by different means and tools to spread our anarchic and anti-authoritarian ideas/actions, therefore the film cycles are just one more tool we choose.
Ciclo de Cine March 2024Ciclo de Cine November 2021
3-Regarding the written material, what is the importance and power that you perceive in it?
The written material certainly has another power, another depth and transcendence, of course the spoken thought is important, but writing allows the ordering of ideas, so as to be able to reflect more carefully on what is going to be exposed and to assimilate/discuss more deeply on what is read.
In a present where immediacy, image culture, the digestible and pyrotechnical, where almost the medium is the message, emptying of content many of our tools, writing/reading is a weapon, which can also serve as a refuge, where to continue polishing and sharpening our ideas.
The written material is an instrument that impels us to grow, to argue and continually revise our positions, widening our views, shining light where there was darkness.
On the other hand, it is necessary to say that written material has always accompanied anarchists, as propaganda for the dissemination of ideas, it is an effective tool to enter into dialogue with more comrades wherever they are: in the street, in prison, or other territories. It is important because it nurtures individual thinking, as well as possible collective discussions.
The written material as propaganda can bring together comrades and depending on the objectives and projections that we have, we can realize initiatives of various kinds. In the same way that we can find ourselves on the path of anarchic struggle, we can also distance ourselves from people who spread anarchist propaganda of other tendencies, for us those who are called to participate in the electoral circus, appeal to platform organization, dream of unity and large federations and those who reject legitimate political insurrectional violence – to give just a few examples – puts us in another place on the sidewalk and in several cases as enemies.
4-There are political-cultural spaces that coexist peacefully with power, while others attract police attention. Why do you think this happens? Are there more dangerous ideas-practices? If so, what would these be?
We don’t think this was the intention of the question, but it is worth clarifying to avoid pejorative atmospheres. For us, anti-power spaces/ideas/practices (truly anti-authoritarian and anarchic, leaving out and fighting the bullshit of “popular power”) by definition do not coexist peacefully neither with power, nor with authority, nor with the police and their investigators of all kinds.
Police eyes and ears are always there, to believe otherwise is naive and dangerous. They let themselves be seen or directly attack depending on conjunctures or panoramas that mark a change of rhythm.
In this sense, it is not the police harassment that defines our comrades’ ties -it is defined by our ideas, values and projections- because valuable initiatives that are undoubtedly a contribution to the anarchic tide, may not receive the police onslaught in an evident and grotesque way and not for that reason be considered “legal”, “innocent” or in any way aspire to coexist peacefully with the power. For example, at present there are activities that do not receive police interference, but that 3 or 4 years ago were seen as a danger and received harassment; we are talking about common pots or self-defense activities. It does not change the activity or the background, but it changes the perception of power or the effect it seeks to achieve as a chain reaction (fear, disarticulation, etc.).
Now, it is important to emphasize that these types of practices carried out by those in power are part of their work, and must be understood as such. They have always existed and will continue to exist, we do not say this in an alarmist way, much less to call for immobility or to “disappear” from certain spaces. Simply because it must be clear, those who consciously decide to undertake a confrontational path to power and propagate it in multiple ways, may encounter those enemy dynamics, therefore, the consequences must be assumed. Continue reading “Chile: Interview with Espacio Fénix EN/ES”→
This is Toby Shone, an anarchist imprisoned in the operation Adream which was an antiterrorist investigation against the counter-information project 325. I am calling from a prison in northwest England, it’s a long term, high security prison, and the fact that we can steal these moments is very important.
As you may already know, Operation A-dream was a repressive attack by the UK state in which 3 collective housing projects, a family home and storage unit were raided by cops. I was accused of being an administrator of 325.nostate, which earned me 4 terrorist charges: section 2 (distribution of terrorist publications), section 15 (funding terrorism) and two counts of section 58 (possession of information which is likely to be useful for terrorist purposes). I was also accused of several direct actions and membership of FAI, ELF and ALF. Hundreds of police were involved in the simultaneous raids and despite this, only one of the comrades were briefly detained and subsequently released for lack of evidence. It’s clear through the conditions of imprisonment I am held under and the constant monitoring that an active investigation continues with tailings and surveillance of comrades on the outside along with observation of anarchist social spaces.
