Gustavo Rodriguez

Mexico: In memory of Alfredo M. Bonanno

Posted on 2024/02/05 by darknights

In memory of Alfredo M. Bonanno
(Catania 04/Mar/1937 – Trieste 06/Dec/2023)

…no one is totally the fruit of himself and each person, individual, it is certain that he is within a framework of relationships that can provoke him and affect his reactions, emotions and even the logic brought to that point.

– Antonio Lombardo

Before I began to think about these lines, I had given myself the task of searching and compiling data to write -with the intention of leaving a clue- about some of the many insurrectionary anarchist actions in contemporary Mexico that, although they have been sporadic, have not been recorded by the “official” historiography, either from “our side” or from the academy. The year 2023 marked the sixtieth (60) anniversary of some small attacks in the city carried out by the Libertarian Youth of Mexico, but I left it on the back burner, because I was taken by surprise by the news of the death of comrade Alfredo.

I did not have the opportunity to exchange impressions with him, the closest I got was when I briefly collaborated in the coordination -ten (10) years ago- of the Informal Anarchist Days / International Symposium, in Mexico City. [i] I did not consider it necessary to have a direct approach -because I refuse to pay homage to personality-, since in my opinion everything said about the “insurrectional project” (including the debate around insurrectionalism), was already circulating in our language since the beginning of the year 2000 in some anarcho-virtual forums, and to a lesser extent, in printed form his ideas were also circulating in some publications although only short articles or one or another lecture were disseminated. Unfortunately, no complete text of this tendency could be found; for this reason, in 2005 I acquired several copies of the Cuadernillos Incendiarios collection from the Chilean region, in order to distribute them in these latitudes.

Insurrection vs. Revolution

…there are people who are so miserable that even talking about them makes you dirty. And then, in the society in which we live and with which we have to deal with; we have many other more powerful (and even more serious) enemies and adversaries that we can easily overlook the “bites” of some “mistake”.

– Gianfranco Bertoli to Alfredo M. Bonanno

In spite of the little dissemination of these contributions in our region -which by then were no longer a novelty-, in 2001 informal actions began in different states of the country. At the time, these first attacks would not be claimed. This shows that the “insurrectional project” was already being debated in small groups among a few comrades and was being put into practice by concretizing the praxis. That is to say, from the need for action and, from the experience acquired in a sequence of attacks, theory was generated which, in turn, fed back into action to later distribute in print the new theoretical contributions and consolidate the debate through the international exchange of similar positions. Finally, some Bonannist postulates were abandoned and the attacks began to be vindicated by the different informal groups in operation. Continue reading “Mexico: In memory of Alfredo M. Bonanno” →

From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone

Posted on 2022/09/11 by darknights

I’ve previously written about the need to recreate an Atlantic bridge, based on international revolutionary solidarity and reciprocal knowledge, that moves towards affinity and direct action in support of our imprisoned comrades. Since then, I was recently visited by a comrade from Anarchist Black Cross Philadelphia here at the G4S facility in which I’m held. G4S is originally an American company, Wackenhut, which has pioneered the private prison and security industry all over the world. As part of our discussion between the comrade from ABC Philadelphia and myself, we spoke of the need to prevent our groups and commons becoming inward-looking and closing in on themselves in microscopic scenes and myopia. The anglophone world is particularly susceptible to this trend, although it is not solely confined to English-speaking territories. How can we translate rhetoric into practical activity? Words and deeds must coincide, and that is what?

For too long, a kind of one-way discourse has been in effect, breached by too few valiant individuals and groups. We can speak of a loss of solidarity flowing across the Atlantic between north and south, east and west. Without wanting to advocate any kind of anarcho-tourism or the colonial approach of the wholesale export-import political programs of the activist left, I’m in favor of strengthening our international networks in the face of an increased technocratic authoritarianism. To remain locked up in our local areas without considering the struggles elsewhere is self-defeating, as repressive operations seek to confine us and stem our anarchic contagion specifically to promote sterility. Can we renew an Atlantic bridge that connects our tendencies, that connects the uprisings in the North American metropolises to those in Europe, Latin America and Asia? Can we join together the struggles of the long-term COINTELPRO prisoners with those elsewhere in the global prison industrial complex? Continue reading “From Coast to Coast: Open Letter by Anarchist Prisoner Toby Shone” →

Part IV: In Defense of Anarchist “Sectarianism”

Posted on 2022/06/01 - 2022/06/01 by darknights

Note of ANARQUÍA: This is the fourth part of a series of articles by comrade Gustavo Rodriguez, in response to the critiques of Marxism and some anarchist individualities, who seek revolutionary unity and label those of us who do NOT forget the objective and the path we must create for anarchy as a sect.

