[The interview with Comrade I. and Comrade D. from Chile took place on
the sidelines of the international Anti-Authoritarian Meeting in
Saint-Imieux, Switzerland, in July 2023, and had the character of a
discussion with three members of the Circle of Fire and APO .]
K: Our first question is about the social uprising of 2019 in Chile, but
also the conclusions from your participation in it and how you proceed
after those events, in their aftermath.
D: First of all, we are from the Valparaiso Anarchist Convention. First
of all, we must clarify that at the time the rebellion broke out, the
assembly had not yet been built. There was no assembly during the
rebellion. And that's important to mention because one thing we saw at
that time is that even though there was a big uprising and a lot of
things were happening in the streets and in our neighborhoods, with all
those expressions of anger and the mood for change in Chile, at the same
time, we didn't have a meeting place as anarchists in the rebellion.
We began to understand that while the social movement had tremendous
momentum, and it was great to see it unfold in front of you and to be a
part of it, however, from a political point of view, and indeed from a
specific political point of view, namely the anarchist dimension, it was
not we had a meeting and discussion ground over everything that happened
every day. Because, as we know, in a rebellion everything changes from
day to day, very quickly. Many events are happening and people are
starting to create, they are starting to use their imagination... And it
is great to participate in this situation together with the great
majority, but at times it is also very important to have processes
between anarchists. So, in the middle of the rebellion, about two months
after it broke out, some comrades met and decided to call for an open
assembly of anarchists in Valparaiso.
I: Maybe I should explain a bit about the larger context. One reason
that this ground did not exist before is the fact that anarchism in
Chile at that time was at a very low level, very disorganized. We would
say that almost the entire movement was dominated by nihilistic views.
So, this is also an element of the analysis we did during and after the
uprising and one of the main reasons that at this particular juncture we
created this assembly, this meeting place and exchange of ideas and actions.
Also, let's say a few words about the background of the uprising
itself... The uprising, then, was unpredictable - like all uprisings.
But at the same time it was also predictable, because it had preceded an
era full of different struggles. For example, environmental struggles
are particularly important in Chile, because a bunch of companies -
mining, deforestation, industrial fishing, etc. - have caused massive
environmental destruction, which we are still experiencing today. It's a
long story, however, it is one of the most critical and intense matches
of its kind. In addition, there was a broad feminist movement,
anti-patriarchal I would say, which gave rise to major insurrectionary
events in the 2017-2018 period, with occupations of universities and
schools. At the same time, the repression of the Mapuche people was at
its height. Of course this continues today, but now I am talking about
the situation before the outbreak of the rebellion. And of course, let's
not forget the general conditions of precariousness. For this reason we
say that the uprising was on the one hand unpredictable, because at that
time there was a recession of social movements, but on the other hand
there were countless reasons to revolt. So from one point of view it was
unexpected but also very possible. All those conditions were there for a
rebellion to be born.
D: I should add that, in addition to the environmental struggles, we
also had the struggles of students and pensioners. And this plays a big
role because it concerns the whole society, all ages... from the
students, the youth, to the elderly, who, having spent their whole lives
working, end up living in absolute poverty. A proclamation was
circulating in the days of the uprising, which likened the situation in
Chile to a boiling cauldron, with a cauldron ready to explode. So there
were two aspects: one was about the social movement, which was low at
the time; the other was that there was a boiling cauldron underground
and, at any moment, anything could cause the explosion. And finally
those who caused the explosion were the students, on the occasion of the
increase in the price of metro tickets.
I: And to go even further back... In Chile there was this long period of
dictatorship, which lasted a whole seventeen years. It was a neoliberal
dictatorship, with a lot of neoliberal changes in the field of the
economy being imposed under this dictatorial regime, that is, at a time
when it was impossible for social movements to exist due to severe
repression. So, they privatized everything from water to... everything!
With the absolute power of repression in their hands, there was no
social movement and so it was very easy for them to impose all these
changes. When we look at how things have worked elsewhere, we see that
in other countries the changes brought about by the neoliberal economy
took place over a longer period of time, much more slowly, because they
were faced with the resistance of the world. On the contrary, in Chile
this regime was imposed by the dictatorship and of course continued by
the democratic government that succeeded it.
So there is also this dimension in the background of the rebellion. And
now perhaps it is time to say something about the characteristics of
rebellion.
K: Of course. However, although you explain that you created the
assembly after the uprising began, in your presentation 1 you described
how you became involved as anarchists in the events. If you want, can
you include in the conversation about the characteristics of the
uprising a couple of words about the ways of your participation and
about the transition to the formation of the assembly?
D: First let's say that Valparaiso is a small town, it's not
particularly big. So the anarchist movement was largely limited to the
counterculture dimension. So on the one hand you didn't have any
anarchist movement or organized anarchist groups, but on the other hand
you knew people. You saw some people at concerts, at gatherings, at
street demonstrations. You may not have known who exactly is an
anarchist, but you knew that there is a world that moves in the same
spaces. In the uprising we saw that all these people found themselves
participating in its self-organized processes, such as neighborhood
assemblies and collective kitchens. We call them "common weasels", but
perhaps the reasoning behind this concept is not very clear. "Communal
feasts" are when people organize and gather in a square or neighborhood,
cook a large amount of food and share it all together. It is something
very important, because food always brings people together. And it is a
practice that survives from the period of the dictatorship. And this
also has its importance, since within the uprising we saw many practices
emerge from the tradition of resistance during the years of the
dictatorship. The same applies to the "pots and pans", the night
gatherings where people come out and bang pots and pans. This is also a
tradition that has survived from the era of the dictatorship. The First
Aid Brigade was also very important (p. Health Brigade in Chile or
medical team in other countries). We know that such groups existed in
the protests and before the uprising. But in the uprising they acquired
a leading role because the number of wounded was huge and the repression
was very harsh. These are self-organized first aid teams on the road.
And when we say self-organized, we mean that they did everything they
could to be visible, they had helmets, shields... They were very well
organized and soon became the protagonists of the demonstrations. Anyone
who was going down the road and before the march even started had to
look and see where the first aid team was because they knew very well
that there was a high chance of being hit. Of course, the Primera Linea
was equally dynamic.
K: Tell us a little about the characteristics of the First Line, because
there are often misconceptions. At your event we heard you say that it
was a way to ensure the social character of the uprising, that is, the
presence of everyone, young and old, on the street.
I: The most important thing is that it was a self-organized process,
which people learned and made on the spot on the street. The point was
not to find some special superheroes, but to find a way to defend our
lines in the conflicts. The basic idea was that "we are all here
together". The First Line was created to defend the people involved in
the conflicts and to do so in an organized, self-organized way. For
example, there were different roles.
D: Yes, that is, some people were collecting the tear gas, others had to
look where the police were coming from, others were throwing things...
I: Everyone assumed a different position and this was organized on the
spot, within the demonstration. Because not only in Santiago but also in
Valparaiso the conflicts lasted for many hours.
D: All night long...
I: And that's because many, many people were coming down the street. So
the demonstrations also lasted for hours and the First Line was there to
protect them.
D: What we have to keep is that all these movements sprung out of
self-organization, both the First Aid Brigade and the food organization
and the First Line. And this was done out of necessity, precisely
because there were so many people. We are talking about the great
majority of society, they were the ones who asked for change and went to
the demonstrations. So it was almost practically inevitable to think,
"We can't just stand here like this, we have to organize, we have to
organize ourselves"! And every team understood that. Even the people who
did not participate in any group and simply went to the demonstrations
understood that organization is necessary if we want to stay on the
streets. To conclude what I was saying before... In those self-organized
movements, then, at some point you would see, and especially in a small
town like Valparaiso, all these anarchists that you knew, that you
already knew to be anarchists or anyway part of the anti-authoritarian
movement, and we just exchanged some words like: "Hey, you're here
too!", "yes, I'm part of this...", but without being together in a
network, a movement or a organization. So we met almost by chance during
the uprising because we kind of knew each other and because the city is
small, but we didn't have deeper political relations.