Why is this taking place? It’s because anarchism is a threat to the existing technocratic order, our direct-action groups have a palpable reality in however minimal way in comparison to the task to be done, and the counter-information constellation continues to shine in the dark nights and become easier to use and navigate. Anarchist publishing is viewed as being an unacceptable endeavour by the police and intelligence services. Reporting on anarchist direct action, social struggles, and uprisings because it forms a narrative of subversion is arguably targeted with as much repression as that towards those who carry out the deeds that are being reported. It’s a strategy which has been in existence for a very long time. In the case of Operation Adream, the police was scared of the explicit anarchist insurrectionalist and anti-civilization rhetoric combined with the distribution of electronic and paper publications. During the interrogations a particular concern of the detectives was the purpose of anarchist paper publication. All the electronic documents have a digital forensic signature known as the hash value which can be tracked across the internet and devices even if deleted from those devices. Paper publications on the other hand, cannot be tracked as they are distributed – an investigation into them requires material forensics and a traditional police enquiry: this needs more resources, money, and personnel and especially the underground publishing initiatives which may have an irregular schedule of publishing and “informal” methods of distribution.
This brings us back to the purpose of anarchist publications: paper copies exist and have the power through being passed hand to hand to have an impactful material reality. They also accumulate forensic traces, the books, magazines, and pamphlets we are talking of, dangerous ideas, which can inspire our lives. Their time duration is different from those digital, and we can view that accordingly. With our publications, even if they are doomed to be in university libraries, mainstream bookshops, or worse, museums and art galleries, they always remain controversial and even illegal in some cases. Their purpose is social war and the destruction of the State. In the investigation files of Operation Adream, dozens of anarchist publications were cited many of which we may take for granted, that are freely available at anarchist bookfairs, squats, social centres and stalls at events. Yet to the police, special unit, and prosecutors these publications form part of an amorphous conspiracy aimed at overthrowing the establishment, which is correct, but not exactly in the perverse way that they wish to interpret it. To explain, we are often confronted by the repressive model that has a special function ascribed to theorists and writers, that of “leadership”. They are accused of giving orders and instructions and then cells or cadres then carry out those orders. I don’t need to tell you that this is an offense to anarchist practice, but it was a clear line of questioning put to me by the counter terrorist division. Does possession of 325 magazine indicate membership of an organization? Does that organization execute actions? And is that organisation part of a larger terrorist infrastructure? These are the types of questions bounced at me. With this scheming, marionettes of repression are formed, arranged in hierarchical structures which reflect their feverish minds. So, in those interrogations the investigators focused in some parts on questioning me about administrative functions, decision making flows, statistics figures, target demographics, research and linguistics, or translations. To the latter the cops wanted to know who was responsible for the translations, how they were organized, and who decided what should be translated.
At what level does the level of repression equate to that of our actions? For me, the answer is straight forward. The level of repression is currently far beyond that of the anarchist direct action. It’s the nature of State’s repression to aim to be overwhelming and our struggle is still only an active minority. In the UK the silence and lack of action highlights the social living death. But it was not always this way. And the future remains unwritten. That’s why police infiltration will continue to try to prevent for ruptures and individual attacks. It’s impossible to separate Operation Adream from the consequences of over a decade of anarchist direct action and social riots in Bristol. Although those things are at low ebb currently, it doesn’t mean that it will remain so. Anarchism remains part of the fabric of this South-West region. And where the reports, communiques and analysis are published will remain high in the list of targets for the State. The hundreds if not thousands of publishers across the world, part of a connectivity of contemporary anarchism, add to our ability to stay relevant and expansive.
