from culmine, translated by war on society:
Words from Esteban Huiniguir, Juan Aliste, Freddy Fuentevilla and José Miguel Sánchez for the prisoners of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
Note: Comrades of the world!!! From Chile with joy we can now share with you the words of the imprisoned comrades José Miguel Sánchez, Esteban Huiniguir, Juan Aliste and Freddy Fuentevilla, who have responded to the solidarity call issued from Greece by the imprisoned comrades of the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire.
Our comrades today find themselves held in the High Security Prison (CAS) in Santiago, Chile and almost all are ex-members of Marxist-Leninist political-military organizations who fought the dictatorship and of whom some have also fought later under democracy in the 90s against capitalism. These armed organizations were the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), the United Action Movement – Lautaro (MAPU-Lautaro, also known as MJL, Lautaro Youth Movement) and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR).
Today, our comrades who write do not necessarily still embrace Leninist ideas, but it is better that they speak for themselves.
From Chile, we send all of you a solidarity salute of internationalist complicity.
Some in solidarity from outside the prisons.
November 2011.
* * *
Words from José Miguel Sánchez
CELLS OF FIRE COMBATANTS PRESENTE.
From one corner of the world, receive an affectionate and combative embrace, and a fraternal salute from another prisoner of capitalism.
From the C.A.S. in $hile we receive your communique and we make ourselves part of it. Our thoughts travel to each prison of the world where they try to annul free thoughts, the enemy will never quiet nor crush our rebellion, our values are not stopped by shackles, here our desire of struggle is nourished day by day, the injustices and abuses strengthen our indomitable desire of struggle against the exploitative systems of the world.
Our growing contempt for prisons and their henchmen is innate, these bars confirm for us that our struggle is just and necessary, we believe that direct action is an effective method for striking the system that tries to trample our rights. We are not immobile, behind the walls our struggle is strengthened and sharpened.
Here we are those who do not sell ourselves to power, the intransigents, those who want nothing to do with the circles of the left that sell themselves to the highest bidder, we are those who do not believe in flattering gestures, nor do we conform ourselves to the crumbs left over by the powerful. Our goal is complete freedom and the vanquishing of the exploitative system that sinks and humiliates our people.
Comrades, receive our solidarity and support, you are not alone, the entire world will be witness to the dignity with which you face your trial, fortitude and struggle is our slogan, strength compañeros.
My case is like those of many combatants, I am an ex-political prisoner of Pinochet’s Dictatorship, ex-member of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), I was liberated upon the assumption of the pseudo-democracy in 1991, and I was imprisoned again that same year for having some rifles and not believing in that made-up democracy. I was condemned to 20 years for the rifles and an assault, of this sentence I’d spent 17 years and 6 months in prison when as a favor from the prison a break of 2 years had me leave, a release I broke on not returning to sleep in the prison. I scorned that “favor” and now I am completing the 2 years and 6 months I had left to complete my sentence; as you can see, I have nothing left of the sentence, and I will leave to continue to struggle against the oppressive system together with those who know that nothing has changed.
My name is José Miguel Sánchez Jiménez, I am held in the High Security Prison (C.A.S.) in $antiago, $hile, together with other comrades who have stood up against the prevailing system such as: Juan Aliste, Freddy Fuentevilla and Marcelo Villarroel, having known each other since the anti-dictatorial struggle. I am 52 years of age, married and father of 4 daughters, carpenter and electrician by profession, and I am anti-system.
I hope to continue receiving your notices and thus to mutually strengthen each other.
To destroy all the prisons and capitalist systems!
With affection,
José Miguel Sánchez Jiménez
C.A.S. Module J. Santiago, $hile, October 19th, 2011
* * *
Words from Esteban Huiniguir.
My name is Esteban Huiniguir R., I am 41 years old, I was born in 1970. I was a militant of the MAPU-Lautaro party. During the 90s I was condemned to 11 years in prison for “Illicit Terrorist Association” and the attack on the home of the ambassador of Spain on October 10, 1992. I completed 8 years of this sentence from October 13, 1992 to May, 2000.
In 2008 I was detained during the Day of the Youth Combatant on March 29. My home, which I shared with other guys, was raided, searched as usual but they only found 5 plants of Cannabis Sativa. For this illegal growing I was sentenced to 4 and a half years for trafficking and illegal growing. Presently I serve the sentence in the CAS, module “J.”
Dear comrades, I write to you from the CAS sending a fraternal greeting to all those who in the distance share histories of rebellion and insubordination and who by consequence live in transit in prison.
