On November 18th, FAG celebrated its 30th anniversary of political
organization, and today, gathered here, we want to joyfully salute thesethree decades of militant efforts, social mobilizations, and grassroots
work. Of struggles and confrontations with dominant projects, of the
countless battles we have been involved in, and of the innumerable
campaigns and actions of class solidarity that we have been building
since our organization, or in conjunction with other sectors from below.
These are just some of the elements of the political and ideological
action that modestly continue to mark us throughout these three decades.
And, beyond saluting this journey of life, struggle, and organization of
FAG, we want, in this brief moment of speaking, to recall what forged us
as a Political Organization and as Anarchists.
It is important to state from the outset that it is not only the 30
years of FAG that we would like to honor today, but also the previous
efforts of our references from distant eras, who paved the way for our
existence, from the Federalist wing of the International, from the
struggles and resistance in various territories of the world and our
combative Latin America, that shaped us as subjects, rebels and
convinced that it is only through revolutionary rupture with the forms
of power established by the State and its governments in power, that we
can achieve a just society, free from oppression and the misfortunes of
Capitalism.
Our memory is an instrument of struggle. And when we look back at the
history that shaped us, we see the calloused faces of fighters for the
oppressed people, of a vast legacy of those who came before us and
risked their lives for the unwavering defense of Socialism and Freedom,
for another form of organization, specifically Anarchist, Federalist,
and one that is always involved in the daily struggles of our people.
We are the product of these fragments of memory, of popular resistance
in Latin America and Brazil, of general strikes, popular uprisings, the
struggles of indigenous peoples, peasants, quilombola communities,
favelas, and peripheries. Of those whose backs did not bow to
domination. Therefore, amidst what is rescued from memory, we affirm
ourselves as a continuation: our disposition for militancy is direct
action at all levels and the construction of Popular Power. It is the
tireless work of daily life, guided by our analyses of the current
situation, in sowing the seeds of a Strong People, in prefiguring the
values of the society we wish to build. A society that rejects
centralism and authoritarianism in all its spheres. And here, we can
affirm that popular power is built in everyday life, against
authoritarianism and oppression, and through the protagonism of those at
the bottom. Our dear comrade Juan Carlos Mechoso, in Acción directa
anarquista - una historia de FAU, stated that a strong people is forged
"by organizing its power, exercising it from urban and rural unions,
from associations and community groups, from popular centers," and thus,
"the people take center stage in the political life of the country. And
they unite" (p. 31).
The journey we've taken in 30 years is a short time historically, but it
symbolizes a great deal for our movement, for the reorganization work we
did at the turn of the 21st century here in Brazil. Many struggles and
experiences that marked us and shaped us as political subjects.
In the first decade, from 1995 to 2005, we remember the occupations of
the homeless movement in Alegrete and Retruco, an anarchist propaganda
organ on the central-western border. The struggle of peripheral
communities for infrastructure and public services, which we
participated in and helped to create in the interior and metropolitan
region. The strike at federal universities and the occupation of the
Ministry of Education in the late 90s. The construction of the waste
pickers' movement and the fierce struggle of the cart drivers to avoid
being repressed and swept from the center of Porto Alegre. The two
marches of unemployed people who demanded better living conditions and
cooperative work projects. There was the agenda of community radio
stations that faced state repression and the oligopolistic dominance of
the bourgeois media. During this period, the FAG headquarters on Lopo
Gonçalves was a bustling center for meetings, training and culture,
producing propaganda for the streets with pamphlets and posters, etc.
The Muralha Rubro Negra collective was created for muralist
interventions that left their mark in various places. This was a time of
experimentation with national political organization, the OSL, and the
FAO. Internationally, it was during these years that we convened the
Anarchist Days in Porto Alegre, which drew a large audience and brought
together activists from various countries during the World Social Forum.
It also marks the beginning of a long series of Latin American meetings
of social organizations and class-independent unions, and the emergence
of Elaopa.
