For Mutual Aid & Solidarity
Part II: Two more video clips for worldwide destructive anarchy. ‘Armed Joy’ + ‘Black International’. First clip narration is from Alfredo M. Bonanno‘s seminal Armed Joy. One of the most important pamphlets of the late 20th Century, for which Alfredo was imprisoned in Italy. The book has been translated into many languages and continues to circulate. The message of the book is as vitally urgent today as it was when it was first published. Second clip honours our slain anarchist comrades and our internationalist tendency of attack. This civilization will be ruins…
For practical black anarchy.
In this fourth interview, we engaged in a dialogue with our anarchist comrade Francisco Solar, acting as a bridge to spread his words and delve deeper into various topics and contexts of interest. His perspective and participation in grassroots projects are vitally important, as they break with the inaction that prison seeks to impose. Throughout this conversation, we address not only aspects related to his personal experience in prison, but also broader political reflections on the ongoing struggles and challenges facing anarchist circles.
1.- How are you doing now? Could you tell us a little about your experience in La Gonzalina prison? What differences do you see between the prison systems in Europe and Chile?
Almost a year ago, I left the maximum security wing where I had spent almost five years and moved to a high security wing with a normal regime, which basically means eight hours of yard time and the possibility of conjugal visits.
Based on the above, my situation is clearly more favorable, as I am not subject to the restrictions of a maximum security regime. However, sharing my daily life with fellow anarchists and subversives who were already in this unit makes prison life much more bearable. Escaping at times from the harmful authoritarian dynamics that exist among prisoners and trying to practice relationships that are contrary to these is a constant challenge and struggle that involves constant questioning. It is clear that we are not an island within this unit; we deal with contradictions and obviously sometimes reproduce behaviors that we say we reject. However, our dynamics, those of the anarchist and subversive prisoners, are different from those of the rest of the prisoners. Our relationships are not based on the stark authoritarianism of the other prisoners, and that is evident.
My daily routine consists of playing sports in the yard, talking and walking with my compañeros, and reading. As I have pointed out in other writings, it is important to have a daily routine, which, at least in my case, allows me to maintain a certain mental clarity and avoid falling into prison despair.
The differences between the Chilean prison system and that of Spain lie mainly in control. The Spanish prison system has managed to discipline life inside prisons through constant and prolonged adjustments to its control strategies. Through the FIES (Ficheros de Internos de Especial Seguimiento, Special Investigation and Security Unit) and dispersion, the Prison Service has pacified Spanish prisons, even managing to turn prisoners into their own jailers, as can be seen in the increasingly numerous “respect modules.”
Although the Chilean prison system is moving towards exercising control in the “Spanish” (or European) manner, the truth is that it is still a long way from achieving this. The control mechanisms are much more precarious and ineffective, which leads, among other things, to the establishment of certain “rules” imposed by the prisoners themselves within prison life. These rules are based on extreme authoritarianism that produces and reproduces relationships of outright slavery among the prisoners themselves. If solidarity was once present in these dynamics, today such relationships have been virtually relegated to make way for ostentation and the aforementioned authoritarianism that makes prison life a hostile environment. Continue reading “$hile: Interview with anarchist prisoner Francisco Solar”
From: La Zarzamora
On Monday, November 3rd, the trial against Aldo and Lucas Hernandez came to an end, with both being sentenced to 21 and 12 years in prison, respectively, after more than three months of hearings, in which the authorities attempted to use all their power to achieve an exemplary punishment for both brothers.
On July 21st of this year, amid protests and multiple solidarity actions, the lengthy trial against Aldo and Lucas Hernandez began at the Center for (In)Justice in Santiago. The prosecution, made up of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Chilean Gendarmerie, initially demanded intolerably excessive sentences, ranging from 20 years in prison for Lucas to 90 years in prison for Aldo Hernandez.
Subsequently, after the verdict was read on October 3, the prosecutors requested a sentence of 32 years and 1,100 days for Aldo and a sentence of 18 years and 800 days for Lucas, while Aldo’s defense requested a sentence of 26 years and Lucas’s defense requested a sentence of 12 years. Finally, on November 3, Aldo was sentenced to 21 years and Lucas to 12 years.
The sentences, set out in a document of more than 400 pages, referred to three incidents: 1) the attack on the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie in December 2021; 2) the raid on a residence in Loncura; and 3) the raid on a residence in La Victoria.
Aldo Hernandez was found guilty of the attack on the Gendarmerie Headquarters but acquitted of the crimes of minor injuries to prison guards and the crime of receiving stolen goods. He was also found guilty in relation to the items found in the raid on Loncura ( incident 2) but was acquitted of all the crimes he was charged with in relation to the raid on the home in La Victoria ( incident 3). Lucas, for his part, was convicted of most of the crimes related to the residence in the La Victoria neighborhood, but was acquitted of the crimes of manufacturing weapons and manufacturing explosive devices. Continue reading “$hile: After more than three months, the trial against brothers Lucas and Aldo Hernandez comes to an end”
(Chile) Brotherly words from prison, before the trial against Aldo and Lucas Hernández
Words by Francisco Solar
To greet comrades Aldo and Lucas Hernandez in this difficult stage of the trial against them is, once again, to validate the insurrectional action. It is to support and understand the necessity of the forceful action for which Aldo is accused. An action that, by the way, shook the daily life inside this prison. An action that, like few others, made solidarity be felt in all its breadth.