I: We can say that there was an individual presence at the tactical
level. That is, in all these expressions of rebellion there were
individuals who participated as anarchists, but there was an absence of
an anarchist organization that gave perspectives, political
perspectives. Even the most rebellious, those who used to talk about
rebellion all the time, when the rebellion happened they were surprised
that such a thing was actually happening. They looked and said "wow"!
So, yes, as individuals we were present at the tactical level, but
absent at the strategic level. And this is very important in our opinion
because the movement and the rebellion did not revolve around a single
demand; there was no single event that triggered it. It was against
everything! We call it protestas contra todo, protests against
everything, against all the conditions of life imposed on us in Chile.
So it wasn't a one-thematic thing, there wasn't a specific perspective.
And we also had no intention of proposing an anarchist perspective on
this whole situation. That is why our analysis, our self-criticism
concerns the fact that we did not have a strategic perspective in that
moment.
So, when the social democrats and other political parties proposed at
one point the creation of a Constituent Assembly, many people thought
"well, this is a way out". Because after one, two, three months of
continuous rebellion, harsh repression but also self-organization in so
many different aspects, the world was starting to run out.
D: Yes, so he began to wonder: "And now what do we do? Where are we going?'
I: Precisely because the uprising was not a reaction to a single event
or a specific problem, people began to say: "Okay, we've had three
wonderful months, but now what do we do, where are we going?" And at
that moment it was realized that the only ones who had a strategic
proposal were the state itself! Again! We anarchists had none. Many
anarchists, both in our city and in other cities, said: "Oh, look, after
all, people want a Constituent Assembly, we are not going to participate
in such a thing." For us it was that moment where we had to say, "Okay,
we don't want that either, but what do we have to offer the world?"
D: That's right. And I want to add one more thing. We have said before
that, based on our analysis, the uprising was not about a single demand,
a single issue. However, at some point there were also mobilizations for
specific issues, for example for an environmental or other struggle. So
from one point on, in the impasse, many people began to choose: "Okay,
well, I'll go along with this demand, we'll ask for this and that..."
And the state also had to offer solutions to such level. While we
believe that we do not need to have a single proposal for the rebellion
itself, that is, a proposal that will lead the rebellion. For us, our
proposition should be: "We want to change everything, because the whole
system is wrong." And this sentence must have been built before the
rebellion. It's not something you just make up in the middle of the riot
and say: "come on people, follow us...". Part of the problem is that
when people came to ask, "Okay, so where do we go now?", they started
looking for the answer in identifying with some particular partial
demand. While our proposal is that everything must change, because the
whole system, as a whole, is unfair.
I: In our opinion, the period after the uprising is also very important.
Because even though it was a very critical and powerful moment, we also
understand that things don't only change in moments like this. And it's
very easy to romanticize such an experience. But we consider it
important to have a critical perspective and to go beyond past
experience. One more reason is because we realize that capitalism is in
crisis. Historically Chile occupies a very specific position in the
world economy. We live in a country where mining and capitalism have
their own special characteristics, making sure to perpetuate the
conditions we live in. They have created a very strong structure to
prevent us from changing things. Consequently, such uprisings are very
likely to happen again. And they can happen, but it will never be the
same. The same thing will not happen again. We didn't have the right
tools for the moment it happened and we have to understand that,
overcome it and see what we can build, create, not just for the next
uprising, but for our lives here and now.
Because there is also the possibility that we will not experience
another such rebellion. In our analysis, of course, we believe that it
will reappear, because it stems from the very conditions of life. But
even if it doesn't happen, okay, what are we going to do? It is not
possible to sustain ourselves only through such spectacular moments,
because life is not only spectacular moments. It's also these somewhat
boring, low-intensity moments of the social movement. So, our proposals
also take into account this dimension, of how we will create political
processes in our territories after the uprising, in the interval between
uprisings or even without an uprising. This is our understanding because
without it we will simply repeat ourselves and once again find ourselves
without strategic policy proposals. And the state will win again. That's
what we believe and that's why we created a political organization. We
call it the organizational process, because in reality we build our
organization, our structures, our propositions. That's why we wanted to
record a road map.
Our analysis is not only about the conditions of the rebellion, but the
broader historical conditions as they are expressed in our region, also
understanding that they are part of the global capitalist structure. In
this context, we formulate three strategic propositions and also some
tactical propositions. According to this analysis, which is linked to
the rebellion but also to our wider political history, we are faced with
three systems of rule. This is our enemy and it has different
expressions in the place where we live. These three systems are
capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism. We perceive them as overlapping
structures. So we need to have strategic proposals to attack these
structures and build something different, the antithesis of all three
systems of dominance.
Because within the political movement in Chile there was and still is a
competition regarding what is more important: the fight against
capitalism, the fight against patriarchy or the fight against the
manifestations of colonialism. We consider them to be a single entity.
And we have to deal with them as a whole because as a whole they work
and are connected to each other.
K: And the State?
I: The state is an expression of all three systems of sovereignty.
D: In Chile, however, with the neoliberal model, the state has a small
share compared to companies, that is, in relation to the capitalist
structure.
I: The most basic expression of the state in Chile is repression. He
doesn't have control over many other things because the companies have
control over everything.
D: The state doesn't have money or much infrastructure. Public
infrastructure is the worst possible. They have nothing to show to say
"here we are a strong state". For example, schools or similar things.
I: When we visit Europe, Germany for example, we see that the state has
enormous power. It controls many things and even through society itself.
It's all very controlled. In Chile this does not happen because the
state does not work. He is merely the administrator of legal violence.
And during the uprising this was very visible. And it became very
visible to the world itself. "What does the state do?" "Suppresses." It
is a very clear situation because the companies have the power. And this
is also related to colonialism. There are families in Chile, with roots
in colonialism, very powerful families, who own a lot of companies and
control everything. And they are against the state! So it is important
for us to clarify from which position we speak, because companies also
criticize the state.
We live in a neoliberal model, with a small state. In other words, we
have discussed it and we see that we need to explain that, when we stand
against the state, it does not mean that we agree with neoliberalism,
because this is not clear to many people. We need to clarify that.
D: To give an example, in Chile, if we talk about hospitals, people
think "oh! I'll have to wait six hours in line to be called." Or the
schools... the public ones are in a terrible state. During the
rebellion, looting and destruction were not directed against government
infrastructure. He made no attack on public property, but only on
private property. Because everyone knows that the state is poor. It's
bad, but it's also poor. So why attack something you know is already
broken? This is also proof that people in Chile understand that the
state has a small stake.
K: Do you now want to tell us a few words about the road map, about your
premises and your activities today?
D: In the context of what we said before, we decided to create a road
map, which we perceive as a compass for our organizational process,
because it was necessary for us to ask questions among the partners, to
know where we want to go, which road we choose, but also how we will
move on this road. With this aim in mind, we formulated three strategic
proposals, which also have practical dimensions. The three strategies
are the following: popular power (s. poder popular/popular power),
anarchist organization and pre-symbolic politics. When we make a
presentation, we always start from popular power, because we know that
as a concept it gathers the most controversy. We began to discuss the
meaning of popular power because in Latin America it has a great
historical and political background, while at the same time it contains
two concepts, that of power/power and that of the people. And as we were
writing, we had a lot of discussion inside the assembly about what they
meant. It's actually something simple. There are some distinct concepts,
but we often confuse them. And these are hierarchy, dominance and
authority/power. Many times we use them as if they are synonymous,
however they are different and each has its own special characteristics.
K: Here we must say that there is a translational/linguistic problem in
the performance of the specific term, but also a political-cultural one.
In Greek, the term popular power/poder popular translates as "popular
power". In English, the word "power" can mean either power or authority.
While the word used in Greek, "écoussia", corresponds to the English
"authority" and for us it is negative in nature. No anti-authoritarians
could claim power. But beyond the linguistic dimension, the term
"people's power" is intertwined with the legacy of the authoritarian
model of communism, and means the seizure of power, that is, the state,
the state apparatus.
D: We, for what they call "popular power", use the term of generalized
self-direction. He is the one who describes the self-direction of
society, that there is no authority outside and above society. We do not
use the concept of popular power. It is used by those who come from
Bolshevism. When they speak of popular power Marxists do not mean the
power of society itself for itself, but the power of the party, the
state power of the party, in the name of society. In Greece this is how
it is perceived.