In the second decade of our political organization, from 2006 onwards,
we had some experiences participating in the actions of March 8th,
International Women's Day, with the women's sector of Via Campesina,
more specifically the MST (Landless Workers' Movement), which at that
time strongly carried the characteristic of direct action against
foreign companies in Rio Grande do Sul. One of the milestones of these
actions was the destruction of seedlings from the Aracruz nursery, which
became a symbol of resistance by rural women against agribusiness. We
participated in actions in the countryside, in land occupations with
this sector, as well as in marches and meetings in the city of Porto Alegre.
Back in 2008/2009, a strong climate of criminalization against the
social movement was taking hold, at the time spearheaded by the Public
Prosecutor's Office of Rio Grande do Sul, which launched an
investigation that outlawed the MST (Landless Workers' Movement). We
prominently displayed the campaign "Protest is not a Crime" in the
public sphere, reflecting our class solidarity. During this political
moment, the mandate of Yeda Crusius (PSDB) would also leave its mark on
this decade for us. On August 21st, in a war-like operation mounted to
evict the MST from a large farm in São Gabriel, the Military Brigade
murdered our comrade Elton Brum at point-blank range with a 12-gauge
shotgun. Immediately that same day, we called for a solidarity action
with other sectors here in Porto Alegre. We also launched a propaganda
campaign holding the governor and the commander responsible for the
terror operation and the murder of the landless worker, Elton Brum,
politically accountable. This resulted, two months later, in the first
police raid and attack against our organization, at the first FAG
headquarters, where our propaganda materials were already being used as
evidence of a crime and militants were being prosecuted. Motivated not
only by this, in 2011 we moved our address to another location, on
Travessa dos Venezianos, inaugurating the Ateneu Libertário a Batalha da
Varzea project, a different model for an unofficial headquarters of our
organization, which in its first years would open its doors with
different projects and articulations beyond our traditional Library, the
Conquista do Pão, meetings, and internal activities. The consumer
cooperative emerged, a work of anarchist militants linked to the Ateneu
and also with militants who lived and produced together with other
families in the MST settlement in Nova Santa Rita. We added dozens of
associates to this project. We had a series of open activities, book
launches, publications, cultural activities, an anarchist book fair,
public acts, and propaganda activities.
The founding Congress of CAB in 2012 gave us momentum and the
expectation of progress at the national level, with sister organizations
already established in several states of the country.
And, at the beginning of 2013, we opened the year with Elaopa, a
meeting that marked the convergence of libertarians towards the context
of mass struggles that characterized that year. From there emerged the
autonomous front, a group that, at the beginning of the Public
Transportation Struggle Bloc, was fundamental in disputing an
organizational style within this front and which also imbued street
actions with combative characteristics. It is impossible to deny,
despite the efforts of our ideological adversaries, the anarchist
influence within the Bloc. During this period, a range of important
political alliances opened up for us; we stood side by side with other
groups in solidarity and in building struggles, such as the Quilombola
front, Utopia and Struggle, independent communication collectives,
solidarity articulation with the Indigenous movement, among many others.
2013 was an unparalleled year for us; we experienced one of the
largest mass mobilizations in the country that our generation of
activists had the opportunity to participate in. Dozens of
demonstrations, crowds of people, discontent with the PT's (Workers'
Party) reforms, its pacts and alliances with the right wing, took to the
streets of Brazil, initially over transportation, but later overflowing
with demands. Locally, we experienced a period of public exposure,
precisely because of the actions of our activists in the struggles of
the Bloco de Lutas (Struggle Bloc), which implied more police raids on
our public space, the Ateneu. The PT government at the state and federal
levels showed its authoritarian claws and cowardly tried to characterize
us as "pseudo-fascists." Nationally, we were the radicals,
troublemakers, violent ones... Let's not forget Rafael Braga, who became
a symbol of what repression of protest is capable of doing, especially
if the target is black and poor. The government in power, led by the PT
(Workers' Party), repressed, persecuted, and criminalized the largest
popular mobilizations of recent decades, and even tried to shift the
burden of a right wing emerging from the shadows and engaging in street
battles onto the struggles themselves. The criminalization targeted and
persecuted militants from different political organizations who joined
us in local struggles. We promptly launched more solidarity actions; for
us anarchists, no left-wing militant, regardless of ideological current,
should be criminalized without gaining the support of the entire
combative sector of that conjuncture. And so it was done. In the first
instance of harassment by the repressive apparatus, we organized a
public event at the Ateneu headquarters, which summoned all politically
persecuted left-wing groups of that period. The event was a gesture that
filled the Travessa dos Venezianos with class solidarity, as it
deserved... And we, in less than two months of that year, suffered two
raids on our premises. Our ideological materials, used as evidence of a
crime, were used to intimidate our activists in Restinga, where a
physical location of extreme importance to us still exists today, where
our ideological propaganda takes on tones, forms, and colors to become
fixed on walls, buildings, and in our memories.
