Words of Anarchist and Subversive Prisoners in Struggle in the Chilean Prisons
July 11, 2023
Monica, Francisco, Joaquín, Juan and Marcelo Speak.
– Our emphasis, challenges and urgencies:
– 50 years after pinochet’s civic-military coup, his juridical legacy shamefully endures in the heavy sentences of the military court for comrade Marcelo Villarroel.
-In the context of the beginning of the trial of power against comrades Mónica Caballero and Francisco Solar, domination does not cease to take vengeance against those who go on the offensive attacking their untouchable impunity.
Since we constituted ourselves as a space of collective affinity, 3 years ago, among comrade prisoners of the social war in struggle and resistance inside the prisons of the Chilean state, we defined that our priority was and is to seek freedom as a point of rupture with the daily normality of the existant and its prison society that locks us up as punishment for our unrenounceable decision to fight for total liberation.
In this journey and indissoluble encounter of anarchists and anti-authoritarian subversives, who are the living reflection of revolutionary struggle through practices of minority violence in Chile in the last decades, we have faced our long stay behind bars in the different moments and places we have had to pass through with fortitude and conviction. That is why, with the necessary clarity demanded by our position of life in struggle, today we want to share our unavoidable urgencies and from here we call for permanent mobilization, active solidarity, and Insurrectionist complicity.
1- Regarding the situation of comrade Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda, arrested in Argentina in March 2008, who has been in prison for almost 16 years, serving 29 years in 3 different periods, we have been clear and insistent: today he is a hostage of the reason of the state and not a prisoner of the rule of law that the power itself claims to defend.
1- Regarding the situation of comrade Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda, arrested in Argentina in March 2008, who has been in prison for almost 16 years, serving 29 years in three different periods, we have been clear and insistent: today he is a hostage of state logic and not a prisoner of the rule of law that power itself claims to defend.
He has been given hefty sentences, amounting to more than 46 years, emanating from Pinochet’s military courts of transitional Chile in the early 90’s for various armed actions such as attacks and harassment of the torturing police of the time, explosive attack on the Spanish embassy in the context of the 500th anniversary of the European colonial invasion, siezing trucks transporting food and distributing it among communities, and bank robberies in the context of his former militancy in the defunct urban guerrilla group Mapu-Lautaro.
The current validity of these sentences is only possible as a result of the maintenance of the legal apparatus of the dictatorship and the silent modification, at the beginning of 2019, of decree-law 321 of conditional liberties. This measure changed their time of fulfillment and allowed the Gendarmería to have carte blanche from the Ministry of Justice of the Piñera government to implement this legal aberration. Since the Chilean state illegally applies this modification retroactively, contrary to the international criminal law that they claim to defend and equally, subsequently and under the current administration of the Boric government, the Courts of Appeals and Supreme Court and the Public Ministry through its democratic judges and prosecutors have explicitly and openly, and without any shame, through recent rulings, defended Pinochet’s military courts. This proves the true social-fascist character of the Chilean state and those who defend, sustain and justify it.
2- On the other hand today our anarchist comrades Mónica Caballero Sepúlveda and Francisco Solar Domínguez, arrested in July 2020, are accused of the simultaneous explosive attack on the 54th police station in the northern zone of Santiago and on the former Minister of the Interior of the first Piñera government Rodrigo Hizpeter and the bombing of the wealthy neighborhood of Santa María de Manquehue in the eastern zone of Santiago in the middle of the period of Revolt.
In December 2021 Francisco took direct responsibility for all the attacks, politically claiming each of the actions.
On July 18 they face the beginning of the trial where the authorities seek to bury them under decades of imprisonment. The sentences requested by the Public Prosecutor’s Office are 129 years for Francisco and 30 years for Monica.
The comrades’ decision of struggle has been to strike back, putting an end to the impunity of the repressors, placing themselves in the clear and ancient revolutionary and particularly anarchist tradition that has sought to destroy by its own hand the State’s monopoly of violence and the tranquility of those who from their positions of power have commanded the most brutal and systematic repressive incursions.
3- It is also necessary to give updates on the situation of comrades Joaquín García Chancks and Juan Aliste Vega.