D: In this regard, we faced similar problems because as a concept it has
a certain historical charge. It was also used by the Government of
Popular Unity; the government of Salvador Allende before the coup.
I: It is indeed a term that has its own political and historical charge,
because it was used by the Popular Unity in order to expand the base of
its supporters. However, they appropriated this pre-existing term, it
was not their own concept, it was not made by them. For us it is
important to highlight that this is an end in itself. We are talking
about self-organized communities. And we're also talking about
self-organizing communities that can win! To defeat our enemies. And
this is perhaps the most essential element that this concept offers us.
Because in our analysis we also saw that the anarchist movement has
erased the idea of power/authority and only talks about the need to
attack power, not understanding that we even need to win. We use this
concept because we are talking about battle. And in this battle we need
this guideline for our forces, for social forces, in order to defeat our
enemies. Why do we see as a big problem this permanent attitude that
existed and exists... an attitude that means giving up the battle,
distancing ourselves from it, precisely because we consider it
impossible to win, because there is an absence of a revolutionary
perspective that says that at some point we must defeat the enemies us,
and not just represent this moral resignation that says "oh, society
doesn't understand us, so we too will keep our morality, this higher
morality, and cut ourselves off from society, let's go, I know , in no
forest to build horizontal communities". We don't agree with that. We
believe we have to be here, to propose what we propose, to build
communities, organized communities that can win in the end.
D: Because we want to win together with everyone and not just win as a
team. We want everyone to feel victorious and strong. And for this
reason, as my partner also said, we are not interested in retiring to
some forest and building our own little communities. We want the elderly
to win, we want the children to win, we want the great majority to win.
I: This is how we perceive the popular power of self-organized
collective forces. We find this perspective to be the most controversial
but also the greatest achievement, because it is something we build
every day in our communities, evolving our capabilities and tools to
create self-organizing communities that can have different approaches
and different capabilities. Also, it is a perception that springs from
the rebellion itself, because there we saw our potential and how strong
we are, how well we can organize life and resistance. We experienced it
and saw that these forces must be organized. We need to create
communities of struggle that will have guidelines and attack our
enemies. And, speaking of popular power, we do not believe that it is
something that will be achieved sometime in the distant future, nor that
it is magically created in revolutionary events. On the contrary, we
must here and now cultivate it within our communities, so that in the
next critical moment we can stand stronger. And this is another element
of our analysis:
Precisely because there was no such political perspective within the
rebellion, it was very easy for them to suppress the movement. Because
the whole world found itself in a situation of "what do we do now?" And
those who most of all did not know what to do were us anarchists! So we
believe that now is the time to do those boring - they call them boring,
but for us they are not - daily movements that are required to create
bonds within our communities. Because something that is also important
to say is that we too are a people. We are part of the great majority.
We are forced to sell our labor power, our energy, our time, to
capitalism. So we need to be with our neighbors, in our communities, and
build another perspective. That is why popular power is one of our
strategic proposals.
D: I should add that it is not something that we place in the future. We
build it and live it day by day, through perhaps small experiences,
having the prospect of a big experience and big events at some point.
But all these small experiences make up popular power.
I: It is also important that we are part of a long-term struggle. There
have been people who have fought for it before us. They accepted the
attack of repression, the attack of the state, the attack of capitalist
formations. And there will be others who enter this fight. Because we
understand that revolution is a long-term process. And within it are the
rebellions, which are very important because they accomplish many
things. But we see our current situation and recognize that we are not
going through such a period of rebellion. And we don't want to wait for
the next uprising to happen before we act.
We need to act within these intermediate processes, which are also part
of the revolution. It is part of the revolution to create
self-organizing living organisms. This is our understanding: that we
must create here and now, within our communities, such forms of
organization, with what we have at hand.
This is linked to our next strategy, prefigurative politics, which we
see as the possibility of building this new society, the new world, here
and now, despite our contradictions. Because, based on our class
analysis, we consider ourselves to belong to a class with its
contradictions, sorrows and beauties. We too carry within us all those
remnants of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, the church... and
reproduce them. However, we do not feel that we have to be pure and
unsullied and great to take part in the process of revolution. We must
accept our contradictions and try here and now to change things in our
lives. We understand that it doesn't happen moment by moment, it's a
whole process. Moreover, we believe that this arrogance of the
anarchists, that "we must first in our personal, private lives be so and
so and so," has worked destructively in the effort to organize with
others. It is necessary to understand that both others and ourselves
carry many characteristics that are due to the way we have been educated
in capitalism. But we don't have to be super perfect revolutionary
warriors to start changing this situation. In short, it is important for
us to accept our contradictions and start creating another society today.
D: One more thing: When you're trying to achieve absolute purity, that's
when you start closing your eyes. Because when you're in favor of
purity, there are things you don't want to talk about at all. The
acceptance of contradictions is also about how we forge our bonds and
relationships inside the organization and outside the organization.
Because we can't wait until the revolution to talk about certain things
or to create comradeship and strong bonds within our communities. There
are too many taboos that sometimes lead the movement to disintegration.
Because things accumulate that we don't talk about and at some point
they explode and can tear apart even a big movement - or a small
movement, it doesn't matter, they tear it apart anyway. So for us it is
important to have healthy relationships within the organization. We must
cultivate bonds of companionship. And for this reason, we also adopt the
concept and proposition of the joy of life. This is also a kind of
political proposition, that we want to create things that give joy.
Having a healthy movement also means enjoying what we create. After all,
this is the world we want to live in the future, a happy life. It is not
mandatory when we do things to be gloomy, depressed or negative all the
time. Because it's really hard if you're like that to create something
and hope it's different. The process always plays a role in the final
result, in our opinion. So all this is connected to the concept of
prefigurative politics and to the mutual care that must exist within the
community. The community itself must cultivate mutual, collective care.
And this is another reason why for us the concept of joy is crucial.
I: And the third strategic proposal is the anarchist organization. We
always clarify at this point that we are not proposing anything new.
These are things that have been proposed and practically implemented for
many years by different organizations. But for us anarchist organization
is of particular importance, as is having a long-term perspective.
Because, as our experience shows, in Chile for a very long time there
was no anarchist organization with a long-term perspective. And we
believe that it is necessary to create it, it is necessary to build
relationships of companionship that will allow us to have organizations
with long-term processes. It is necessary to form friendships and to
organize ourselves, as it is also a form of exercise in how far we can
commit to each other, to take responsibility for our actions but also
the responsibility of consistency between word and deed. We consider
anarchist organization a building block.
Accountability, the production of analyses, the planning of actions and
perspectives among anarchists are crucial. We also believe that
anarchist organization should be open to the outside, that we should
have a presence and intervention as anarchists in the public sphere.
Because in previous years we lived in a situation where almost
everything was hidden, in the illegality. And so for many people in our
society we didn't even exist. They said: "What are anarchists? Ah, the
ones who wear black and do conspiratorial things." So it is important
for us to have a publicly visible organization with a long-term
perspective. And also we must realize that companionship is a different
thing from friendship. We must create companionships, which are not mere
friendship, nor exclusively pure political kinship, but based on common
political goals, so that we can overcome this state of short-term,
opportunistic political relations, which constitute our past experience.
So we are working in this direction, as my partner said before, of
healthy relationships between partners, without this meaning that our
aim is to build super friendships. In fact, we have discussed it and
choose to use the term "radical honesty", which we consider necessary if
we want to build an organization with a long-term strategy.
So these are the three proposals we have and which act as a compass for
us: to build popular power, or, to put it another way, self-organized
communities, to create an anarchist organization with a long-term
perspective and to implement a prefigurative politics within the
organization but and within our community. In this context we have two
spaces-infrastructures. First, we participate in a sit-in, which we call
the Occupied Community Center. Because in Chile there was a squatting
movement, but it was always, or at least in general, exclusively for
anarchists... In fact, many of these squats were not even anarchist
squats, but more anti-authoritarian, in the sense of an alternative
lifestyle. However, there were several with such characteristics. It is
important for us that, okay, we are an anarchist occupation, but at the
same time we are also a community center, where our neighbors can come,
use it and do different things. So this is one of our infrastructures,
where, on a regular basis, we organize educational activities with
children but also with our elderly neighbors. Because in Chile, as we
explained before, because of the pension system, people after the age of
sixty are usually many alone and many poor, because pensions are
terribly low. They are therefore a group of people essentially abandoned
by society. In the occupied community center we organize workshops, and
these people are the best political allies we have in the neighborhood!