The third decade, from 2015 to the present day, began with the
experience of tough strikes against wage cuts and neoliberal attacks on
public services, which lasted until 2017. Municipal workers in Porto
Alegre, São Leopoldo, and Cachoeirinha. The long CPERS strike in the
state education system, where we were active in several cities. The Vila
Resistência occupation was born in Santa Maria and remains very active,
approaching its 10th anniversary. Another anti-anarchist repressive
operation was launched in Rio Grande do Sul, targeting FAG and other
groups, with wide national media coverage. This period is very tense and
antagonistic; while it saw the growth of the reactionary, liberal, and
proto-fascist wave, it also recorded combative struggles by the social
movement. The occupations of schools and universities and the massive
movement against the deadly squeeze imposed by the spending cap on
popular demands in the budget. The historic general strike against labor
reform in 2017 and later the strike that confronted the attack on
pensions. Where we've been involved since our involvement in unions,
students, and in the territories.
We remember the important libertarian concentration in the mass
mobilization that marked the #elenão movement, with an anti-fascist and
anti-neoliberal political agitation that affirmed the agenda of direct
democracy and a strong popular movement to fight in new historical
conditions. We never aligned ourselves with electoralism and the
defeatist ideological formula of the "lesser evil." During the pandemic,
we resisted and activated a solidarity network in every place of
activism we set foot in. We launched, with CAB, a campaign for a
dignified life, addressing social urgencies against the cost of living.
In recent years, we contributed to the development of the Vila Castilho
Community Library in Pelotas, took part in community struggles for Morro
Santana, the articulation with the Kaingang land reclamation in Morro
Santana in Porto Alegre, the articulations for the Teia dos Povos
network, shoulder to shoulder with Vila Resistência, Ateliê Griô, and
the Guandú Agroecologia collective of Santa Maria. During the great
flood in Rio Grande do Sul, we didn't stand idly by; we quickly took a
stand in solidarity and participated in the historic community effort
that took place in the peripheral neighborhoods to help the affected
communities. And we didn't fail to denounce the capitalist system and
all its economic and political agents who destroyed the climate and the
environment and produced the collapse.
It is impossible to speak of the history of these three decades
without mentioning our sister organization FAU, and the immense scope
and significance this organization holds for us. It was the dedication
of life and militant work of FAU that provided us with the "open field"
for what has ideologically sustained us throughout this brief historical
journey. This organization broke with the logic of simply calculating
and copying other continents, and long before us, they were already
questioning the most pressing needs of the people and how to address
them. They honed the idea that libertarian action could not waste
efforts merely reacting to current events and phenomena, pointing to the
indispensable role of having a political program, thinking tactically
and strategically according to our own analytical tools. They left us a
broad conceptual body of great theoretical caliber, with nuances
reflecting our specificities and the multiple historical and cultural
realities we all share, we South American brothers and sisters. They
presented us with undeniable examples of the bravery and love for the
cause with which they threw themselves into building and defending
resistance against the civil-military coups suffered by the countries of
the Southern Cone. They sowed Specifism and Federalism in corners close
to us, which transcended imposed borders. They contributed ideologically
to a theoretical and practical production that does not bow to imported
reproductions and recipes of methods and formulas of struggle
established in other continents. Therefore, they gave us the joy and
relief of knowing where to begin; they were and continue to be pillars
of reference for what a specifically anarchist organization is and, for
us, more than that, they are examples of fraternity, humility, courage,
and solidarity. The FAU is our link in the long and indomitable chain of
federalism that crossed continents and became an organization with the
colors and pains of its own people.
