(Chile) Words from fellow anarchists Aldo and Lucas Hernández
For an August of black memory of struggle…
The absence they leave behind for their comrades must have an impact on the daily lives of those who knew them, those who exchanged more than a few words with them must miss them, and how could they not? Who is prepared for the death of a brother or sister? Even if we can put ourselves in the situation, the scenario, there is no certainty of being prepared. All feelings are personal and individual; what one feels inside must be experienced firsthand in order to speak of the loss.
We did not walk with you, we did not know you, but our comrades bear witness to your determined and resolute journey to face this reality.
These lines are to bring Luciano, Belén, and Lupi to mind, so that no comrade has to die in a distant memory, but rather be present in every moment that one decides to confront the establishment.
For Luciano, Lupi, Belén, Santiago Maldonado, Macarena Valdés, and so many others who died or were killed…
First week of a Black August. Aldo and Lucas from “La Gonzalina” and “Santiago Uno.”
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”→
Incendiary attack on RED bus outside San Miguel Prison
When we visualize the face of the enemy, we immediately recognize the prison and its penitentiary system, with all its apparatuses and officials, as a focus to destroy, since it is there where historically they have sought to imprison revolutionary minds and actions.
Both in the past and in the present, we know that our comrades in prison have had to resist on a daily basis the constant harassment of their bodies, as the gendarmerie tries to systematically provoke the demoralization of our comrades in prison, through humiliation, punishment, torture, threats to take away their visits or orders in the face of any act that alters the codes of domination within the modules.
That is why, by means of a precision attack, we have set fire to a RED bus with an efficient incendiary device outside the San Miguel Prison, with the aim of altering the passivity that can be smelled in the streets in the face of a society that watches and controls behavior, longing for submission and building a false belief about the impossibility of fighting it.
A special greeting to comrade Monica Caballero, who is in a new trial against her together with Francisco Solar for several explosive attacks against repressors and powerful people. Insurrectional solidarity with Monica and Francisco!
A warm embrace for Itamar Diaz who recently experienced the punishment of the San Miguel jailers after confronting their authoritarian dynamics. Also for the comrades in Santiago 1 who were dispersed to different modules after showing solidarity with Itamar.
For all of you, a gesture of solidarity turned into fire, trying to oxygenate the daily life in prison, know that you are with us in every action. A speedy recovery to comrade Zukato.
For the abolition of prisons! To multiply the autonomous action!
Seditious Cell Santiago Maldonado – New Subversion (Célula Sediciosa Santiago Maldonado – Nueva Subversión)
Five years later, we publish – taken from the website anarhija.info (DN: English translation from Insurrection News) – the claim text of the explosive attack against the Carabinieri barracks in the San Giovanni district of Rome. Consistent with the need for support for the practices of attack and international revolutionary solidarity, we consider it equally important and necessary to find, and therefore disseminate, the documents and claim texts.
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Claim of the explosive attack against the carabinieri barracks in the San Giovanni neighbourhood by the Santiago Maldonado Cell / FAI-FRI (Rome, 7 December 2017)
In times of social peace and compliance there is no better reply than action. A stimulus, a continuity and a jolt to wake up those who sleep.
Acting on one’s own initiative breaks the compliance and inaction and ignites those whose blood boils.
The anarchic praxis of attack must be the basic stimulus of anarchy, otherwise it is a walking dead. Action is necessary to make us alive in the ways we consider opportune, removed from every program, hierarchical and vertical structure. Many revolutionary practices are part of an anarchism in its bowels.
We have decided to take our lives into our own hands by breaking the oppressive peace that surrounds us.
On the night of the 6th to the 7th of December we placed a steel thermos containing 1.6kg of explosives outside the carabinieri barracks in the San Giovanni district in Rome.
On June 10, 2022, at dusk, a group of hooded people leaves one of the existing university campuses in the sector of Macul and Grecia to cut the street, erect barricades and confront the police with firebombs.