1. IN DEFENCE OF ASSOCIATIVE SPECIFICITY – ABOUT (INTRINSICALLY) ANARCHIC “SECTARIANISM
2. CONSULTING THE DICTIONARY: CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS OF “SECTARIANISM”.
3. THE MARXIAN CHURCH AGAINST ANARCHIST “SECTARIANISM”.

The Marxian religion was imposed in Russia by blood and fire with the Bolshevik coup d’état. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (alias Lenin) would be in charge of canonizing the dogma -glorifying its metaphysical character with ontological and metahistorical pretensions- and implementing it as a disciplinary instrument and tool of domination. As could not be otherwise, the institutional faith produced its high priests who, in the end, would turn out to be “more papist than the Pope”; reaching its dogmatic paroxysm with the rise of Soviet orthodoxy after 1930 and the development of the schools affiliated with Stalinism (read: most of the Marxian currents that were implanted in the so-called Third World). Certainly, in this context, the “struggle against sectarianism”¹ was exacerbated in the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Circus-trials, mass imprisonments, state surveillance and extrajudicial executions – by means of Cheka -,² were the response to “sectarianism” in the land of the “soviets” during 70 years of red fascism. Thousands of anarchists, critical Marxians, Mensheviks, social-revolutionaries and other “sychophants” went to the concentration camps created by Trotsky, accused of “sectarianism”. In those same extermination camps, the survivors of the Kronstadt massacre served their sentences, under the same accusation. In East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, China, North Korea, Mongolia, Cuba, Cambodia and Ethiopia, “sectarians” were persecuted and killed by their respective states/churches. Continue reading “Part IV: In Defense of Anarchist “Sectarianism”” →

In Defence of Associative Specificity – Part III: “The marxian church against anarchist “sectarianism”” by Gustavo Rodriguez

Posted on 2022/04/20 - 2022/04/20 by darknights

Concerning (Inherently) Anarchist “Sectarianism” Part I

Consulting the dictionary: concepts and definitions of “sectarianism” Part II

———————————————————————————

Part III: “The marxian church against anarchist “sectarianism””.

Anti-sectarian grammar achieved preeminence amidst the entanglements of the First International between 1864 and 1872. While during its first years the conceptual discrepancies between Proudhonians, Blanquists, Lassalleans and Marxists had been resolved without major tantrums within the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), in 1868 tensions increased with the incorporation of Bakunin and a large group of like-minded people. The anarchists went so far as to demolish all the economistic onanism of Saint Charlie and his acolytes, placing in their sights the “gravest evil”. That is to say, the State (in particular) and all authority (in general). Thus, they erected their strongest theoretical specificity on the assumption that property or, generically, the relationship with the means of production, was not the only and excluding factor of “class” domination, but that the very instances of domination – and the State in particular – were also mechanisms that generated social groups that could be considered privileged.

On top of all that, the anarchists defended the full autonomy of the different sections of the IWA against the statutory centralism of the General Council tooth and nail. This position provoked the definitive rupture with the Marxists during the celebration of the V Congress of the Association in 1872. The theoretical-practical positions were irreconcilable and markedly antagonistic. For Saint Charlie, the International had to be the centralizing and guiding organ of the “movement”; while for the Russian anarchist and his comrades, it had to be a planetary conspiracy lacking a directing organ, centred on the concrete individual and his freedom; capable of eradicating all authority from the face of the earth, even that which was instituted in the name of the proletariat. By placing individual freedom and voluntary and autonomous association “before the historical development of society”, they received the eternal condemnation of the marxian Church and were accused of being “sectarians”; becoming the target of the wrath of Saint Charlie and his fervent sacristans. Continue reading “In Defence of Associative Specificity – Part III: “The marxian church against anarchist “sectarianism”” by Gustavo Rodriguez” →