Joaquín, an anarchist prisoner, has been imprisoned for almost 8 years, convicted of placing an explosive device in the 12th police station of San Miguel, Santiago, along with Kevin Garrido (comrade murdered in prison in November 2018) and of illegally carrying a firearm while breaking the house arrest imposed by Power. The comrade is already within the minimum time to access parole, in fact, he already applied, but was denied by the nefarious Technical Area of Gendarmerie. It is worth emphasizing that this is the same body that has taken a decisive role in access to various benefits after the already mentioned application of the amendment to DL 321 in January 2019. In addition, it is technically impossible to access this or other intra-penitentiary “benefits” while living in a high or maximum security module, which leaves every prisoner who is determined to seek his legal exit outside the walls at a dead end.
Juan, a subversive prisoner, was also condemned by Pinochet’s nefarious military courts in the same context of his former militancy in the Mapu Lautaro group. He also served 12 years of imprisonment, between 1991 and 2003, of the 18-year prison sentence for “mistreatment of a carabinero resulting in death”, an act that was never claimed, and which occurred in a social political scenario typical of the dictatorship, which is why he only still owes a few months.
He is currently serving a 42 year sentence, of which 13 years have passed and he still has no concrete possibility of applying for release. Like Marcelo, Francisco and Joaquín, most of his time in captivity has been spent in high and maximum security regimes.
Clearly we have never had confidence in the criteria of any institution, least of all prison. This does not mean that we are willing to burn all the legal instances that are necessary, as a practical tool, in each of our efforts to gain release from prison. For this reason we will always put our antagonistic morality first in the balance, rejecting outright any shady maneuver that comes from domination. We have never begged for anything from anyone, especially from Power, always aware that the path we have taken fills us with healthy pride, we face existence without taking a step backwards.
The call is to raise revolutionary solidarity initiatives always bearing in mind that our comrades are imprisoned for concrete actions against the established order and its defenders. And that the best way to show solidarity is to continue along the path of conflict from the autonomy and free will of groups, individuals and communities in struggle against the existant.
To redouble the efforts of Anti-prison Internationalism also means summoning all our comrades and brothers and sisters of struggle spread in the different territories and continents of the planet, breaking the sectarianisms of those who have not lived the extreme experiences of combat such as prison, clandestinity or death; contributing with generosity from the different capacities and possibilities and calling for the specific mobilization of direct solidarity in the widest possible way.
In the immediate term we are on the verge of the trial against Monica and Francisco and it is here where capital’s democratic inquisition must be clear that it is not only judging two anarchist comrades in action, but all those who share the same pulse of conflict.
September is also approaching, marking 50 years of the bourgeois insurrection led by Pinochet in Chile. The truly repugnant and complicit silence of many allows the legal-political structure of the dictatorship to survive, crystallized in the sentences of Marcelo who, walking the path of autonomous and anti-authoritarian subversion, has left more than half of his life behind bars.
To the Chilean state: know that there is no prison or punishment capable of ending stories of life in struggle that irreducibly keep their fist raised beyond the ups and downs of history and the resignations, fears and accommodations of those who shy away from conflict.
We embrace with love and complicity all the anarchist and subversive anti-authoritarian prisoners in the jails of the world who face confinement with dignity, contributing to real struggles with concrete practices far from the nefarious charity victimhood and always close to the revolutionary position.
Alfredo Cóspito, Anna Beniamino, Juan Sorroche, Poula Roupa, Nikos Maziotti, Thanos Xatziangelou, Claudio Lavazza, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Tomas Meyer Falk to you all our respect and real closeness beyond the kilometers and bars that separate us.
We are very happy about the recent release of Gabriel Pombo da Silva whom we greet with warm fellowship.
To the comrades imprisoned in Chile of the “Gendarmerie Case” and “Susaron Case”, to the peñi of struggle, Mapuche political prisoners.
With all our dead comrades in our memory and action, we portray all the passion to live and the infinite newen to fight in our eternal and beloved comrade Luisa Toledo Sepúlveda.
For Monica and Francisco: Solidarity and complicity with those who attack the powerful and repressors!
For Marcelo and 50 years after Pinochet’s civil-military coup: Annulment of the Pinochet military court’s sentences which are still shamefully in force!!!
Freedom for Juan and Joaquín and all anarchist and subversive prisoners!!!
Death to the state and long live anarchy!!! While there is misery there will be rebellion!!!
Mónica Caballero Sepúlveda
Francisco Solar Domínguez
Joaquin Garcia Chancks
Juan Aliste Vega
Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda
-Women’s Prison of San Miguel Santiago.
-La Gonzalina Prison Factory, Rancagua.
Territory occupied by the Chilean state.
July 2023.
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via:informativoanarquista
Translated by Act for freedom now!