Many of them belong to a time when... after all, their perceptions are
the result of various traditional, conservative things. So when they
first approach us, it's like, "Oh! So this place is illegal? Wow!" So
the occupation is a community center. And our second space is the
anarchist hangout FLORA, which we rent.
D: Let me say some things about FLORA. The anarchist hangout is part of
our regular offerings and stems from our strategic choice of anarchist
organization. It is located in the center of the city, precisely because
we want to have a public presence. While the occupation, the community
center, is located in the residential zone, in the hills of Valparaiso,
because in that area we live and we want to have various activities
together with our community and our neighbors. But we chose to open the
anarchist hangout in the center of the city. We consider that these two
spaces are different from each other and have different characteristics.
Downtown allows us to have a more central, public presence. There are no
residences there, but shops and various other infrastructures... for
example, right next to us is a church (laughs). And we think that's the
ideal place to be as anarchists, more so than in the housing zone.
Actually both spaces are just different aspects of our movement. FLORA
was born out of our need to have a place where we can meet as an
assembly, but it also functions as a place where other organizations can
come, meet, make a presentation, organize themselves... And this is
equally important for us . At FLORA we also have an open library and
bookstore. The bookstore to a certain extent helps us to deal with the
rent costs. On the question of rent there was a dispute... not exactly a
dispute, but conflicting opinions. But in the end it was a smart move,
in our effort to find practical solutions. Because we already live in
one occupation and we didn't have the strength to occupy a second place
in the city center. And it is also essential that it is a comfortable
space, a place where the people who come feel at home. To make something
like this you need to put in a lot of effort. Wanting to be efficient on
a practical level, we had this option, to rent a small space. It is
located in a very poor area of the center, so the rent is not expensive.
And we love being there, it's a really nice place. It's in an area
that's close to everyone's jobs and we like the character of the
neighborhood. And as we said, it is part of our public presence.
There is a sign outside that says in big letters: FLORA. We've been
doing some work lately and it's been closed for a while. When we
reopened a few weeks ago, it was nice to have people coming from the
neighborhood, even from the church across the street, saying: "Hi,
welcome, we're glad to see you" or "How nice that the place is filled
with young people" . For us it is important to create bonds with
everyone, even with people we know very well that we do not agree on
some things, but live next to us. It is a neighborhood that many do not
like at all. They say it's dirty or "there's a lot of violence and you
might get robbed." We feel good to be there. It is good that we are
visible in a central place. Also, we always try to have food for the
people. This is also an example of how we want to live and what we
should create. We need to make spaces where people will feel good, make
them think and want to participate themselves, to build communities. And
every time someone comes for the first time, we have such reactions:
"Oh, how nice, you make food and eat together" or "Oh, what a colorful
place, you have pink too!"
All this makes up FLORA.
I: It's part of our perception that we don't aim for pure and
uncontaminated anarchist spaces. Because, in our opinion, for many years
the anarchist movement was closed. There was a "we don't want to mix
with anyone else" attitude. It is good for us that the contradictions of
our class are mixed in this space, because we come from this class. We
are not special, we are not special. We are also a people, a part of the
people. Our fathers and our mothers and our grandmothers are part of
this people. Therefore we are not interested in being the chosen ones.
And that's why we care that our space is beautiful, warm and welcoming
for everyone. Because the usual was a situation where everyone was very
sullen, angry and overly serious. A tense atmosphere prevailed in the
anarchist premises. And in our opinion this is not very useful because
it is not something attractive. And it is not actually connected to the
social conditions we live in as a people. Sitting down to eat with
others or sharing happy moments is part of our folk history. Popular
resistance has always involved collective entertainment and collective
eating. So it is important to have these two elements, otherwise we will
always be something outside, something else, the experts. We are not
special either. We are simple people. Anarchists are ordinary people.
Because everyone can become an anarchist. And that matters a lot too.
For us, anarchy is not just for the young and brave. If we continue to
move in such footsteps, then in the next uprising we will be alone
again. So this is our rationale for the FLORA hangout.
Another part of our tactical movement is that we choose to be present in
open, public spaces and at demonstrations, as anarchists. That is, to
not just be lost in the crowd, but to stand out as anarchists. And above
all to be there. We participate in the marches and all the different
mobilizations of the social movement as anarchists, with our own speech
and our own banners.
D: Colorful banners!
I: Yes, they are colorful, because we like pink, not just black. We have
also analyzed a little the aesthetics that dominates in Chile. Anarchism
ended up representing more of an identity, an aesthetic, than a
political, social and popular project. We understand that aesthetics
also has its importance, but it is necessary to evolve not only as
individual identities, but as a social, popular, political proposal. So,
in summary, these are our tactics: We organize educational processes for
children and for our neighbors in general. We have our housing project,
which we co-shape as an occupation but also in collaboration with our
neighbors, because we want to find more comprehensive answers to the
housing issue. In Chile, housing is a big problem and the way we deal
with it goes beyond the fact that we live in an occupation. Because time
and time again, people think it's that simple: "oh, you've foreclosed,
you've found a solution to the housing problem". But for us, the fact
that we have an occupation in which seven people live does not provide a
solution to the housing issue. We therefore need to create collective,
community-based responses to the issue of housing. And we also see it as
a political opportunity to co-shape analyzes and practical choices
together with our neighbors. Because when you do things together with
neighbors who are not ideologically convinced, you see the need to
create possibilities and develop political perspectives. So, this
housing project is not already ready, it is something we are working on.
For example, together with people from the neighborhood, we build spaces
for school housing, analyze the situation together, co-formulate
proposals together... And we consider it an important opportunity to do
political analyzes with our neighbors, and not just be us which we do
the analysis and give it ready. So yes, squatting is one answer, but we
need more answers for larger communities. Otherwise we will once again
be closed ventures that seem to say "okay, we found a solution for
ourselves, we are not interested in creating things with the communities
we belong to". So I'm coming back after this parenthesis about the
mortgage. Our tactics are about education, housing, occupied community
center, anarchist hangout FLORA, and choosing to be visible in
demonstrations, in the public sphere, in social movements, also building
relationships with other organizations that exist.
D: Before we close, maybe we'll say a few words about a future venture
we're planning. At the moment we are still in the discussion stage on
how to start the operation of a health center within the infrastructure
of the occupied community center. Because we know of course that it is
not possible to build a self-organized hospital overnight, but we can
build a health center where, for example, the elderly can come and have
their injections, take their blood pressure, etc. We are talking for
such small things in a way, but they are necessary. There is a private
company that started coming every Friday and doing this work. And many
people went because they have countless questions about health issues.
And as we said, if you go to any public structure, the situation is so
bad that you have to wait in line for six hours just to ask a question.
So we see that there is this necessity and we look at what tools we have
and what capabilities we can develop to find a solution as a community.
I: Another thing that we are also discussing, without however having
arrived at a specific proposal - moreover because we consider that it
does not correspond exclusively to us to present a final proposal - is
the question of self-defense. We understand that it is necessary to
develop the self-defense of our ventures and communities, precisely
because we want to win. So we must be able to defend ourselves against
state repression. But we also realize that there is a need to develop
self-defense capabilities in a self-organized perspective, which will
not lend itself to a military state structure. Because we see that there
are also logics of self-defense or self-organized violence that often
follow patriarchal and hierarchical structures. This is also due to the
fact that in Chile there are strong references to authoritarian
socialism and communism. After all, they were the most organized in the
violent resistance against the dictatorship. So there is also this
legacy of quite authoritarian structures. Therefore we understand the
need to create self-defense forces, but without patriarchal,
hierarchical and state references.
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/diethni/1650-anarxikes-protaseis-sti-diamaxi-gia-to-paron-kai-to-mellon-synentefksi-melon-tis-a-s-tou-valparaiso-xili
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A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
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the sidelines of the international Anti-Authoritarian Meeting in
Saint-Imieux, Switzerland, in July 2023, and had the character of a
discussion with three members of the Circle of Fire and APO .]