The Aroma of Fire: The Rage of Despair in a Tripolar World – Gustavo Rodríguez [I am Dynamite Editions]

Posted on 2021/12/17 - 2022/01/19 by darknights

“The sulphorous aroma of the combustion of petrol and is derivatives, causes an unmistakable olfactory sensation that incites a certain transitory state of euphoria and unconsciously sends us a succession of associated images that produce infinte pleasure: a burning precinct, a prison reduced to ashes, a conglomerate of charred atennas, a torched patrol car or a beautiful charred shopping centre. This becoming-fire -which lights up the night- causes a liberating commotion that no other means, no war machine, can bring about. A gesture is innovated that makes anarchy perceptible through the flames of devastation.”

– Gustavo Rodríguez

PDF: The Aroma of Fire: The Rage of Despair in a Tripolar World

I am Dynamite Editions present their first publication of the long awaited translation into English of our anarchist comrade, Gustavo Rodríguez’s ‘The Aroma of Fire: The Rage of Despair in a Tripolar World (Rethinking the struggle from the informal anarchic perspective)’.

With our first publication we begin our publishing project to promote the informal insurrectional anarchist praxis and Black Anarchy.

More than ever there is a need for analysis and critique of the past, present and future systems of domination, along with the struggles against them. This is our contribution to a newly evolving insurrectional conflict, a destructive end to the existent.

Future publications to come…

I am Dynamite Editions

iamdynamiteeditions[at]riseup.net

PS. Our delayed gratitude and ongoing anarchist complicity to all those comrades who helped us in the long hard journey to create this publication. Better late than never!

Consulting the dictionary: concepts and definitions of “sectarianism” Part ii by Gustavo Rodríguez

Posted on 2021/12/17 by darknights

First part can be read here: In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES

From anarquia.info, translated by Act for Freedom Now!

According to the Diccionario de uso del español¹ María Moliner,² it is defined as:

Sect: Doctrine taught by a teacher and followed by his adepts. Particularly, the doctrine and the group of its adepts. desp. Doctrine considered erroneous, or that departs from the traditional or official, and, especially, that which is considered pernicious for its followers: “Destructive sect”. A group of the followers of a sect.
Sectarian: -a (adv. sectarian) 1 adj. and n. (of) Follower of a certain sect. 2 Applied to one who fanatically follows a doctrine, and its attitude, opinions, etc. → *Intransigent, * partisan.
Sectarianism: m. Quality or attitude of sectarian.

If we consult the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language, it reveals that the noun “sect” (sectam) is the feminine of an obsolete participle of the Latin sequor (“to follow”) that comes from the Indo-European root *sekʷ-.³ The Oxford Latin Dictionary also agrees with this meaning.⁴ And, in the same vein, the Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary is also in agreement with this meaning; therefore, it is inferred that “the sect has as its first point of reference, not a particular doctrine, but […] membership to a group with a identity which is well-defined and distinct from the broader social environment […] The opposition is then manifested at the level of doctrine, morals, ritual and discipline and structuring of the group”⁵.

However, around this elucidation there are strong discrepancies, since the Indo-European root sek actually has three meanings that give rise to three Latin verbs: 1. secare (to blind/cut), 2. sequor (to follow), 3. siccare (to dry). The latter comes from the Latin word siccus (“dry”) which has a very different Indo-European root (*seik). However, secare or sectum (“to cut”), from which the Latin word sectio (sector/section/segment) derives, does seem to be related to the Latin and Spanish voice “secta”, as well as the verbs sequor, sequi, sequire (“to follow”, “to continue”, “sequence”). In this sense, the Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue Latine. Histoire des mots by Alfred Ernout and Antoine Meillet, offers us a certain “solution” by combining the verbs sequor (to follow) and siccus (“dry”), concluding that secta could rather derive from the verbal frequentative sector.⁶ In this regard, it is curious – without falling into wordplay – that the feminine noun “sedition”, which comes from the Latin seditio, seditionis (“estrangement”, “disunion”, “going far away”, “departure from an established power or a common march”), from which also comes “revolt”), although derived from a completely different Indo-European root (*ei, meaning “to go”), is closely related conceptually to the notion of “sect” understood as the “doctrine that departs from orthodoxy” or “sections itself from the established”.

