Communique from Clandestinity of the May 21 Case Fugitives

October 23, 2024 / informativoanarquista

Received by mail

As the Felipe Ríos support network has already communicated, through communiques on the counterinformation networks, for the past month our comrade has been receiving continual harassment from the gendarmes of $hile. Concretely, he is being transferred within the CPP Bío Bío from one unit to another, placed in isolation cells, denied his belongings and under constant threat of punishment, all for not bowing his head to each arbitrary order of the cops.

Pipe has been imprisoned for more than 4 years, after spending almost two years in clandestinity. Through his communiques we’ve been made aware that being in prison has not bent his firm beliefs against the State and capital, and that he’s remained critical to the prison dynamics that pit some prisoners against others, promoting codes that are different from the authoritarian ones reproduced in the wretched prisons. The comrade’s stringent belief implies an enormous challenge, because it’s not the same path of the majority of the prison population. Therefore, it is mediated by a large share of solitude, which he has always confronted with dignity and with his head held high.

His writings, especially his communique “7 Years Since the May 21 Case” have been received by us, in each of our clandestine trenches, as a war cry that gave us energy in difficult moments on the rocky path that we have traveled for 6 long years. We have arrived at this point, although our paths split, because we’ve known how to be consistent and silent. Since the beginning it was clear for all of us that, faced with the pantomime of a trial full of irregularities that condemned us, any degree of collaboration with the cops or the prosecutors was never an option. We know that Felipe, like us, has stayed consistent with this decision at all times, although he is bearing the hardest part, carrying out a 12 year sentence.

The acts for which we were convicted are the consequence of an incendiary insurrectional act in a demonstration in Valparaíso in 2016, motivated by the public address of then president Michelle Bachelet, who was running for a second term, both marked by the blood of the peñis Matías Catrileo, José Quintriqueo, Johnny Cariqueo and Jaime Mendoza.

An important part of the outcome of this imposing fire in the center of Valparaíso, wasn’t the desire of any who sign below, and we carry this weight in the baggage of our flight. We were never indifferent. But on the way we’ve had time to think about it seriously, contrast it with so many losses of this struggle against the chilean State which murders and torturs, and we understand that revolutionary violence won’t always follow the channel hoped for by those who light the fuse. If this May 21 case taught us something, it’s that insurrectional fervour can’t be completely controlled when it’s unleashed. Understanding this is maturing in the struggle. Condemning that fire from moralistic heights harms the struggle more than our beliefs, which remain intact in favour of continuing to promote incessant attack against the State and capital.

The bullying, the defamations, the attempts to vilify aren’t new, they’re scattered across the different revolutionary spaces of all stripes in the territory. We are radically opposed to these practices and we call on everyone to cut them at the root from which they arise.

As is already clear, we who write this communique don’t aim to appear; clandestinity isn’t compatible with making public declarations. Coming out to write this communique today is a risk that we take on because Felipe is a brave comrade of ours and of the struggles that each of us claims. We extend these words of solidarity with him, with his committed way of carrying political prison and in response to the solidarity that we’re aware he has shown to other prisoners in these years.

To him and the network that accompanies him, a sincere revolutionary embrace.

A complicit greeting to all the comrades who have had to opt for this path of clandestinity and flight, especially to Constanza and Rodrigo wherever they are.

Freedom for all anarchist, subversive and mapuche prisoners in the prisons of the Chilean State!

Down with the prison walls!

Long live the struggle against the murderous State and capital without truce by all possible means!

Never victims, never repentant

Nicolas Bayer
Hugo Barraza
Miguel Varela