K: Our first question is about the social uprising of 2019 in Chile, but
also the conclusions from your participation in it and how you proceed
after those events, in their aftermath.
D: First of all, we are from the Valparaiso Anarchist Convention. First
of all, we must clarify that at the time the rebellion broke out, the
assembly had not yet been built. There was no assembly during the
rebellion. And that's important to mention because one thing we saw at
that time is that even though there was a big uprising and a lot of
things were happening in the streets and in our neighborhoods, with all
those expressions of anger and the mood for change in Chile, at the same
time, we didn't have a meeting place as anarchists in the rebellion.
We began to understand that while the social movement had tremendous
momentum, and it was great to see it unfold in front of you and to be a
part of it, however, from a political point of view, and indeed from a
specific political point of view, namely the anarchist dimension, it was
not we had a meeting and discussion ground over everything that happened
every day. Because, as we know, in a rebellion everything changes from
day to day, very quickly. Many events are happening and people are
starting to create, they are starting to use their imagination... And it
is great to participate in this situation together with the great
majority, but at times it is also very important to have processes
between anarchists. So, in the middle of the rebellion, about two months
after it broke out, some comrades met and decided to call for an open
assembly of anarchists in Valparaiso.
I: Maybe I should explain a bit about the larger context. One reason
that this ground did not exist before is the fact that anarchism in
Chile at that time was at a very low level, very disorganized. We would
say that almost the entire movement was dominated by nihilistic views.
So, this is also an element of the analysis we did during and after the
uprising and one of the main reasons that at this particular juncture we
created this assembly, this meeting place and exchange of ideas and actions.
Also, let's say a few words about the background of the uprising
itself... The uprising, then, was unpredictable - like all uprisings.
But at the same time it was also predictable, because it had preceded an
era full of different struggles. For example, environmental struggles
are particularly important in Chile, because a bunch of companies -
mining, deforestation, industrial fishing, etc. - have caused massive
environmental destruction, which we are still experiencing today. It's a
long story, however, it is one of the most critical and intense matches
of its kind. In addition, there was a broad feminist movement,
anti-patriarchal I would say, which gave rise to major insurrectionary
events in the 2017-2018 period, with occupations of universities and
schools. At the same time, the repression of the Mapuche people was at
its height. Of course this continues today, but now I am talking about
the situation before the outbreak of the rebellion. And of course, let's
not forget the general conditions of precariousness. For this reason we
say that the uprising was on the one hand unpredictable, because at that
time there was a recession of social movements, but on the other hand
there were countless reasons to revolt. So from one point of view it was
unexpected but also very possible. All those conditions were there for a
rebellion to be born.
D: I should add that, in addition to the environmental struggles, we
also had the struggles of students and pensioners. And this plays a big
role because it concerns the whole society, all ages... from the
students, the youth, to the elderly, who, having spent their whole lives
working, end up living in absolute poverty. A proclamation was
circulating in the days of the uprising, which likened the situation in
Chile to a boiling cauldron, with a cauldron ready to explode. So there
were two aspects: one was about the social movement, which was low at
the time; the other was that there was a boiling cauldron underground
and, at any moment, anything could cause the explosion. And finally
those who caused the explosion were the students, on the occasion of the
increase in the price of metro tickets.
I: And to go even further back... In Chile there was this long period of
dictatorship, which lasted a whole seventeen years. It was a neoliberal
dictatorship, with a lot of neoliberal changes in the field of the
economy being imposed under this dictatorial regime, that is, at a time
when it was impossible for social movements to exist due to severe
repression. So, they privatized everything from water to... everything!
With the absolute power of repression in their hands, there was no
social movement and so it was very easy for them to impose all these
changes. When we look at how things have worked elsewhere, we see that
in other countries the changes brought about by the neoliberal economy
took place over a longer period of time, much more slowly, because they
were faced with the resistance of the world. On the contrary, in Chile
this regime was imposed by the dictatorship and of course continued by
the democratic government that succeeded it.
So there is also this dimension in the background of the rebellion. And
now perhaps it is time to say something about the characteristics of
rebellion.
K: Of course. However, although you explain that you created the
assembly after the uprising began, in your presentation 1 you described
how you became involved as anarchists in the events. If you want, can
you include in the conversation about the characteristics of the
uprising a couple of words about the ways of your participation and
about the transition to the formation of the assembly?
D: First let's say that Valparaiso is a small town, it's not
particularly big. So the anarchist movement was largely limited to the
counterculture dimension. So on the one hand you didn't have any
anarchist movement or organized anarchist groups, but on the other hand
you knew people. You saw some people at concerts, at gatherings, at
street demonstrations. You may not have known who exactly is an
anarchist, but you knew that there is a world that moves in the same
spaces. In the uprising we saw that all these people found themselves
participating in its self-organized processes, such as neighborhood
assemblies and collective kitchens. We call them "common weasels", but
perhaps the reasoning behind this concept is not very clear. "Communal
feasts" are when people organize and gather in a square or neighborhood,
cook a large amount of food and share it all together. It is something
very important, because food always brings people together. And it is a
practice that survives from the period of the dictatorship. And this
also has its importance, since within the uprising we saw many practices
emerge from the tradition of resistance during the years of the
dictatorship. The same applies to the "pots and pans", the night
gatherings where people come out and bang pots and pans. This is also a
tradition that has survived from the era of the dictatorship. The First
Aid Brigade was also very important (p. Health Brigade in Chile or
medical team in other countries). We know that such groups existed in
the protests and before the uprising. But in the uprising they acquired
a leading role because the number of wounded was huge and the repression
was very harsh. These are self-organized first aid teams on the road.
And when we say self-organized, we mean that they did everything they
could to be visible, they had helmets, shields... They were very well
organized and soon became the protagonists of the demonstrations. Anyone
who was going down the road and before the march even started had to
look and see where the first aid team was because they knew very well
that there was a high chance of being hit. Of course, the Primera Linea
was equally dynamic.
K: Tell us a little about the characteristics of the First Line, because
there are often misconceptions. At your event we heard you say that it
was a way to ensure the social character of the uprising, that is, the
presence of everyone, young and old, on the street.
I: The most important thing is that it was a self-organized process,
which people learned and made on the spot on the street. The point was
not to find some special superheroes, but to find a way to defend our
lines in the conflicts. The basic idea was that "we are all here
together". The First Line was created to defend the people involved in
the conflicts and to do so in an organized, self-organized way. For
example, there were different roles.
D: Yes, that is, some people were collecting the tear gas, others had to
look where the police were coming from, others were throwing things...
I: Everyone assumed a different position and this was organized on the
spot, within the demonstration. Because not only in Santiago but also in
Valparaiso the conflicts lasted for many hours.
D: All night long...
I: And that's because many, many people were coming down the street. So
the demonstrations also lasted for hours and the First Line was there to
protect them.
D: What we have to keep is that all these movements sprung out of
self-organization, both the First Aid Brigade and the food organization
and the First Line. And this was done out of necessity, precisely
because there were so many people. We are talking about the great
majority of society, they were the ones who asked for change and went to
the demonstrations. So it was almost practically inevitable to think,
"We can't just stand here like this, we have to organize, we have to
organize ourselves"! And every team understood that. Even the people who
did not participate in any group and simply went to the demonstrations
understood that organization is necessary if we want to stay on the
streets. To conclude what I was saying before... In those self-organized
movements, then, at some point you would see, and especially in a small
town like Valparaiso, all these anarchists that you knew, that you
already knew to be anarchists or anyway part of the anti-authoritarian
movement, and we just exchanged some words like: "Hey, you're here
too!", "yes, I'm part of this...", but without being together in a
network, a movement or a organization. So we met almost by chance during
the uprising because we kind of knew each other and because the city is
small, but we didn't have deeper political relations.
I: We can say that there was an individual presence at the tactical
level. That is, in all these expressions of rebellion there were
individuals who participated as anarchists, but there was an absence of
an anarchist organization that gave perspectives, political
perspectives. Even the most rebellious, those who used to talk about
rebellion all the time, when the rebellion happened they were surprised
that such a thing was actually happening. They looked and said "wow"!
