from liberaciontotal, transl waronsociety:
And if I call myself an individualist anarchist, an iconoclast and a nihilist, it is precisely because I believe that in these adjectives there is the highest and most complete expression of my willful and reckless individuality that, like an overflowing river, wants to expand, impetuously sweeping away dikes and hedges, until it crashes into a granite boulder, shattering and breaking up in its turn. I do not renounce life. I exalt and sing it.
(…)
Anyone who renounces life because he feels that it is nothing but pain and sorrow and doesn’t find in himself the heroic courage to kill himself
(…)
Life — for me — is neither good nor bad, neither a theory nor an idea. Life is a reality, and the reality of life is war.
Renzo Novatore
I Am Also a Nihilist
There is a line from a poem-made-song that says that “life is like a sheet of paper, at any moment it could break”… Even with the nostalgia that intones, one finally realizes that it is so, simply and coldly. There is a fragile and light line between living and dying and, even though in certain moments it can depend on a decision that we make–consciously or unconsciously–it is concretely something unexpected that ends up taking us by surprise, since as they say: “When it’s your turn, even if you complain and when it’s not your turn, even if you put yourself out there.”
The anarchists of praxis, those who fight against Power, the social rebels, in short, anyone who decides to direct his or her life in a relentless struggle against the State, always find themselves on that line, light and fragile, which is not a suicidal decision–as many declare–it is simply a consequence, often unexpected. On the other hand, in many cases, being conscious of these consequences–death, prison, torture–the need for freedom is greater than any feeling of fear and terror, and they throw themselves into the battle, with absolute confidence, with fear, it’s true, but also with an implacable determination that emanates only from those who at all costs seek anarchy, or “absolute freedom, the greatest of all.”
Once again I assert: we must seek and find felicity through our actions.
1. What has happened to me–I say this because I know the arguments of those who criticize us–will be taken by a wide sector of anarchism in Mexico as starting point to discredit before society (?) our struggle, my individual project, and an informal project that at a local and global level maintains a direct struggle for the destruction of the State-capital. I know that what happened to me will be used by some as a form of “intimidation” in order to make fewer comrades take the path of action and to amuse themselves in positions of comfort and eternal waiting.
For me, what happened to me was only an accident, which rather than weakening me morally, makes me stronger without inflating my ego. No! It inflates my convictions and my anarchist condition.
If something comes out of this situation, I hope it is the intensification of debate, of struggle, of critique–clear, direct and objective. The intensification of the struggle against the penitentiary system and the prison. The intensification and increase of the direct and unmediated struggle against the State-capital.
2. In spite of these negative questions, which occupy the least of my attention, there have arisen positive things. And even in spite of the low interest–of those who say they are “in the struggle”–in participating or attending the recent anti-prison events, the comrades outside stay firm. It has made me very happy that there has emerged another insurrectional anarchist publication, accompanying my beloved Conspiración Ácrata, which is responsible for spreading the insurrectional space and anarchism of action. More publications, more debate, more diffusion and diversity. Even though, as the Conspiración Ácrata editorial says, my present situation in prison will largely make it impossible for me to continue actively contributing with that publication, I will do it as far as I am able. With this and any other medium that opens space for me, since in the struggle that we carry, the participation of prisoners of war is of high importance.
3. From my person, I absolutely reject and do not claim the motives that the State and the mass media grant me. My project, our project, is not an “arson” project. A struggle focused on the destruction of a society ruled by technological capitalism cannot be reduced and “infantilized” to a simple arson project. I am not an arsonist, a pyromaniac or a terrorist, I am an anarchist, an enemy of the State-capital. My positions are rooted in a serious posture replete with critique, self-critique, analysis and theory, but also with practice and action. Solidarity, mutual aid, self-management, autonomy and self-responsibility are anarchist values and practices that, like permanent conflictuality (an attitude toward life), we place as counter-values to those that the system inculcates in us from our birth. These values are put into practice in the present, in our persons and our environment.
In my consideration the exploitation, oppression and domination of the State-capital-technology is not only exercised against humans, but also mostly against nature and animals, all for the progress of a society that doesn’t care at all about the destruction of the natural environment, on which it also “depends,” for the comfort of a society of capital that destroys alike nature, ancestral cultures, originary peoples, and people who oppose and resist that system and its mode of life full of sell-consume, consume-sell, destroys their natural identity and turns them into another product of the market and even of “revolutionary tourism.”
That exploitation, oppression, domination is not only played out in work, but also in school, in feelings, in love, in sexuality. An example is Pussy Riot, who find themselves repressed by the Russian State and the church, put on trial much like centuries ago many people of the female sex were murdered under absurd “crimes” of witchcraft, adultery, dishonor, etc.
It is due to fighting objectively against the system of domination that there are many imprisoned eco-anarchist comrades, like the case of the brother Braulio Durán or the “Operación Mangiafuoco,” comrades of the ALF/ELF who remain prisoners. It is because anarchism is a danger for the State that the police changed their attitude at the moment when Giannis Dimitrakis declared being an anarchist, after the expropriation of a bank in Greece.
And against all this is where we should focus our struggle, attacking objectively the roots of the problem: the existence of the State/capital. Against all this and with all possible means at our reach we should focus the struggle toward achieving total and absolute liberation. With objectivity and projectuality.
My project, our project of total liberation, our insurrectional projectuality, does not come from the logic of “burn for the sake of burning,” it comes from a solid basis, of some principles and from the idea of destruction of the established, but at the same time it is based in the construction of spaces, realities, moments and relations that are outside of capitalist statutes and not by any possible means “assimilatable” and therefore “destructible” by the system.
Long live anarchy!!
In the mornings when I wake up, look around at my surroundings and see the bars of these cells, my body shudders and my eyes crystallize. My mind travels for a moment and enters every cell where there is an imprisoned compañerx. It does not instill in me sadness or fear, or anguish; it gives me ferocity and courage to not be able to act in solidarity with you, with those who I have shared critiques, reflections, discussions and opinions, those from whom I have learned much and felt mutual support for my projects, for my life. You warriors for freedom, we may never see each other face to face, but I always maintain with you an affect, a feeling of siblinghood, affinity and complicity, a mutual learning. Now I go back to reading you, two, three, behind the bars in the dungeons of the State-capital. Not sad, not weak, not absent, on the contrary, always convincing… that is how I feel you!
Never defeated, never repentant!
With furious affection for the comrades Stefano Gabriele Fosco and Gabriel Pombo da Silva
The Culmine of our struggle and the Conspiración Ácrata of our life remain alive.*
Solidarity with comrade Marco Camenisch’s hunger strike, with the eco-anarchist comrade Braulio Durán, with the anarchist and libertarian prisoners of the whole world.
Solidarity with Felicity Ryder in her escape, in her flight of freedom.
Remember sister: ¡We stand, when other fail!**
Face to face with the enemy! Social war! Individual vindication! For anarchy!
Mario López Hernández
South Voronil Detention Center
Mexico City,
September 4th, 2012.
____________________
* Culmine means summit and Conspiración Ácrata means anarchic conspiracy; Mario is referencing the anarchist projects in Italy and Mexico, respectively – transl.
** English in original (sic) – transl.
Other letters by Mario in English:
1. June, 2012 – first letter
2. August 1st – second letter
3. August 6th – “About the New Set-up”
4. August 9th – “With All Means Possible”