In the religious context, these nominatives (“sect”, “sectarian” and “sectarianism”) are widely documented in the Jewish religion. Specifically, upon their return from exile (in the 6th century B.C.E.), the idea of a single God became popular among the Israelites and, hand in hand with this monotheistic conception, any group that departed from the religious hegemony began to be adjectivized as a “sect” or “faction”, considering it a “disloyal practice”. In this sense, the Bible mentions the Sadducees, Pharisees, Nazarenes and Christians as factions of Judaism. When they departed from the orthodox ideas and practices of Judaism, they were called “sectarians”. Continue reading “Consulting the dictionary: concepts and definitions of “sectarianism” Part ii by Gustavo Rodríguez” →

In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES

Posted on 2021/11/29 - 2021/11/29 by darknights

ES: APOLOGÍA A LA ESPECIFICIDAD ASOCIATIVA

“The International was founded in order to replace the Socialist or semi-Socialist sects by a real organisation of the working class for struggle. The original Statutes and the Inaugural Address show this at the first glance. On the other hand the Internationalists could not have maintained themselves if the course of history had not already smashed up the sectarian system. The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are (historically) justified, the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historic movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity al sects are essentially reactionary. […] And the history of the International was a continual struggle on the part of the General Council against the sects […] At the end of 1868 the Russian, Bakunin, entered the International with the aim of forming inside it a second International called the “Alliance of Social-Democracy,” with himself as leader. He – a man devoid of theoretical knowledge – put forward the pretension that this separate body was to represent the scientific propaganda of the International, which was to be made the special function of this second International within the International. His programme was a superficially scraped together hash of Right and Left […] atheism as a dogma to be dictated to the members, etc., and as the main dogma (Proudhonist), abstention from the political movement. This infant’s spelling-book found favour (and still has a certain hold) in Italy and Spain, where the real conditions of the workers’ movement are as yet little developed, and among a few vain, ambitious and empty doctrinaires in French Switzerland and Belgium. Resolutions I (2) and (3) and IX now give the New York committee legal weapons with which to put an end to all sectarian formations and amateur groups and if necessary to expel them.”

K. Marx, Letter to Friedrich Bolte, November 23, 1871. [1]

Since the defeat of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, reiteration is a frequent ocurrence in the Babellian context in which the life of the so-called “anarchist movement” painfully takes place.[2] As if it were “Groundhog Day” [3], we are condemned to repeat the same experience indefinitely. Time and again, the ideological displacements and the conceptualizations of others gain presence in our camp. Thus – again – the notions of “sect”, “sectarianism” and “sectarian” emerge in the debate. We don’t have the slightest chance of escaping from this vicious cycle. Like Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in the famous comedy, every day the same song is hammered into us (at six in the morning!), forced to repeat ourselves in an infinite cycle from which not even suicide saves us.

Perhaps, for those who come from the so-called “left” – who have happily already evolved into “libertarian” positions – and today share the same barricade side by side, these imprecations have always been there, close at hand. Ready to be wielded at the slightest provocation. So they assume that such curse words are part of our lexicon or that they are part of a kind of universal vocabulary that we have to use out of obligation.

For those of us who have been in the fight for some years, the feeling of déjà vécu caused by the remastering of this farcical operetta is inevitable. Indeed, it’s not the first time that we have to face these epithets and, definitely, it will not be the last. They are repeated as a mantra invoking the “crushing march of history” (Saint Charlie of Trier, dixit). The sad observation is that this liturgy even occurs in the ins and outs of the praxis —live and active today— of the Informal Anarchic Tendency (TIA). A tendency that has no place for uniforming practices, nor for repetition; that is to say, the attempts at fronts, nor the attempts at “tactical unity” and “collective responsibility.” Continue reading “In Defense of Associative Specificity by Gustavo Rodríguez EN/ES” →

Part Three: What’s happening in Cuba? An Anarchic look at the 11-J protests EN/ES

Posted on 2021/09/06 by darknights

ES: TERCERA PARTE: ¿QUÉ PASA EN CUBA? UNA MIRADA ANÁRQUICA DE LAS PROTESTAS DEL 11-J.

