[Translated into English by Insurrection News
in spanish: Por El Compañero Anarquista Santiago Maldonado]
This September 1st marked one month since the disappearance of the anarchist comrade Santiago Maldonado at the hands of the police of the National Gendarmerie of Argentina. This took place within the context of the repression against a demonstration that included road blocks made by the Mapuche community Pu Lof in Resistance at Cashamen, in the Argentine province of Chubut.
While the anarchic agitation spread beyond borders, comrades in Argentina took to the streets to spread acts of revolt via propaganda and direct action. With arson attacks against the police, barricades and Molotov cocktails against government buildings, our comrades unleashed their rage at a situation that is as sad as it is real: the bastards have arrested and disappeared an anarchist comrade.
Because Santiago is an anarchist, and not just a young musician and artist, something the press and leftists conveniently leave out, in denouncing the state repression we make it clear that denial and silencing of the comrade’s political identity is another form of disappearance, erasing from the narrative the true motivations of his solidarity presence in the Mapuche community where he was at the time of his arrest. [1]
We have no advice for our comrades in Argentina, we believe in them and their conviction and autonomy to continue transforming their pain into rage, spreading chaos against the world of authority, and deepening and expanding affinities in concrete experiences of confrontation and agitation.
Simultaneously, coordinated informal international action since the announcement of Santiago’s arrest and disappearance sends a clear message: he is not alone.
Extermination, Cover-Ups and Psychological Warfare: The Counterinsurgency of the 21st Century Against the Internal Enemies of the Established Order
The arrest and disappearance of Santiago Maldonado is not, as some people might think, an isolated incident. On the contrary, it is the living and current state of capitalist and civilized repression. It is a new espisode of the historical confrontation against the forces of law and order.
It is no surprise then that individual Mapuche and anarchists are designated as the new internal enemy within the context of dominion’s democratic state. It is well known that the radical struggle of land defense, autonomy and freedom has been transformed over the years into a real danger to the interests of power. As others have stated, it is a new autonomous subversion. Offensive actions of resistance that, combined with the propagation and implementation of ways of living and relationship modes that are contrary to those imposed by the state, capitalism and civilization, build an antagonistic reality that preoccupies power and keeps it busy with its eradication, isolation and extermination.
In relation to the above, the present configuration of the conflict includes the updating of tactics that many continue to consider as being exclusive to dictatorial regimes.
The arrest and subsequent disappearance of Santiago at the hands of the police in Argentina on August 1st, as well as the death in Chile of Macarena Valdés [2] – an active opponent of the RP GLobal hydroelectric project who was found dead of an apparent suicide at her home in 2016, days after hit men linked to the company left threatening messages for her family – these are just two recent examples of the continuity of the tactics of counterinsurgency in the 21st century.
In both cases, the state and media cover-ups appear under the guise of a fake suicide in the case of Macarena, and for the protection of police agencies by the State in the case of Santiago, seeking to insert the idea that the comrade was never at the location, or that he continues to enjoy a ‘hippie’ lifestyle elsewhere, or even that he went underground in Chile to carry out guerrilla actions [3]. The Latin American dictatorships responded to complaints regarding cases of missing persons with the same or similar lies and arguments.
This is compounded by the situation of Facundo Jones Huala, lonko (tribal leader) of the Cushamen community and spokesperson for the Mapuche Ancestral Resistance, who was arrested for the second time in Argentina since June 2017. At the same time, the Chilean justice system requested his extradition, accusing him of the attempted embezzlement of a private fund. This was state revenge for his participation in the processes of Mapuche land reclamation. Although the lonko was released in early September, cooperation between Member States for repression and the transfer of internal enemies continue beating their wings with the same counterinsurgency motivations that saw the establishment of Operation Condor in the early 70’s [4].
These are the tactics deployed by 21st century capitalism, which reveal its oppressive and totalitarian essence that seeks the subjection of the entire population and the perpetuation of the social order via the militarization of resisting territories using surveillance, monitoring and phone taping, undercover agents, infiltrators and collaborators and the imprisonment, torture and disappearance of Mapuches and anarchists at the hands of state agents.
The picture is completed with the complicity of the mass media who contribute to the propagation of false, confusing and misleading information with the aim of molding a favorable ‘public opinion’ for the validation and continuity of a strategy that is historically well known: the extermination of the projects of struggle that are the embodiment of revolutionaries, subversives, conspirators and communities in conflict.
September Rage and Memory
Today as protagonists of the continuity of the conflict against power and its society, we are facing this previously mentioned strategy. While others assume eternal positions of waiting and victimization, perpetuating their status as spectators of other people’s struggles, the insurrectionists who do not recognize flags or borders continue to focus each within their own territories and with their affinities, on the continuity, deepening and (re) activation of the anarchic threat against power.
The case of comrade Santiago Maldonado is not an ‘excess of repression’ or an ‘abuse of power’. It is power and its repression displaying their sincere intentions to eliminate us. And while others seek refuge in the same State or in the institutionality of the international community, we feel it is important to stress strategies that we can develop to deal with the dynamics of repression and what may come with the worsening of the totalitarian character of democratic regimes.
This is a challenge that we take on in the heat of confrontation and not from the comfort of citizens or reformers as passive observers, for it is the declared enemies of the social order who the enemy will target first, and it is not hard to envisage where they will hyper-vigilantly direct their repressive compass; the normalization of the military presence on the streets, the expansion of citizenist ideologies, joint exercises between military assault groups for urban contexts and the promotion of intelligence operations under the discourse of protecting society by annihilating ‘the enemies of the democracy that has cost us so much to build’.
In Chile, the month of September has left us with other concrete examples of what we have already mentioned. The murder of the anti-authoritarian comrade Claudia López by police bullets on September 11, 1988 – encapuchados (hooded ones) behind the barricade during demonstrations against the beginning of the dictatorship initiated in September 1973 – are another refelction of the emergence of autonomous subversion and anti-authoritarianism in post-dictatorship Chile [5]. In September 2005, in the city of Puerto Montt, José Huenante, a young person of Mapuche origin is detained by police. And in September of 2015, in the town of Alto Hospicio, the young José Vergara is arrested and taken away in a police car [6]. Since being detained, neither of them have been seen again. Both are currently detainees who have been disappeared under democracy.
One month since the disappearance of comrade Santiago Maldonado, 17 years since the murder of the comrade Claudia López, 118 years since the death in action of the anarcho nihilist comrade Bruno Filippi while attacking a meeting center of the Italian bourgeoisie with an explosive device in September 1919.
Let nothing stop our offensive against authority and those who validate the imposed roles. Do not stop the conflict with those who defend the power!
LET’S CONTINUE TO SPREAD ANARCHIST CONFRONTATION AGAINST ALL AUTHORITY!
Sin Banderas Ni Fronteras, cell of anti-authoritarian agitation.
Chile, September 2017.
[2] http://www.mapuexpress.org/?p=13455
[3] http://www.nuestrasvoces.com.ar/entendiendo-las-noticias/estan-defendiendo-guerrillero/
[4] Operation Condor: Cooperation agreement between South American intelligence agencies during the 1970s to eliminate subversive activities in the region.
[5]https://publicacionrefractario.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/memoria-anticarcelaria-para-claudia-lopez-11-de-septiembre-desde-la-carcel-hasta-la-calle/
[6] http://lamatriznoticias.com.ar/jose-huenante-y-jose-vergara-los-detenidos-desaparecidos-en-democracia-de-chile/
