Chile: Interview with synthesis anarchists Boina Anarquista
Interview between synthesis anarchists Boina Anarquista in Chile and JURNAL ANARKI in Indonesia.
1. What motivates you to create this counter-information newspaper?
A: Hello, good day. Well, the platform began as a newspaper, edited precariously with Word. What motivated us was that nearly 11 years ago, in 2013, when the waves of the student movement in Chile were still present, we started researching and came across a book about anarchist propaganda in Chile. We were amazed by how much of it existed in the 1920s.
Around that time, there were other physical-format newspapers: El Surco (2009-2013), El Amanecer (from Chillán, in central-southern Chile) (2011-2013), El Sol Ácrata (from Calama, northern Chile; 2011-2024), Acracia (from Valdivia, far south of Chile; 2012-2019) and Solidaridad, a Libertarian-Communist newspaper, aligned with the branch closest to especifismo or platformism (2010-2016).
It was within this context that we decided to found a newspaper called Periódico La Boina (2014), which only released 7 issues. Financial problems, time constraints, and lack of coordination led to its discontinuation, but we noticed that the website’s visits kept growing, reaching over 100,000 per year.
The need to communicate, reflect, critique, share, and discuss with other comrades enriches our ideas and fosters camaraderie, especially through printed propaganda. What I see as a downside—and something we are also guilty of—is that there’s a lot of digital propaganda circulating on social media. While it’s positive to have more contact with comrades from other places, the information becomes more instantaneous, preventing deeper reflection. It also introduces anxiety over likes, making everything faster.
We believe it’s necessary to return to printed propaganda without neglecting the digital. It’s essential to discuss and reflect as the anarchists of the past used to do.
2. In our informal conversation, you mentioned your involvement in a historical archive project. Could you tell us more about it?
A: Yes, I am currently part of a group called Archivo Histórico La Revuelta, which has existed since 2009. The mission of the archive is to preserve the memory of anarchist history. Archivo La Revuelta publishes a magazine called Acontratiempo, where we present research by comrades on the history of anarchism in Chile and elsewhere.
The issue is that, according to some historians, anarchism arrived in Chile in the 1890s and lasted until 1930, when the last mass anarchist unions existed (of course, there were experiences in the 1950s and 1960s, and we have found active comrades in the 1970s, but they are marginal compared to Marxist groups). After that period, anarchism experienced a revival, gradually growing with counterculture and punk in the 1990s. So the archive has the mission of preserving anarchist memory in this region, both from the 20th century and from the late 1990s and early 2000s. There are many struggles led by younger comrades, as young as 16 years old, who may not be as familiar with the struggles fought in the early 2000s, for example.
That’s why the archive doesn’t just focus on the history of anarchism from 100 years ago but also on the present. We aim to collect and reconstruct the history of anarchism from the 1990s, when there were many zines and the first newspapers, to understand what interested comrades of those years and to share those struggles and discussions with younger comrades so they can learn about the efforts and ideas of those who came before them.
On the other hand, anarchist research has emerged in recent years. Its main historians might include Eduardo Godoy, Manuel Lagos, or study groups like the Grupo de Estudio José Domingo Gómez Rojas, which has the Editorial Eleuterio.
Currently, the archive operates in a physical space called Casa Anarquista La Termita, which is shared with other anarchist projects. Also, with comrades dedicated to research, we are also organizing the IV Congress on Research about Anarchism(s) – Santiago – October 2025. The first Congress was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina (2016); its second edition was in Montevideo, Uruguay (2019), and São Paulo, Brazil (2022).
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