So, yes, as individuals we were present at the tactical level, but
absent at the strategic level. And this is very important in our opinion
because the movement and the rebellion did not revolve around a single
demand; there was no single event that triggered it. It was against
everything! We call it protestas contra todo, protests against
everything, against all the conditions of life imposed on us in Chile.
So it wasn't a one-thematic thing, there wasn't a specific perspective.
And we also had no intention of proposing an anarchist perspective on
this whole situation. That is why our analysis, our self-criticism
concerns the fact that we did not have a strategic perspective in that
moment.
So, when the social democrats and other political parties proposed at
one point the creation of a Constituent Assembly, many people thought
"well, this is a way out". Because after one, two, three months of
continuous rebellion, harsh repression but also self-organization in so
many different aspects, the world was starting to run out.
D: Yes, so he began to wonder: "And now what do we do? Where are we going?'
I: Precisely because the uprising was not a reaction to a single event
or a specific problem, people began to say: "Okay, we've had three
wonderful months, but now what do we do, where are we going?" And at
that moment it was realized that the only ones who had a strategic
proposal were the state itself! Again! We anarchists had none. Many
anarchists, both in our city and in other cities, said: "Oh, look, after
all, people want a Constituent Assembly, we are not going to participate
in such a thing." For us it was that moment where we had to say, "Okay,
we don't want that either, but what do we have to offer the world?"
D: That's right. And I want to add one more thing. We have said before
that, based on our analysis, the uprising was not about a single demand,
a single issue. However, at some point there were also mobilizations for
specific issues, for example for an environmental or other struggle. So
from one point on, in the impasse, many people began to choose: "Okay,
well, I'll go along with this demand, we'll ask for this and that..."
And the state also had to offer solutions to such level. While we
believe that we do not need to have a single proposal for the rebellion
itself, that is, a proposal that will lead the rebellion. For us, our
proposition should be: "We want to change everything, because the whole
system is wrong." And this sentence must have been built before the
rebellion. It's not something you just make up in the middle of the riot
and say: "come on people, follow us...". Part of the problem is that
when people came to ask, "Okay, so where do we go now?", they started
looking for the answer in identifying with some particular partial
demand. While our proposal is that everything must change, because the
whole system, as a whole, is unfair.
I: In our opinion, the period after the uprising is also very important.
Because even though it was a very critical and powerful moment, we also
understand that things don't only change in moments like this. And it's
very easy to romanticize such an experience. But we consider it
important to have a critical perspective and to go beyond past
experience. One more reason is because we realize that capitalism is in
crisis. Historically Chile occupies a very specific position in the
world economy. We live in a country where mining and capitalism have
their own special characteristics, making sure to perpetuate the
conditions we live in. They have created a very strong structure to
prevent us from changing things. Consequently, such uprisings are very
likely to happen again. And they can happen, but it will never be the
same. The same thing will not happen again. We didn't have the right
tools for the moment it happened and we have to understand that,
overcome it and see what we can build, create, not just for the next
uprising, but for our lives here and now.
Because there is also the possibility that we will not experience
another such rebellion. In our analysis, of course, we believe that it
will reappear, because it stems from the very conditions of life. But
even if it doesn't happen, okay, what are we going to do? It is not
possible to sustain ourselves only through such spectacular moments,
because life is not only spectacular moments. It's also these somewhat
boring, low-intensity moments of the social movement. So, our proposals
also take into account this dimension, of how we will create political
processes in our territories after the uprising, in the interval between
uprisings or even without an uprising. This is our understanding because
without it we will simply repeat ourselves and once again find ourselves
without strategic policy proposals. And the state will win again. That's
what we believe and that's why we created a political organization. We
call it the organizational process, because in reality we build our
organization, our structures, our propositions. That's why we wanted to
record a road map.
Our analysis is not only about the conditions of the rebellion, but the
broader historical conditions as they are expressed in our region, also
understanding that they are part of the global capitalist structure. In
this context, we formulate three strategic propositions and also some
tactical propositions. According to this analysis, which is linked to
the rebellion but also to our wider political history, we are faced with
three systems of rule. This is our enemy and it has different
expressions in the place where we live. These three systems are
capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism. We perceive them as overlapping
structures. So we need to have strategic proposals to attack these
structures and build something different, the antithesis of all three
systems of dominance.
Because within the political movement in Chile there was and still is a
competition regarding what is more important: the fight against
capitalism, the fight against patriarchy or the fight against the
manifestations of colonialism. We consider them to be a single entity.
And we have to deal with them as a whole because as a whole they work
and are connected to each other.
K: And the State?
I: The state is an expression of all three systems of sovereignty.
D: In Chile, however, with the neoliberal model, the state has a small
share compared to companies, that is, in relation to the capitalist
structure.
I: The most basic expression of the state in Chile is repression. He
doesn't have control over many other things because the companies have
control over everything.
D: The state doesn't have money or much infrastructure. Public
infrastructure is the worst possible. They have nothing to show to say
"here we are a strong state". For example, schools or similar things.
I: When we visit Europe, Germany for example, we see that the state has
enormous power. It controls many things and even through society itself.
It's all very controlled. In Chile this does not happen because the
state does not work. He is merely the administrator of legal violence.
And during the uprising this was very visible. And it became very
visible to the world itself. "What does the state do?" "Suppresses." It
is a very clear situation because the companies have the power. And this
is also related to colonialism. There are families in Chile, with roots
in colonialism, very powerful families, who own a lot of companies and
control everything. And they are against the state! So it is important
for us to clarify from which position we speak, because companies also
criticize the state.
We live in a neoliberal model, with a small state. In other words, we
have discussed it and we see that we need to explain that, when we stand
against the state, it does not mean that we agree with neoliberalism,
because this is not clear to many people. We need to clarify that.
D: To give an example, in Chile, if we talk about hospitals, people
think "oh! I'll have to wait six hours in line to be called." Or the
schools... the public ones are in a terrible state. During the
rebellion, looting and destruction were not directed against government
infrastructure. He made no attack on public property, but only on
private property. Because everyone knows that the state is poor. It's
bad, but it's also poor. So why attack something you know is already
broken? This is also proof that people in Chile understand that the
state has a small stake.
K: Do you now want to tell us a few words about the road map, about your
premises and your activities today?
D: In the context of what we said before, we decided to create a road
map, which we perceive as a compass for our organizational process,
because it was necessary for us to ask questions among the partners, to
know where we want to go, which road we choose, but also how we will
move on this road. With this aim in mind, we formulated three strategic
proposals, which also have practical dimensions. The three strategies
are the following: popular power (s. poder popular/popular power),
anarchist organization and pre-symbolic politics. When we make a
presentation, we always start from popular power, because we know that
as a concept it gathers the most controversy. We began to discuss the
meaning of popular power because in Latin America it has a great
historical and political background, while at the same time it contains
two concepts, that of power/power and that of the people. And as we were
writing, we had a lot of discussion inside the assembly about what they
meant. It's actually something simple. There are some distinct concepts,
but we often confuse them. And these are hierarchy, dominance and
authority/power. Many times we use them as if they are synonymous,
however they are different and each has its own special characteristics.
K: Here we must say that there is a translational/linguistic problem in
the performance of the specific term, but also a political-cultural one.
In Greek, the term popular power/poder popular translates as "popular
power". In English, the word "power" can mean either power or authority.
While the word used in Greek, "écoussia", corresponds to the English
"authority" and for us it is negative in nature. No anti-authoritarians
could claim power. But beyond the linguistic dimension, the term
"people's power" is intertwined with the legacy of the authoritarian
model of communism, and means the seizure of power, that is, the state,
the state apparatus.
D: We, for what they call "popular power", use the term of generalized
self-direction. He is the one who describes the self-direction of
society, that there is no authority outside and above society. We do not
use the concept of popular power. It is used by those who come from
Bolshevism. When they speak of popular power Marxists do not mean the
power of society itself for itself, but the power of the party, the
state power of the party, in the name of society. In Greece this is how
it is perceived.