On more than a few occasions this year there have been confrontations on that corner as well as in other educational establishments, used as an excuse to propagate the fight against power. Most of the time these confrontations are vindicated by pamphlets and banners, about some aspect of the struggle in particular. This time the comrades sent a communiqué to different pages of counter information from the “Warriache Matias Catrileo Cell” in an open dialogue with other groups of action and urban guerrilla existing in the territory dominated by the Chilean State.
Incendiary action (sent to noticiasdelaguerrasocial(a)gmail.com)
“Those who decide to rebel against the misery implanted at birth only know two destinies: jail and death, we whisper a third option, THE ATTACK“.
In the face of this new restructuring of the state-capital with a pro-green face, which comes only to continue and perfect the police-military-neoliberal-extractivist regime to which they are trying to subject us by all means, we consider it necessary to advance in the accumulation and coordination of revolutionary forces, which, from multiple guerrillas, are ready to overthrow this system of misery and death at its roots.
This time, irreducible individualities we set out to twist the established order directly confronting their henchmen, suddenly shining on their ugly machines, in order to contribute to the ongoing war, adding this focus of street confrontation with the aim of hindering the flow of the decadent productive normality of Santiago, on a Friday, in coordination with the various demonstrations and activities that were happening at that time in that city. Continue reading “Santiago, Chile: Incendiary attack in Macul and Grecia + Claim of the “Célula Warriache Matías Catrileo”.”→
Attack carried out on the night of Sunday, June 5, 2022.
“Certain human cultures have been waging war against the Earth for millennia. I chose to fight on the side of bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff roses and all things wild.” Bill Rodgers, ELF member.
It has been 13 years since our comrade Mauricio Morales, the punky, left his earthly life in the midst of the offensive that with courage and will he raised against the tortured bastards of the gendarmerie school. Unfortunately, the explosive device he was carrying started earlier than expected, generating the consequences already known by many. We embrace punky and his actions from the depths of our irreducible spirit, meeting him on different fronts: against prisons, capital, speciesism and civilization.
It is in this last front, responding to the call to raise the memory of punky in this Black May, is that we have decided to attack a telecommunications antenna of the Entel company, located on a hill in the commune of Puente Alto, in the capital of the territory dominated by the Chilean state. We are and will always be against the advance of technology and the digitalization of our lives. The existence of these means the exploitation and devastation of the ñuke mapu, the extraction of its minerals through the genocide of wild species in pursuit of the filthy commodities needed by the warriors to reproduce their cursed existence. Antennas like this one erode their natural environment, both at the time of their installation, as well as in the recurrent maintenance they require. Moreover, the effects on the different beings produced by a world overloaded with electromagnetic waves through these antennas and new technologies such as the 5G network are doubtful. We are not scientists nor do we pretend to prove that they do harm, but the invitation of our instinct to destroy them is enough for us. Continue reading “Santiago, Chile: Arson attack against telecommunications antenna”→
In recent years our days have been filled with news of deaths, with numbers of dead, with the words of “experts” who command arrogantly and boastfully from the power they have been given. They are filled with unreasonable orders and outrageous government impositions. We do not intend to extensively analyze positions on the health crisis. The tragic shortages of medical personnel, equipment and infrastructure, the “stain” of 100 deaths a day, i.e. the dire consequences of decades of privatization of public health care. The provocative strengthening of the private sector, exemplified by the big pharmaceutical companies and health giants, whose profits have reached historic highs. The re-emergence of the ‘strong’ state model to restore capitalist equilibria. The strengthening of centralised powers and the emergence of a new caste of all-round technocrats, with the role of abdicating and covering up the responsibilities of the state apparatus and shifting the responsibility for the spread of the virus to the individual. These are just some of the points that shape the management of the pandemic by the capitalist states.
Throughout the pandemic, the key issues that have dominated the public debate have been around public health, mental health and the effects of incarceration, the social exclusion of increasing segments of the population, growing class inequalities, the wider capitalist division of available resources, the role of science and technology, civil rights and the diminished role of bourgeois democracy in emergency situations.