-Interview with comrade Gustavo Rodriguez (Third of three parts)

AI: To what extent was the 1959 revolution willing to destroy the system of domination and its protagonists determined to promote a Social Revolution?

First of all, it is necessary to examine thoroughly who were the forces in conflict in 1959; what were the motivations and; above all, the ideological limitations of those involved. Of course, this is an exercise fraught with difficulties for those who continue to be fascinated by the official mythology1 and; equally difficult for those who -from different points of view, even dissidents- cling to the supposed tendencies raised by certain protagonists (Camilo Cienfuegos, Hubert Matos, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Pastorita Núñez, for example), as if trying to decipher (at a distance of six decades) what would have been the attitude of this or that character in a specific situation or whether or not he or she was right at a given time and what would have been his or her action if he or she had greater political weight in the process. In that tenor, the legends of Camilo “anarchist”; Matos “socialist”; Che Guevara “Trotskyist” and Pastorita “feminist” arose. All dilettante speculations that in no way help to understand what those figures hypothetically opposed to revolutionary autocracy and bureaucratization represented. Unfortunately, these digressions do not manage to escape from the legends that must be demolished. Neither Cienfuegos was “anarchist” nor Matos “socialist” nor Che “Trotskyist” and, Pastorita, much less “feminist”. By the way, the latter came from the old nucleus of Fidel Castro’s nationalist militancy2 ; as did Huber Matos, Ñico López, Haydée Santamaría, among other members of the “Orthodox Youth” of the Cuban People’s Party (Orthodox)3 who would found the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement (MR-26-7).

The opposition to the Batista dictatorship was made up of a coalition of traditional nationalist (anti-imperialist) parties4 and the so-called “revolutionary movements” which -from diverse and equally nationalist perspectives- were articulated in the course of the struggle. Among the traditional parties, the following stood out: the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Authentic), which emerged after the nationalist revolution of 1933; the Cuban Orthodox People’s Party, -established in 1947 by Eduardo Chibás, after his break with the “authentic” ones-; the Cuban Revolutionary Nationalist Party (Authentic), which was formed in 1947 by Eduardo Chibás, after his break with the “authentic” ones; the Revolutionary Nationalist Party (PNR) of José Pardo Llada (co-founder of the Orthodox Party) and; the Free People’s Party, instituted by Márquez Sterling and a group of assailants of the Moncada barracks who had broken with Castro and precociously warned: “We come from armed struggle, exile and clandestinity. We have shed blood […] and we invite you to break the hateful conspiracy of silence and fear. Against Batista. Against the Dictatorship. Against the useless blood that serves as a pedestal for new pernicious dictators “5 . Among the “revolutionary movements”, the following stood out: the July 26th Revolutionary Movement (MR-26-J) led by Fidel Castro; the Revolutionary Directorate (DR), created by José Antonio Echeverría – assassinated during the ill-fated assault on the Palace – and led by Faure Chaumón; the Federation of University Students (FEU) and the Radical Liberation Movement, founded by Amalio Fiallo and several “moncadistas” who also distanced themselves from Castro’s dictatorship. Continue reading “Part Three: What’s happening in Cuba? An Anarchic look at the 11-J protests EN/ES” →

Part Two – What’s happening in Cuba? An Anarchic look at the 11-J protests EN/ES

Posted on 2021/09/05 - 2021/09/06 by darknights

ES: SEGUNDA PARTE – ¿QUÉ PASA EN CUBA? UNA MIRADA ANÁRQUICA DE LAS PROTESTAS DEL 11-J.

-Interview with comrade Gustavo Rodriguez (Second of three parts)

AI: Do you think a U.S. military intervention instigated by the annexationist yearnings of the Cuban exile is possible?