Huge changes are taking place in society, and mass discontent has the possibility to form into a needed vital resistance. The new anarchist critique of high technology is cited by various intelligence agencies, State and private, as having the threatening ability to infect the population with a deep anger of the digital future. This future being planned by the bosses is a vast surveillance state which is part of the cybernetic matrix, where machines are taking the place of humans, and the artificial intelligence has inserted itself into every place it can be situated. Likewise, we can see human beings are becoming more machine-like, and their environment is degraded and polluted. Increasingly we can talk about the fact that many complete failures are taking place in various social systems, due to the ecological collapse and economic and post-industrial transformation. Huge territories are rapidly changing from floods, wildfires, draughts and intense storms. Unprecedented challenges are coming very quickly with harsh effects on critical points pertaining to agriculture, migration, division of labour, geopolitical conflicts and so on. Our publications and counter-information networks are a direct way in which we can communicate our analysis and methods of organization. Repression recognizes the danger of the contagion of this message, and the narrative which we possess. To the extent that they illegalize our publications and try to impose exemplary sentences is only a means to and end for them. And this is what we have always faced. If we are effective, we meet repression, prison, death. That’s what many comrades face across the world right now. Essentially some of us have been living under surveillance and investigation for so long, everything we do could be considered as crime, simply existing. That’s worth writing about and when we read and know more about what others are confronting and how, we can gain our power.
Lastly, I want to talk about the censorship I am facing here. Since it’s been a consistent feature of my imprisonment and is also part of the topic we’re discussing. Many comrades face problems with their correspondence and receiving publications. This is not unusual. But it’s worth saying here that I’ve been denied access to the majority of my correspondence and books which I am being sent. Even though I am facing denials by the prison administration that this is taking place, it most certainly is. This is the strength of our newsletters, our books, our letters to catch with comrades, that they make the enemy afraid. In my case, I’m also being denied socialist, autonomous-marxist and communist papers and books, which have been sent to me by those in solidarity from the radical left, as well as books on black history, transformative justice, and prison abolition. The very few anarchist books I have managed to receive I hold them close to my heart, here in my cell. Freedom is written with ink and our blood, like it always has been and will be. Value your books, your newspapers, your letters sent and received, combative memory persists, and we pass it to each new generation without efforts alone.
I’ll finish here and so I thank you for your energy and your attention, and a strong hug to all, and especially those under repression for the written word. For from the words come deeds, and that is the topic we’ve encountered today. Love and rage, thank you.
During January 3, in different parts of the territory controlled by the State of Chile, barricades were erected and confrontations took place in a new commemoration (No. 16) of comrade Matías Catrileo, who in the context of territorial recovery and vindication, was assassinated in the former Santa Margarita estate by Lance Corporal Walter Ramírez Inostroza.
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!
On Tuesday, January 3, 15 years were commemorated since the murder of the weichafe Matías Catrileo in 2008 at the hands of the carabinero Walter Ramírez while armed confrontations were taking place in a territorial recovery in the former Santa Margarita estate (owned by the Luchsinger families).
For this new day of memory and combat, there was the deployment of banners and propaganda in different parts of the local territory; a concentration in Alameda at the height of Cerro Huelen where barricades were set up and confrontations with Molotov;
After armed confrontations in Villa Francia, a policewoman was shot in her helmet and had to be taken to the hospital. In the following days, an investigation was carried out at the site to search for those responsible. Also a RED bus was stopped and completely burned by hooded comrades. Continue reading “Chile: Commemoration 15 years after the assassination of Matías Catrileo”→
“There are people you love and you don’t know how it happened, you may have loved them almost at the beginning of knowing them, or you may have loved them over time, or you may have thought you didn’t love them and then discovered you loved them. or you thought you didn’t love them and you have discovered that you loved them when they are no longer there, because of the emptiness they leave behind”.
Words one year after the departure of our most courageous fighter. Luisa Toledo.
“To be flowers in the mountains of freedom instead of roses in the garden of obedience!”
How can we measure in a few words a whole life of combat, because Luisa’s life was precisely that, the irreducible story of a compañera who knew early on the pain and the paths of death but who was able to give us so much life, love and rebellion.
From this side, it is difficult for us to say that pain is a revolutionary emotion because pain by itself can have a terrifying, intimidating and dispersing effect. The death of Luisa and Manuel’s children* shook us to our core because they were irreparable losses in the ranks of the irreparable losses in the ranks of those of us who seek total liberation, yet, generation after generation we took up the baton of the combative memory with ascents of rage, courage and conviction. Continue reading “Chile: Tribute one year after the departure of our bravest fighter Luisa Toledo”→