The judicial spectacle is prepared, the anti-anarchist Prosecutor already has all his cards ready to return to condemn anarchists of action to harsh sentences, however, in the face of this adverse panorama, they will find themselves with dignified and whole comrades assumed in a life of combat as they have well demonstrated during these years of confinement. Aldo’s situation has been complicated by being classified and locked up, these last months, in a maximum security module where it is not clear when he will be able to get out.
All the strength for Aldo and Lucas with the certainty that no sentence is eternal and knowing that every action is worth it.
Aldo and Lucas to the streets!
Let the prisons explode!
Francisco Solar
La Gonzalina Prison – Rancagua
June 2025
Words by Joaquín García
Before the beginning of the trial against comrades Aldo and Lucas;
In the next few days a new theater of Power will begin: two comrades will begin the final stage of the judicial inquisition, the last media feast; after this, nothing is public….
I know, it is clear to me, that they will face this stage with all the solidity that characterizes them, firm in their convictions, as they have shown in and out of jail, in word and action.
In times when news, ideas and initiatives seem to have a superfluous, instantaneous and innocuous character, you have given a lesson of fortitude and antagonistic solidarity, you are and have been truly comrades to count on, who could doubt your commitment? How many others have put their will at the disposal of solidarity? Or of vengeance?
They are exceptional compañeros! And that is a treasure that will always accompany them.
Joaquin Garcia
July 2025
The anarchist comrade Francisco Solar comes out of isolation after 5 years in punishment.
After spending almost 5 years in solitary confinement, touring different maximum security modules and facing the recent hardening of the prison regime that kept him with 21 hours of confinement in the cell, without TV or radio and with restrictions on visits, today we have news regarding his situation in prison.
After successive hearings and technical advice, the gendarmerie has run out of excuses to keep the comrade in this punishment regime, being forced to transfer him.
Today the anarchist comrade manages to get out of the circuit and labyrinth of isolation and maximum security modules, being transferred to module 33 inside La Gonzalina Prison, where other anarchist and subversive prisoners are held.
Solidarity and complicity with the anarchist comrade Francisco Solar!
Solidarity and complicity with those who attack power and repression!
Via & translated by Abolition Media
Source: Informativo Anarquista
Francisco has remained in Maximum Security modules for almost 5 years, since he was arrested in 2020 accused of attacks against repressors and the powerful.
Once sentenced, the isolation regime became even harsher, remaining for more than 6 months with a regime of strict isolation, restrictions on visits, 21 hours of confinement, no TV or radio.
By March the administrative authorities will decide whether or not the comrade will remain in solitary confinement. We call to remain attentive to the next information.
Facing the hardening of the prison regime: Solidarity and action!
Source: Informativo Anarquista
Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)
Article translated and published in Spanish in “Tinta de Fuga,” periódico anárquico contra las prisiones y la sociedad carcelaria, no. 7, segundo semestre 2024.
PHYSIOPATHOLOGY OF THE PRISON MONSTER:
POISONS AND ANTIDOTES
Stories of mice and men
In pharmacology laboratories, antidepressants are tested with an experiment of exquisitely human cruelty: a mouse, drugged or “nature,” is submerged in a glass cylinder half-filled with water and the time of desperate swimming before immobility overtakes is calculated.
Usually the rodent without psychotropic support tries to climb along the cylinder and jump for 5 minutes before giving up; antidepressants lengthen desperate swimming attempts by a few minutes before resignation overtakes.
Stripped of the cynicism it conveys, the Porsolt or “desperate swimming” test is a useful allegory to illustrate the current situation in Italic jails and this summer’s trickle of suicides and riots in the overcrowded, dilapidated communal sections1, a charcoal of forced cohabitation in cramped spaces, in a word humiliating human dignity: drug-induced apathy and depression, the ubiquitous “therapy,” desperate attempts at reaction that often take self-harming forms, backyard hegemonies, desolidarization, childish brawls, where there is a constant pouring of suggestions and models from TV dramas, which is then the lobotomizing diversion that overcomes “therapy” in the pervasive echoing from cell to cell.
To the pathological infantilization of the individual, the prison works methodically, depriving him not only of freedom of movement, but also of that of minimal choice in the course of the day: the idiotic and incomprehensible regulations, the extreme bureaucratization of every minutia of daily survival. Depersonalizing mechanisms that deprive one’s humanity, the application of which essentially serves to establish the pressure of the repressive structure (and the individual’s capacity for resistance or adaptation), are handled aseptically, feeding a meat grinder where reactions can cover the entire range between anesthetized apathy and revolt as an assertion of subsistence in life rather than claim.
This Dantesque bedlam is overlaid and counterbalanced by the fragmentation and consequent isolation of differentiated sections and circuits. In most compas one finds oneself as well as in small numbers, divided from the rest of humanity in chains, locked between high-security sections and, even more isolated, in 41bis2 circuits.
