Some Ideas on Solidarity During Days of Hunger
I have always understood solidarity as a mutual relationship, reciprocal and disinterested, that erupts from the honest convictions of our rebellious will. This is how I have lived and developed in the street and is how I believe solidarity unfolds in a fertile form- we find ourselves where we find ourselves.
It is inside the necessity to act in solidarity that crucial moments exist, maybe the most extreme, when we prisoners use our bodies as trenches, in the development of judicial “codes,” sentences or offenses on the part of the jailers. But the challenge lies in understanding how to overcome and surpass the exclusive logic imposed by the rhythm of the judicial process in order to support each other. The imprisonment of any comrade is strong and constant motivation to not remain static or indifferent… this challenge continues to present itself and we call upon all of us to overcome it. The global reality of repression speaks to us in its unmistakable language: charges, bars, sentences, media condemnations, and judicial processes. In Mexico we find Abraham, Braulio, and Adrian Magdaleno, this last one was recently taken in retaliation; the comrades who remain behind bars in Swiss prisons; the different revolutionaries in Greece; members of the Conspiracy Cells of Fire and those who find themselves accused under the same case, now faced with a trial against them, the sentence against of G. Dimitrakis, power’s morbid retaliation against Simos Seisidis and the rest of the prisoners who confront their incarceration with dignity; in France power does not let up in its reversal of roles to prolong the charges against Jean Marc Roullian and Georges Cipriani; the Italian state and its last repressive campaign against the anarchic eternity… and all of the prisoners from every part of the world who are not forgotten.
Neither in this part of the world can we let the reality of the remaining revolutionary prisoners scattered throughout the prisons of the Chilean democracy pass unnoticed: Patricio Gallardo, Alejandro Rodriguez, Alberto Olivarez, Sergio Vazquez, Claudio Melgarejo, Juan Aliste, Esteban Huiniguir, Marcelo Villaroel, Freddy Fuentevilla, Rodolfo Retamales, Francisco Solar, Felipe Guerra, Omar Hermosilla, Carlos Riveros, Camilo Perez, Andrea Urzua and Monica Caballero.
Behind bars the gestures of support arrive, possibly the only real nourishment in these days of prolonged fasting, from every corner of the world, the fliers, murals, demos, activities, banners, painted slogans, and fire speak a language understood without difficulty, which transcends all the security cameras just a heartbeat away.
But those of us held hostage by the state, write, talk, try to communicate, reflect, and with gestures of struggle and dignity we express ourselves, each from their particular standpoint.
A strong greeting to those who do not abandon us to forgetfulness, who do not leave us to be devoured by the prison and judicial machine, who view our imprisonment with the sincere optic of solidarity…because these are not only trials brought against concrete subjects but also against he same seed that questions authority and does not accept this world of exploitation constructed on its behalf.
At the end of the hunger strike April 2011
Felipe Guerra anti-authoritarian political prisoner
