Illegality – Dark Nights

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” →

Insurrectionary anarchism is not an ideological solution to all social problems, a commodity on the capitalist market of ideologies and opinions, but an on-going praxis aimed at putting an end to the domination of the state and the continuance of capitalism, which requires analysis and discussion to advance. We don’t look to some ideal society or offer an image of utopia for public consumption. Throughout history, most anarchists, except those who believed that society would evolve to the point that it would leave the state behind, have been insurrectionary anarchists. Most simply, this means that the state will not merely wither away, thus anarchists must attack, for waiting is defeat; what is needed is open mutiny and the spreading of subversion among the exploited and excluded. Here we spell out some implications that we and some other insurrectionary anarchists draw from this general problem: if the state will not disappear on its own, how then do we end its existence? It is, therefore, primarily a practice, and focuses on the organization of attack. These notes are in no way a closed or finished product; we hope they are a part of an ongoing discussion, and we most certainly welcome responses. Much of this comes straight from past issues of Insurrection and pamphlets from Elephant Editions.

1. The State Will Not Just Disappear; Attack

The State of capital will not “wither away,” as it seems many anarchists have come to believe — not only entrenched in abstract positions of ‘waiting,’ but some even openly condemning the acts of those for whom the creation of the new world depends on the destruction of the old. Attack is the refusal of mediation, pacification, sacrifice, accommodation, and compromise.
It is through acting and learning to act, not propaganda, that we will open the path to insurrection, although propaganda has a role in clarifying how to act. Waiting only teaches waiting; in acting one learns to act.
The force of an insurrection is social, not military. The measure for evaluating the importance of a generalized revolt is not the armed clash, but on the contrary the amplitude of the paralysis of the economy, of normality.

2. Self-Activity versus managed revolt: from insurrection to revolution

As anarchists, the revolution is our constant point of reference, no matter what we are doing or what problem we are concerned with. But the revolution is not a myth simply to be used as a point of reference. Precisely because it is a concrete event, it must be built daily through more modest attempts which do not have all the liberating characteristics of the social revolution in the true sense. These more modest attempts are insurrections. In them the uprising of the most exploited and excluded of society and the most politically sensitized minority opens the way to the possible involvement of increasingly wider strata of exploited on a flux of rebellion which could lead to revolution.
Struggles must be developed, both in the intermediate and long term. Clear strategies are necessary to allow different methods to be used in a coordinated and fruitful way.
Autonomous action: the self-management of struggle means that those that struggle are autonomous in their decisions and actions; this is the opposite of an organization of synthesis which always attempts to take control of struggle. Struggles that are synthesized within a single controlling organization are easily integrated into the power structure of present society. Self-organized struggles are by nature uncontrollable when they are spread across the social terrain. Continue reading “Some notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism” →