After 16 Years of Prison: Words of Marcelo Villarroel
This past March 15 marked 16 years of uninterupted prison, since I was detained in San Martin de los Andes, Neuquén province, territory occupied by the argentine state, while fleeing a search and arrest warrant from the chilean state.
The cases that encouraged that moment of clandestinity and which were spread profusely at the time have already been fulfilled:
I was sentenced to 14 years for two bank robberies. This date was met December 16 of last year, counted from December 16, 2009, the moment I was extradited from argentinian territory to be judged in chile.
Currently I still have 46 more years of sentences for cases emanating from pinochet’s military court in the early 90s framed in the urban guerrilla practices of my old militancy in the armed group Mapu-Lautaro which has been extinct for more than 3 decades.
I’m a hostage for reasons of state since within the very realm of power, they have contravened their sickening legality to keep me locked up and I belong to this segment of revolutionary prisoners of the world over whom hangs the vicious punishment of the State for not giving up, for not being silent, for maintaining irreducible antiauthoritarian convictions and, as I’ve said before, for believing firmly in anarchy.
These 16 years of daily resistance to carceral enclosure have been possible thanks to the loyalties, care and love of uncondicional people who animate me without pause, to the incessant persistence of wills that become material through insurrectional complicity, to the strong ties of kinship in struggle with different territories and languages with which the same language of war continue forging common paths. And of course this resistance wouldn’t be possible without the ideas and convictions that guide me.
After 16 years of prison the fight for my release to the street continues to persist. Legally, this concentrates on the annulment of the convictions of the military court of pinochet in which there are currently concrete efforts to achieve such a long-awaited goal.
This 2024 is a crucial year in this persistent campaign and from there I make the direct call to deepen solidarity in all its forms and possibilities to achieve my release from prison.
These are intense times of definitions in which actions must overcome mere words full of good intentions and from there the urgent call to contribute in this concrete moment of struggle.
In a new march, in the region occupied by the chilean state we vindicate the Combatant Youth as expression of historical continuity in the Subversive struggle against the state, prison and capital and from there an uncontainable eternal shout for each one of those who have fallen … for Eduardo Rafael and Pablo Vergara Toledo, Luis Silva Jara “el Chakita”, for Andrés Soto Pantoja, Pablo Muñoz Moya, for Norma Vergara Cáceres, Alejandro Sosa Durán, for Claudia López, Jhonny Cariqueo, Mauricio Morales and Sebastián Oversluij, for our eternal Luisa Toledo and for all those who don’t give up, or forget and continue nourishing our Memory of Resistance and Subversion.
Warm embrace for all the antiauthoritarian comrades held prisoner in the world and may you remain active, contributing to the struggle.
All of my newer to the anarchist, subversive and mapuche prisoners in the chilean prisons who continue on the path of Conflict with dignity.
My respect to the different communities of antiauthoritarian struggle that are weaving Anticarceral internationalism in various territories around the world.
To all who dare to defy normality of the existent in the here and now, attacking in the social peace of the rich towards total liberation in the present.
For the annulation of the sentences of the military court!!
Freedom for anarchist, subversive, and mapuche prisoners now!!
Until we destroy the last bastion of carceral society!!
Amulepe taiñ weichan!!
Where misery exists there will be rebellion!!
Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda
La Gonzalina Rancagua prison factory. Territory occupied by the chilean state.
Late march, 2024.
Translated by Act for freedom now!