The health crisis has affected in a universal way the relations constituting the social reproduction of capital. The inability of the social formation to reproduce the formed conditions of capitalist production led to an ideological crisis of the applied model of neoliberalism, while at the same time, following the dictum that “for capitalism every crisis is an opportunity”, it served as a key tool for the organised transition to a new era. The capitalist restructuring under way is the huge-scale operation to rescue a system that is plunging into chain crises of a structural nature. It is also the attempt to move capitalism into a new phase, something that its apologists of all kinds openly admit. It is a given that the contradictions that are developing within societies, states and big bosses will be on a trajectory of bloody conflicts in the coming years. The emergence of a powerful bloc within the imperialist bourgeoisies, consisting of the owners of the great technological giants, with the decisive potential for extracting cultural hegemony, is shaping a historical intersection in which the passage to the new capitalist formation will universally determine the lives, habits and lifestyles of the social majority. In the new totalitarian capitalist world that is emerging, the possession of information (data) will be (to an even greater extent than now) only one of the many fields of profitability of these oligarchs, who, in addition to the sharp increase in their profits, will concentrate even greater powers in their hands. On the other hand, those who live within the hyper-connected metropolises will literally become fully exploitable commodities, as they will not only sell their labour power, but every field of social, personal, consumer, recreational interest will be a profitable process for capital, they will constitute an uninterrupted flow of data. Every click, every piece of information unlocked by the algorithms on their screens will fill the pockets of their provider with profit in an endless game of exploitation and total control of every aspect of human activity. Continue reading “Greece: Direct Action Cells – Responsibility claim for a barrage of incendiary attacks in Athens and Thessaloniki”→
During the early morning of Monday, December 27, 2021, a loud bang shakes the center of the capital. An explosive device detonates against a window of the National Directorate of Gendarmerie, located on Rosas Street at the height of Teatinos.
GOPE personnel quickly arrived at the scene, and the South Prosecutor’s Office, which handles this type of crime, was present, entrusting the OS-9 and Labocar personnel with the investigation. According to the press, it was the Prosecutor’s Office itself which indicated the prohibition to inform and give more information. No pamphlets were found at the site.
Via email, the action is claimed by “La Negra Venganza”, which according to the text would be the same group that acted against a police station in 2020. The text details the use of industrial explosives, as well as ammunition in the explosive device, making an open call to expand this type of practice, to show solidarity with the prisoners and to expand the use of their name, and finally to greet other action groups.
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Campaign of attack and revenge against the executioners. Act II
Explosive attack to the National Directorate of Gendarmerie of Chile.
“In a highly self-critical manner, the solidarity actions that are undertaken are generally reactive. There are no actions that are rather offensive… We all know where the guys are, they are walking around in their uniforms, and they do it with total impunity. And we know that inside they are harassing the brothers and sisters, they are making them feel bad, they are humiliating them…”
Mauricio Morales
One year after our first action, as the group that we are, and after much study, tensions, proposals and reflections, we are back. We are back, we continue with the campaign we started some time ago.
Four years after the murder of Santiago Maldonado, we continue to vindicate our comrade
Because anarchic memory is action, we make a call to remember Lechu, emphasizing the ideals and perspectives of our comrade.
We do not forget that Santiago was killed by the repressive agents of the State in a barricade in Puelmapu, nor do we forget the usurpation that reformist sectors and supporters of this society made of his death, using his face and his body for their political games. Because of this:
This year we propose NOT to use the physical image of Santiago in propaganda, but rather his songs, ideas and practices, thus combating the emptying and the washed-out image that has been taken by those in power.
Because we know that Lechu fought for the land and against capital, we propose to accentuate a multiform memory, which inevitably leads us to remember other comrades who fell in these same struggles. Thus, six months after the murder of Baucis by assassins in the process of recovering Mapuche land, we call for Bau to be present in the actions that we carry out.
We propose a memory of action that assumes that enemies are everywhere, which increases our capacity to attack. We can be creative attacking, let’s not forget.
For a black memory
To multiply the propaganda and actions
No comrade is forgotten.
To our compas in the dungeons of power in $hile, know that you are with us in every action.
July 2021,
MalosAires, Territory (still) dominated by the Argentine State.