At over 3 years of this my second sentence, which is 4 and a half years, what has been the most ignominious for me was when I had to face the incomprehension, the social prejudice of those who do not want to hear and are driven by the media’s communication campaign. Despite this, I am together with my friends and companions… I also receive with great gratitude the solidarity of other accomplices who manifest in the street in this combat against capital. Then there are my little siblings who gave their youth, their commitment and their life. Norma Vergara, José Luis Oyarzun, Andrés Soto (Papi), big Pablo Muñoz… and so many others: although you are no longer here and they do not want to listen, we are still us and you; for that, thanks.
I know little about you in the personal sense, your lives and histories, but your present condition, your conviction and how you wanted to confront your trial speak very well of yourselves. Walk with all my support, since it is true that the street, the trial and the prison are trenches where one must continue fighting.
I do not have much more to say right now nor will I pretend a grandiloquent discourse since for me the practice of direct action is not made with words but by lighting a wick that smells of benzine, with black powder, and if the moment requires (the prison), with closed fists utilizing what they leave us our body exposed to fatigue and hunger.
So then comrades, come what may, say what they will, you will remain proud and exemplary. It was good to know that you exist, so far away, with your histories, your slogans, your bottles and black powder for the social war of all peoples.
Health and rebellion.
With our fallen in our memory.
Not one minute of silence, and a lifetime of combat.
Esteban Huiniguir R.
* * *
Words from Juan Aliste.
The social war is an issue of class, it is a question of life that transcends the obstacles (borders) traced by a common enemy, capital with its system of domination, exploitation, repression and misery at the hands of the power of the rich. As hostages of the chilean State and its bourgeois government of the wealthy, from the carceral jaws of its society, we escape in the libertarian complicity of vindicating direct action in the flesh with the fertile idea of subversion from individuality to real collectivity.
History repeats itself and the long experience of power to submit those who struggle is transversal, their fascist machinery with sustained methods in repression in conjunction with police, judges and media of disinformation expand fear and terror to legitimize their prisons, murders and tortures. Moreover, the State lies to hide the indomitable heartbeat of our lives, concrete and in-the-flesh proof is this complicity of blood that we allow to strengthen ourselves in adversity, communicating with each other, knowing each other, hating together the mornings and rescuing the tenderness in each gesture of action from our comrades. So the prison, in its prisons, is no more than the reaffirmation of all that we abhor, from their courtrooms, murderers of children and sowers of misery.
Dear partners in struggle, with the uncompromising taste to drink* my life, carrying on my back the certainty that in the face of misery there is no freedom, I take my bones to light that wick, I salute you with the happiness of being alive, I clench my hand, I sharpen my sight and the totality of the senses. May the oxygen from your proposal be the unstoppable inception of coordination. To begin, my greetings, your thoughts are ours, echos of a libertarian uproar.
Health! While there is misery there will be rebellion!
Combative solidarity with those who fight!
Juan Aliste Vega, subversive imprisoned by the Chilean State,
accused for the expropriation of Banco Segurity, the clash with the police
causing the death of one of their members and serious wounds of another.
High Security Prison, Santiago, Chile.
* also ‘to take’ as in to claim or seize – transl.
* * *
Words from Freddy Fuentevilla.
Esteemed comrades of CCF, a fraternal embrace full of rebellion. To tell you that we are joined by a common reality, whether in Greece, Latin America or whatever corner of the world. Redeemed in these lines is more than the individual, the collective. The causes for which we are imprisoned, with more or less nuances, are the same cause, we are rebels, we are subversives, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, we are the pueblo-pobre,* we are not victims, we are not complicit in a history without redemption, we are not indolent, we are never their slaves, we are neither guilty nor innocent.
When the State decides to annihilate us, persecute us, and incarcerate us, it is not mere coincidence, but because each one of us symbolizes danger for any State. They demonize us with their language since it not our own, the prison is part of their language, part of the social war and the class war. I must say that it has affected us to live imprisonment, not only in this territory called Chile, also in Argentina, and in each prison I always saw the same subject, my pueblo-pobre, my class brethren, my brethren of the trenches; at the same time, the executioner is always the same, their police.
In the game of what we are and what we are not, we make it clear that we are not victims, we are combatants, and this is not only words, this is what our history and our present tell us. This reality has made us embattled, not by our seeking nor desire, but we make a mission of our dreams, our choice of conscious struggle, the unrenounceable struggle for happiness.
Brothers and sisters, I send you my strength, my dignity, my solidarity. Borders and flags do not exist between peoples, solidarity and internationalism are not only words in the wind, they are a weapon.
“Here nothing is over and no one yields, the struggle continues”
Freddy Fuentevilla Saa. MIRist prisoner.
High Security Prison, Santiago, Chile, October 2011
Note: Freddy Fuentevilla is imprisoned for the same case as Juan Aliste, accused of participating in the assault on a bank in 2007 that ended with the death of a police officer.
* Fuentevilla’s phrase “pueblo-pobre” means “the people, the poor”; we leave it in Spanish. – transl.