To speak in the singular of “Cuban exile” is to refuse to see the whole picture. We must refer to “the exiles” and, not only for chronological but even “ideological” reasons. One should mention, for example, a first exile, which originated in December 1958 and the first half of 1959, with the flight of high-ranking army and police officers of the Batista dictatorship (most of whom -including Batista- did not obtain visas to enter the U.S.). Another one immediately after, between December 1959 and January 1961, where the aristocracy and the upper classes of the society (sectors that, curiously, had financed the struggle of the Catholic nationalists to overthrow “the black man” who governed the Island in an apocryphal way 1 ). A third wave would follow, which originated between 1962 and 1965, with the departure of the middle class. During those years, Cuban anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists also went into exile; some of them after having served “political imprisonment”. The story would be similar for a large group of rebels who had fought against Batista -including Castro’s former comrades of the 26th of July Movement- who opposed the Stalinist turn of “their” Revolution. From 1966 to 1979, the first leftist dissidents fled in dribs and drabs. 1980 would be a turning point for Cuban migration with the mass departure of the “scum” (an epithet used to designate thousands of artists and intellectuals, considered until then “sons and daughters of the Revolution”). In 1994, a new chapter was opened with the flight of thousands of ” rafters” who risked their lives in order to escape from the “socialist paradise”. These last two migrations stand out for the high incidence of Afro-Cubans from the poorest strata. And, of course, with the different waves of exiles, there is also evidence of diverse political-ideological positions, from the conservative right to the ultra-left (including libertarian socialists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Stalinists, Luxemburgists and “pure” Marxists), without forgetting the more hackneyed expressions of that same National Socialism which, from the extremes of the pendulum, aspire to a Castroism without Castro. A reliable example of that political-ideological diversity was the customary edition of the anarchist magazines Guángara Libertaria and A Mayor, in the heart of Miami.

Once these nuances have been highlighted, it only remains for me to underline that the only thing that gives a certain “unity” to the different exiles is the unison rejection of the dictatorship. This common denominator, in fact, has never exceeded the limits of a local industry (very lucrative) that is far from being a binding force capable of capitalizing some political leadership and, much less, consolidating a uniform and monolithic ideological vision (Fortunately!). And this is where the theoretical-practical heterogeneity comes in, which influences behaviors as disparate as the choice of the method of struggle or the geographical site we choose as residence. Of course, in this extensive political-ideological plot, there is also the annexationist position. However, it is necessary to point out that this political figure had a certain prominence in the 19th century and, at present, it is reduced to an entelechy fabricated by the dictatorship. “Annexationism” is significantly small and caricatured. It is so buffoonish that it leaves no doubt that those who express it -on this side of the Florida Straits- are probably on the payroll of the Cuban State. Continue reading “Part Two – What’s happening in Cuba? An Anarchic look at the 11-J protests EN/ES” →

What’s happening in Cuba? An Anarchic look at the 11-J Protests. Interview with comrade Gustavo Rodríguez (First of three parts) EN/ES

Posted on 2021/08/06 - 2021/09/06 by darknights

Source & Translated by : Anarquía Info

ES: ¿QUÉ PASA EN CUBA? UNA MIRADA ANÁRQUICA DE LAS PROTESTAS DEL 11-J

-Interview with comrade Gustavo Rodríguez (First of three parts)

These days we have received a torrent of statements generated in the mass disinformation media about the recent protests in Cuba. On the one hand, there are those formulated by the Cuban officialdom and the leftists of the world in the name of anti-imperialism and in defense of what they still call the «Cuban revolution», on the other hand, there are the traditional right-wing media that accuse the «communist dictatorship» of the lack of freedoms and rights.

The Cuban Communist Party and its international acolytes call for solidarity with the regime, arguing that they are facing a new intervention of «Yankee imperialism» which is taking advantage of the disastrous economic conditions caused by more than sixty years of blockade and the greatest health crisis in its history. While the supporters of the free market and the right-wing forces claim that what is happening in the country is the result of its citizens’ oppression due to the lack of opportunities in the socialist regimes.

In these times of post-truth we are suspicious of all these positions, but also, as anarchists, we are not only suspicious of these channels of manipulation but we identify positions that are contrary to our praxis and enemies of our desire for total liberation.

Unfortunately, the information we have received so far with a clear anarchist position from the territory controlled by the Cuban state is minimal. That is why we chose to interview an anarchist voice with whom we identify and asked him to share with us his perspective of the facts from his experience as an exile of Cuban origin, in order to better understand what is happening in Cuba.