D: In this regard, we faced similar problems because as a concept it has
a certain historical charge. It was also used by the Government of
Popular Unity; the government of Salvador Allende before the coup.
I: It is indeed a term that has its own political and historical charge,
because it was used by the Popular Unity in order to expand the base of
its supporters. However, they appropriated this pre-existing term, it
was not their own concept, it was not made by them. For us it is
important to highlight that this is an end in itself. We are talking
about self-organized communities. And we're also talking about
self-organizing communities that can win! To defeat our enemies. And
this is perhaps the most essential element that this concept offers us.
Because in our analysis we also saw that the anarchist movement has
erased the idea of power/authority and only talks about the need to
attack power, not understanding that we even need to win. We use this
concept because we are talking about battle. And in this battle we need
this guideline for our forces, for social forces, in order to defeat our
enemies. Why do we see as a big problem this permanent attitude that
existed and exists... an attitude that means giving up the battle,
distancing ourselves from it, precisely because we consider it
impossible to win, because there is an absence of a revolutionary
perspective that says that at some point we must defeat the enemies us,
and not just represent this moral resignation that says "oh, society
doesn't understand us, so we too will keep our morality, this higher
morality, and cut ourselves off from society, let's go, I know , in no
forest to build horizontal communities". We don't agree with that. We
believe we have to be here, to propose what we propose, to build
communities, organized communities that can win in the end.
D: Because we want to win together with everyone and not just win as a
team. We want everyone to feel victorious and strong. And for this
reason, as my partner also said, we are not interested in retiring to
some forest and building our own little communities. We want the elderly
to win, we want the children to win, we want the great majority to win.
I: This is how we perceive the popular power of self-organized
collective forces. We find this perspective to be the most controversial
but also the greatest achievement, because it is something we build
every day in our communities, evolving our capabilities and tools to
create self-organizing communities that can have different approaches
and different capabilities. Also, it is a perception that springs from
the rebellion itself, because there we saw our potential and how strong
we are, how well we can organize life and resistance. We experienced it
and saw that these forces must be organized. We need to create
communities of struggle that will have guidelines and attack our
enemies. And, speaking of popular power, we do not believe that it is
something that will be achieved sometime in the distant future, nor that
it is magically created in revolutionary events. On the contrary, we
must here and now cultivate it within our communities, so that in the
next critical moment we can stand stronger. And this is another element
of our analysis:
Precisely because there was no such political perspective within the
rebellion, it was very easy for them to suppress the movement. Because
the whole world found itself in a situation of "what do we do now?" And
those who most of all did not know what to do were us anarchists! So we
believe that now is the time to do those boring - they call them boring,
but for us they are not - daily movements that are required to create
bonds within our communities. Because something that is also important
to say is that we too are a people. We are part of the great majority.
We are forced to sell our labor power, our energy, our time, to
capitalism. So we need to be with our neighbors, in our communities, and
build another perspective. That is why popular power is one of our
strategic proposals.
D: I should add that it is not something that we place in the future. We
build it and live it day by day, through perhaps small experiences,
having the prospect of a big experience and big events at some point.
But all these small experiences make up popular power.
I: It is also important that we are part of a long-term struggle. There
have been people who have fought for it before us. They accepted the
attack of repression, the attack of the state, the attack of capitalist
formations. And there will be others who enter this fight. Because we
understand that revolution is a long-term process. And within it are the
rebellions, which are very important because they accomplish many
things. But we see our current situation and recognize that we are not
going through such a period of rebellion. And we don't want to wait for
the next uprising to happen before we act.
We need to act within these intermediate processes, which are also part
of the revolution. It is part of the revolution to create
self-organizing living organisms. This is our understanding: that we
must create here and now, within our communities, such forms of
organization, with what we have at hand.
This is linked to our next strategy, prefigurative politics, which we
see as the possibility of building this new society, the new world, here
and now, despite our contradictions. Because, based on our class
analysis, we consider ourselves to belong to a class with its
contradictions, sorrows and beauties. We too carry within us all those
remnants of capitalism, patriarchy, colonialism, the church... and
reproduce them. However, we do not feel that we have to be pure and
unsullied and great to take part in the process of revolution. We must
accept our contradictions and try here and now to change things in our
lives. We understand that it doesn't happen moment by moment, it's a
whole process. Moreover, we believe that this arrogance of the
anarchists, that "we must first in our personal, private lives be so and
so and so," has worked destructively in the effort to organize with
others. It is necessary to understand that both others and ourselves
carry many characteristics that are due to the way we have been educated
in capitalism. But we don't have to be super perfect revolutionary
warriors to start changing this situation. In short, it is important for
us to accept our contradictions and start creating another society today.
D: One more thing: When you're trying to achieve absolute purity, that's
when you start closing your eyes. Because when you're in favor of
purity, there are things you don't want to talk about at all. The
acceptance of contradictions is also about how we forge our bonds and
relationships inside the organization and outside the organization.
Because we can't wait until the revolution to talk about certain things
or to create comradeship and strong bonds within our communities. There
are too many taboos that sometimes lead the movement to disintegration.
Because things accumulate that we don't talk about and at some point
they explode and can tear apart even a big movement - or a small
movement, it doesn't matter, they tear it apart anyway. So for us it is
important to have healthy relationships within the organization. We must
cultivate bonds of companionship. And for this reason, we also adopt the
concept and proposition of the joy of life. This is also a kind of
political proposition, that we want to create things that give joy.
Having a healthy movement also means enjoying what we create. After all,
this is the world we want to live in the future, a happy life. It is not
mandatory when we do things to be gloomy, depressed or negative all the
time. Because it's really hard if you're like that to create something
and hope it's different. The process always plays a role in the final
result, in our opinion. So all this is connected to the concept of
prefigurative politics and to the mutual care that must exist within the
community. The community itself must cultivate mutual, collective care.
And this is another reason why for us the concept of joy is crucial.
I: And the third strategic proposal is the anarchist organization. We
always clarify at this point that we are not proposing anything new.
These are things that have been proposed and practically implemented for
many years by different organizations. But for us anarchist organization
is of particular importance, as is having a long-term perspective.
Because, as our experience shows, in Chile for a very long time there
was no anarchist organization with a long-term perspective. And we
believe that it is necessary to create it, it is necessary to build
relationships of companionship that will allow us to have organizations
with long-term processes. It is necessary to form friendships and to
organize ourselves, as it is also a form of exercise in how far we can
commit to each other, to take responsibility for our actions but also
the responsibility of consistency between word and deed. We consider
anarchist organization a building block.
Accountability, the production of analyses, the planning of actions and
perspectives among anarchists are crucial. We also believe that
anarchist organization should be open to the outside, that we should
have a presence and intervention as anarchists in the public sphere.
Because in previous years we lived in a situation where almost
everything was hidden, in the illegality. And so for many people in our
society we didn't even exist. They said: "What are anarchists? Ah, the
ones who wear black and do conspiratorial things." So it is important
for us to have a publicly visible organization with a long-term
perspective. And also we must realize that companionship is a different
thing from friendship. We must create companionships, which are not mere
friendship, nor exclusively pure political kinship, but based on common
political goals, so that we can overcome this state of short-term,
opportunistic political relations, which constitute our past experience.
So we are working in this direction, as my partner said before, of
healthy relationships between partners, without this meaning that our
aim is to build super friendships. In fact, we have discussed it and
choose to use the term "radical honesty", which we consider necessary if
we want to build an organization with a long-term strategy.
So these are the three proposals we have and which act as a compass for
us: to build popular power, or, to put it another way, self-organized
communities, to create an anarchist organization with a long-term
perspective and to implement a prefigurative politics within the
organization but and within our community. In this context we have two
spaces-infrastructures. First, we participate in a sit-in, which we call
the Occupied Community Center. Because in Chile there was a squatting
movement, but it was always, or at least in general, exclusively for
anarchists... In fact, many of these squats were not even anarchist
squats, but more anti-authoritarian, in the sense of an alternative
lifestyle. However, there were several with such characteristics. It is
important for us that, okay, we are an anarchist occupation, but at the
same time we are also a community center, where our neighbors can come,
use it and do different things. So this is one of our infrastructures,
where, on a regular basis, we organize educational activities with
children but also with our elderly neighbors. Because in Chile, as we
explained before, because of the pension system, people after the age of
sixty are usually many alone and many poor, because pensions are
terribly low. They are therefore a group of people essentially abandoned
by society. In the occupied community center we organize workshops, and
these people are the best political allies we have in the neighborhood!