And speaking of FAU, we cannot fail to remember Uncle Alejandro (Pablo),
who accompanied us for years and perhaps provided us with one of the
most honorable experiences that part of our militancy could have lived
through. A young man endowed with a controversial wit that unsettled,
with an enviable discipline, a self-taught man of our theoretical
framework, like so many other examples that FAU gave us. Uncle was, for
those who had the pleasure of his company, a living school of the
experiences in which we anarchists were protagonists in a not-so-distant
past. From the victorious bank heists to the hardest days under the
tortures that the damned military imposed on that generation that was
set to resist. Your memory has many flavors, Uncle, but today we only
want to thank you for your life, your example, even your critical
firmness in the face of our inexperience... How beautiful to know that
you rest in the estuary of the waters of the Mar del Plata, the same
waters that saw you as a boy and grow up. "Getting to the field of
knowledge is stopping" he said, paraphrasing Borges. Never die than
Luchan Pablo!
And here in Brazil, immersed in our own roots, in this country of
continental dimensions, with a rich history of struggles and resistance,
from the indigenous peoples, to the Black and Quilombola resistance. We
also remember the anarchist immigrants, mostly Italians and Spaniards,
who brought in their suitcases not only hopes for a better life, but
also experiences of organization, worker mobilizations, and direct
action. We recall the general strikes that paralyzed São Paulo and many
other cities, the Anarchist Insurrection of 1918 in Rio de Janeiro, the
workers' strikes and struggles in Rio Grande do Sul, the audacity of
Espertirina Martins' ship... For we are also fruits of the indomitable
stock of Revolutionary Syndicalism.
These fragments of lived memories are what allowed us to emerge as a
political organization and to form a framework of anarchist militancy
capable of elaborating, in the theoretical and practical fields of
ideas, the conditions for social insertion with results focused on the
short and long term. It is true that none of this has magical effects,
where it would be enough to simply "believe for it to happen," or simply
be satisfied by the best speeches, the best congress resolutions, or the
most elaborate analyses of stages and conjuncture. Nor is it true that
being deeply involved in social insertion efforts is sufficient... The
dynamics of dualism generously teach us that this implies caring for
theory from a political-ideological perspective, without neglecting the
fundamental element of social insertion, precisely so that the desired
effects are achieved within the framework of a strategic campaign. The
meeting is a respite from practice, and the organization is not an end
in itself.
To strategically advance the construction of a federalist project at the
national level, from the FAO to the consolidation of the CAB. It is
worth saying that this was not and is not a linear construction; it has
had and continues to have its ups and downs, the dilemmas of a proposal
of this magnitude, with different realities in each territory of action,
even more so when facing adverse circumstances for the popular movement
and left-wing groups. The truth is that we have experienced few and
fragmented moments of accumulation in the recent history of the country;
for most of the time we have been in the crosshairs of criminalization,
under the ills of austerity packages and adjustments, facing the
regrouping of the right and far-right that has emerged in the last
period. Therefore, the construction of the CAB demands firmness,
patience, and above all, dedication and fraternity, to advance "brick by
brick" together with our sister organizations towards the great
Federation. And we want to reaffirm here at this moment that we will
remain dedicated to this with fraternity and willingness. Therefore, we
salute the life of all our sister organizations that make up the CAB.
Last but not least, a very special greeting to CALC on its recent 15th
anniversary!
Our greetings and remembrance also extend to other corners of Latin
America, to our fellow organizations in other countries such as
Argentina and Chile, which, despite the harsh conditions imposed by
Liberal projects, continue to be examples of struggle and resistance.
We stand in solidarity with and commit to continuing to denounce the
massacre of the Palestinian people. Zionism, like all fascist
ideologies, deserves and demands to be combated.
We extend our solidarity to the countries beset by the imperialist
onslaught in Latin America, where they attempt, through institutional
means or military threats, to steal what remains of their
self-determination.
Three decades is still not enough time for something that aims to last
over time, to endure.
Long live FAG!
Long live CAB!
Long live Anarchy!
Long live socialism and freedom!
https://cabanarquista.com.br/memoria-e-luta-30-anos-da-fag-cab-semeando-socialismo-libertario/
_________________________________________
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