From AnarquíaInfo (AI) we have always given place to the reflections of our comrade Gustavo Rodríguez (GR), hosting in our blog almost all his contributions to the informal anarchist tendency and to the development of contemporary insurrectional anarchism, reaffirming the black path of Anarchy and promoting permanent insurrection through an international conspiracy that concretizes the Black International in our days.

AI: Comrade, for us it is a pleasure that you have agreed to this conversation. For some time we had been contemplating doing an interview with you but more focused on issues related to the perspective of the informal and insurrectional anarchist tendency, and your emphasis on «the need to abandon all that is alien». This concern became even greater after reading your last contribution (Against The Tide), where you state that we anarchists «really are «sectarian», «purist», «intransigent» and even «totalitarian».» However, with the passing of time, the revolts in Cuba arose and this made us reformulate this interview, but leaving pending for a future occasion the approach of these crucial issues for the development of a new anarchist paradigm. And well, on this particular occasion, we would like you to comment on your impressions about what is happening in Cuba, with the intention of clarifying things and forming a criterion more in line with our praxis. With this interest in mind, we have formulated the following questions:

AI: What is happening in Cuba?

GR: Comrades, the immense pleasure is mine. First of all, I would like to thank you -for a long time now- for promptly hosting and disseminating my contributions on your website. I also thank you for the opportunity to expose my views on the Cuban situation; however, I declare myself incompetent to answer your first question in all the extension it demands. However, this plea does not arise from the impossibility of being present in the country and/or not having participated in this struggle -there are those who even being there have been unable to take the pulse of the insurrectional moment they are living- but by the vast diversity of perspectives generated by these events from many different points of view, including the different lenses that, in one way or another, claim to be libertarianism and insular anarchism.

Undoubtedly, I can transmit you a balance of the facts through the related reflection of comrades in situ and I will also share with you my perspective from my experience as an exile of that singular banana national socialism¹ that for more than six decades reigns with blood and fire in the largest of the Antilles. In that sense, I can assert that last July 11, there was an unprecedented social outburst, with presence in all 16 provinces. Of course, according to the narrative of the Cuban dictatorship, this social explosion never occurred, but rather there were attempts of «public disorder» and «riots» instigated by «vandals», «delinquents» and «antisocial elements» belonging to the «most vulgar and indecent sectors of society» and manipulated by the «cyberwar orchestrated by the Empire». Evidently, what is happening in Cuba is that a deeply rebellious generation that has lost its fear, despite the omnipresent control of the repressive mechanisms, has gained prominence. It happens that to the six decades of authoritarian epidemic was added the Covid pandemic, with its nightly curfews and «sanitary encirclements». It happens, that the myth of the Revolution (with capital letters) is over and the grammar of the «socialist paradise» is exhausted; evidencing the enormous inequality gap generated by the ruling class in the name of «Communism». It happens, that the deep classism and acute racism of the political elites has come to light, beyond the «egalitarian» rhetoric and discursive demagogy. It happens that during the protests, the National Socialist State took off its mask, revealing its true face -which is not at all different from the repressive role of the Chilean, Colombian, American or any other State, as the global revolt of the last years has shown-, as anticipated by Ramón García Guerra² . Thousands of people were arrested during the demonstrations and half a thousand are still imprisoned (some of them minors, such as Marcos Antonio Perez Fernandez) under the accusation of «contempt», «insulting the president», «damaging property» and «spreading contagion», among other charges. It happens, that there are about twenty disappeared; a dozen of people wounded by firearms (of exclusive use of the repressive forces) and, a hundred of women and men savagely beaten by civilian and uniformed agents. It happens that the young Afro-Cuban Diubis Laurencio Tejeda (Aka, Piquiky Rasta), was cowardly assassinated by the regime’s henchmen. It happens that, for the first time, hundreds of young people from the poor neighborhoods and marginal strips, those who put their chests on the front line in Oaxaca, Santiago de Chile or Portland and promote subversive indiscipline and propagate illegalism -living daily Anarchy beyond the «classics», discursive rhetoric and politically correct verbiage-, responded to the bullets with stones; They overturned patrol cars, expropriated supermarkets, and confronted the agents of repression hand to hand. Continue reading “What’s happening in Cuba? An Anarchic look at the 11-J Protests. Interview with comrade Gustavo Rodríguez (First of three parts) EN/ES” →