Many of them belong to a time when... after all, their perceptions are
the result of various traditional, conservative things. So when they
first approach us, it's like, "Oh! So this place is illegal? Wow!" So
the occupation is a community center. And our second space is the
anarchist hangout FLORA, which we rent.
D: Let me say some things about FLORA. The anarchist hangout is part of
our regular offerings and stems from our strategic choice of anarchist
organization. It is located in the center of the city, precisely because
we want to have a public presence. While the occupation, the community
center, is located in the residential zone, in the hills of Valparaiso,
because in that area we live and we want to have various activities
together with our community and our neighbors. But we chose to open the
anarchist hangout in the center of the city. We consider that these two
spaces are different from each other and have different characteristics.
Downtown allows us to have a more central, public presence. There are no
residences there, but shops and various other infrastructures... for
example, right next to us is a church (laughs). And we think that's the
ideal place to be as anarchists, more so than in the housing zone.
Actually both spaces are just different aspects of our movement. FLORA
was born out of our need to have a place where we can meet as an
assembly, but it also functions as a place where other organizations can
come, meet, make a presentation, organize themselves... And this is
equally important for us . At FLORA we also have an open library and
bookstore. The bookstore to a certain extent helps us to deal with the
rent costs. On the question of rent there was a dispute... not exactly a
dispute, but conflicting opinions. But in the end it was a smart move,
in our effort to find practical solutions. Because we already live in
one occupation and we didn't have the strength to occupy a second place
in the city center. And it is also essential that it is a comfortable
space, a place where the people who come feel at home. To make something
like this you need to put in a lot of effort. Wanting to be efficient on
a practical level, we had this option, to rent a small space. It is
located in a very poor area of the center, so the rent is not expensive.
And we love being there, it's a really nice place. It's in an area
that's close to everyone's jobs and we like the character of the
neighborhood. And as we said, it is part of our public presence.
There is a sign outside that says in big letters: FLORA. We've been
doing some work lately and it's been closed for a while. When we
reopened a few weeks ago, it was nice to have people coming from the
neighborhood, even from the church across the street, saying: "Hi,
welcome, we're glad to see you" or "How nice that the place is filled
with young people" . For us it is important to create bonds with
everyone, even with people we know very well that we do not agree on
some things, but live next to us. It is a neighborhood that many do not
like at all. They say it's dirty or "there's a lot of violence and you
might get robbed." We feel good to be there. It is good that we are
visible in a central place. Also, we always try to have food for the
people. This is also an example of how we want to live and what we
should create. We need to make spaces where people will feel good, make
them think and want to participate themselves, to build communities. And
every time someone comes for the first time, we have such reactions:
"Oh, how nice, you make food and eat together" or "Oh, what a colorful
place, you have pink too!"
All this makes up FLORA.
I: It's part of our perception that we don't aim for pure and
uncontaminated anarchist spaces. Because, in our opinion, for many years
the anarchist movement was closed. There was a "we don't want to mix
with anyone else" attitude. It is good for us that the contradictions of
our class are mixed in this space, because we come from this class. We
are not special, we are not special. We are also a people, a part of the
people. Our fathers and our mothers and our grandmothers are part of
this people. Therefore we are not interested in being the chosen ones.
And that's why we care that our space is beautiful, warm and welcoming
for everyone. Because the usual was a situation where everyone was very
sullen, angry and overly serious. A tense atmosphere prevailed in the
anarchist premises. And in our opinion this is not very useful because
it is not something attractive. And it is not actually connected to the
social conditions we live in as a people. Sitting down to eat with
others or sharing happy moments is part of our folk history. Popular
resistance has always involved collective entertainment and collective
eating. So it is important to have these two elements, otherwise we will
always be something outside, something else, the experts. We are not
special either. We are simple people. Anarchists are ordinary people.
Because everyone can become an anarchist. And that matters a lot too.
For us, anarchy is not just for the young and brave. If we continue to
move in such footsteps, then in the next uprising we will be alone
again. So this is our rationale for the FLORA hangout.
Another part of our tactical movement is that we choose to be present in
open, public spaces and at demonstrations, as anarchists. That is, to
not just be lost in the crowd, but to stand out as anarchists. And above
all to be there. We participate in the marches and all the different
mobilizations of the social movement as anarchists, with our own speech
and our own banners.
D: Colorful banners!
I: Yes, they are colorful, because we like pink, not just black. We have
also analyzed a little the aesthetics that dominates in Chile. Anarchism
ended up representing more of an identity, an aesthetic, than a
political, social and popular project. We understand that aesthetics
also has its importance, but it is necessary to evolve not only as
individual identities, but as a social, popular, political proposal. So,
in summary, these are our tactics: We organize educational processes for
children and for our neighbors in general. We have our housing project,
which we co-shape as an occupation but also in collaboration with our
neighbors, because we want to find more comprehensive answers to the
housing issue. In Chile, housing is a big problem and the way we deal
with it goes beyond the fact that we live in an occupation. Because time
and time again, people think it's that simple: "oh, you've foreclosed,
you've found a solution to the housing problem". But for us, the fact
that we have an occupation in which seven people live does not provide a
solution to the housing issue. We therefore need to create collective,
community-based responses to the issue of housing. And we also see it as
a political opportunity to co-shape analyzes and practical choices
together with our neighbors. Because when you do things together with
neighbors who are not ideologically convinced, you see the need to
create possibilities and develop political perspectives. So, this
housing project is not already ready, it is something we are working on.
For example, together with people from the neighborhood, we build spaces
for school housing, analyze the situation together, co-formulate
proposals together... And we consider it an important opportunity to do
political analyzes with our neighbors, and not just be us which we do
the analysis and give it ready. So yes, squatting is one answer, but we
need more answers for larger communities. Otherwise we will once again
be closed ventures that seem to say "okay, we found a solution for
ourselves, we are not interested in creating things with the communities
we belong to". So I'm coming back after this parenthesis about the
mortgage. Our tactics are about education, housing, occupied community
center, anarchist hangout FLORA, and choosing to be visible in
demonstrations, in the public sphere, in social movements, also building
relationships with other organizations that exist.
D: Before we close, maybe we'll say a few words about a future venture
we're planning. At the moment we are still in the discussion stage on
how to start the operation of a health center within the infrastructure
of the occupied community center. Because we know of course that it is
not possible to build a self-organized hospital overnight, but we can
build a health center where, for example, the elderly can come and have
their injections, take their blood pressure, etc. We are talking for
such small things in a way, but they are necessary. There is a private
company that started coming every Friday and doing this work. And many
people went because they have countless questions about health issues.
And as we said, if you go to any public structure, the situation is so
bad that you have to wait in line for six hours just to ask a question.
So we see that there is this necessity and we look at what tools we have
and what capabilities we can develop to find a solution as a community.
I: Another thing that we are also discussing, without however having
arrived at a specific proposal - moreover because we consider that it
does not correspond exclusively to us to present a final proposal - is
the question of self-defense. We understand that it is necessary to
develop the self-defense of our ventures and communities, precisely
because we want to win. So we must be able to defend ourselves against
state repression. But we also realize that there is a need to develop
self-defense capabilities in a self-organized perspective, which will
not lend itself to a military state structure. Because we see that there
are also logics of self-defense or self-organized violence that often
follow patriarchal and hierarchical structures. This is also due to the
fact that in Chile there are strong references to authoritarian
socialism and communism. After all, they were the most organized in the
violent resistance against the dictatorship. So there is also this
legacy of quite authoritarian structures. Therefore we understand the
need to create self-defense forces, but without patriarchal,
hierarchical and state references.
https://landandfreedom.gr/el/diethni/1650-anarxikes-protaseis-sti-diamaxi-gia-to-paron-kai-to-mellon-synentefksi-melon-tis-a-s-tou-valparaiso-xili
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