High-security sections have an additional internal separation to avoid contact between those accused of “terrorism,” domestic and international (AS2) and those of “mafia-style criminal conspiracy” (AS3) and related offenses, to avert, in the eyes of the legislature, monstrous criminal chimeras due to cross-species interbreeding3. Or, more prosaically, even if only to prevent the spread of a basic knowledge of one’s rights as a prisoner, a subject on which political prisoners are normally better versed, as they come from more literate backgrounds on the subject and are more prone to the consequent dialectic.
In AS, with the rubber stamp of the “mafia” or “terrorism” formula, an opposite strategy is applied to the overcrowded common sections: separation between prisoners, removal from the place of residence to make contact with family members more difficult, reduced contact with the outside world (fewer interviews, 4 hours monthly, and fewer phone calls, 2 monthly of 10 minutes each), heavier sentences, with less if any possibility of alternative sentences under the aegis of 4bis o.p. 4.
Then there is 41bis, the bottom of the well, the bottleneck of the repressive funnel where it is easier to get in than to get out, in the highest degree5, with a further exacerbation of solitary confinement, intracarceral and extracarceral: a one-hour interview per month with partitioned glass and audio-video recording; almost total postal censorship; limitation of items allowed in the cell, including books and music CDs, the purchase of which is in any case made very difficult, if not impossible; one hour of air time per day in cramped, netted yards and with socializing with up to three other prisoners (in fixed groups selected by management).
This prologue, unpleasant, is to explain a minimum the difficulties and contradictions experienced, as antiauthoritarians, in facing and fighting prison these days in these shores.
The strategy of isolation, sterilization of human contacts and rescission of solidarity networks is obviously not an Italian prerogative but, as our Chilean comrades are well understanding, a practice that is spreading and being perfected there as well, as in the aggravation of Francisco’s conditions of isolation and the restructuring of the Alta Seguridad. Just as everywhere the restructuring of detention facilities combines punitive logics toward the individual refractor with those of a “Fordist” efficiency of preventive repression aimed at creating compartmentalized and incommunicative levels to more effectively and aseptically manage control, inside as well as outside. Continue reading “Anna Beniamino: Pathophysiology of the prison monster: poisons and antidotes (October 2024)”
PDF download link: [ENG] Blessed Is The Flame – Issue #3
(For those who wish to print the newspaper, see the instructions below.)
The 3rd issue of the anarcho-nihilist/insurrectionary newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame” has been published. Its pages contain reports of direct actions, claims of responsibility, texts, poems, and news from anarchist prisoners and trials that were published in November and December 2024 in ten different languages across various parts of the world, or were sent to us via email and are being published for the first time. (Some of the texts published for the first time will also be uploaded as standalone posts on our blog, blessed-is-the-flame.espivblogs.net.)
Our goal is not only to break down the linguistic barriers that hinder information, solidarity, and the dissemination of propaganda by the deed on an international level but also to give counter-information a printed form. We believe it is crucial for counter-information to transcend the limits of the digital realm.
In an era of rapid developments, we unfortunately published the 3rd issue a bit later than we had planned, as this is the first time the newspaper is officially published in seven different languages: Greek, English, Spanish, Indonesian, French, Italian, and German. A new post will include links to all these translations, once they are published on the respective counter-information platforms.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all comrades—both within Greece and abroad—who contribute by translating, offering financial support, and enabling the circulation of this newspaper in different parts of the world. Anyone interested in helping translate “Blessed Is The Flame” into even more languages can contact us at: blessedistheflame@riseup.net.
For those interested in printing the newspaper, ask a trusted print shop to print it in A5 format as a colored booklet. In a few weeks from now, the English and the Spanish editions of the newspaper will also be available in an alternative format appropriate for the US paper sizing system.
For printing, please download the PDF directly from our website, as the download link may be updated in case we detect minor formatting errors in the file that may have overlooked.
As part of the call for a Black November in memory of comrade Kevin Garrido, a group of young anarcho-nihilists set up barricades and clashed with police near a secondary school in Chile during the first weeks of November. At the scene they threw molotovs for black memory, in solidarity with the prisoners of social war, in solidarity with the comrades of “INBA”, who were hit by fire while making Molotov cocktails in the toilets of a secondary school in Santiago, Chile. Also, among the molotovs thrown there is a call for solidarity with comrade Marianna M. and in memory of comrade Kyriakos Xymitiris.
The propaganda read:
“MEMORY AND REVENGE FOR OUR DEAD!
Black November for Kevin Garrido
Down with the cages of civilized society
Free our imprisoned comrades in Chile and the world, Joaquín García, the prisoners of the July 6 case, Monica and Francisco, Aldo and Lukas, Ayekan and every prisoner of war, in the streets!
Solidarity with the comrades of INBA, action and mutual aid!
Solidarity and action with comrade Marianna M. who is hospitalized in Athens.
Kevin Garrido, Kyriakos Xymitiris and each of our dead present!”
(Information and photos were collected from social networks)