Tierra Revuelta: direct action and antimilitarism in the territory known as South America

The southern cone of the continent named America (in honor of the colonizer Amerigo Vespucci) is marked by the permanent presence of boots, rifles and helmets throughout its territory. Whether in its remote history or in its more recent history, military mobilization against the peoples of these lands is a constant of torture, disappearances, executions, mass killings, massacres of revolts and ethnocides. However, this violence did not happen in a linear, progressive way and without resistance. There are countless examples of resistance in struggles against the military that have occupied this continent for over 500 years. 

In this bulletin we provide some analytical notes on recent direct actions against the presence of the military in nuestra tierra revuelta. 

The official history of the South American continent is told through heroic figures, to whom monuments are erected and tributes paid. Just look at the map of every major city in this territory. If you look closely, especially at the names you will be faced with a map of exterminations and military incursions that have crossed the centuries and dyed this soil blood red. 

There is also a certain way of telling this story, which retraces the events, focusing only on the invasions, mass murders, sexual violence and torture carried out by the security agents of the states and their armies against the peoples of this land. This history is undoubtedly important, because the blood never stops flowing and the bodies never stop being piled up, buried in mass graves or simply disappeared. However, without forgetting our dead, imprisoned and tortured, we prefer to trace our history back to the resistance of those who died in the struggle and those who are still resisting today. 

It is necessary to speak from the bodies that, with their heads held high, promote the antimilitarist struggle in everyday practices and that are in our memory. Those who carried and carry the hammer that brought down, brings down and will bring down the monuments to the murderers of yesterday and today.

A general on fire 

Santiago, Chile. On March 5, 2021, a demonstration once again took place in Plaza Dignidad. The place has been part of the city’s political memory for decades, but it became even more important with the uprising that spread through the streets in October 2019. 

There is a huge statue there in honor of General Manuel Baquedano. During the protest, at nightfall, a group of people surrounded the monument with tires, threw gasoline and set it on fire, leaving the imposing general in flames. Paint was also thrown as people cheered and let off fireworks in front of the flaming image. 

Below the square where the statue stands is the Baquedano metro station, which also pays homage to the impotent general. In the same building, until shortly before this action, there was a police station. During the October 2019 uprising, it was discovered that an isolated part of the building, apparently abandoned, housed a secret torture center, where people arrested in the context of the demonstrations were tortured by police officers and hung from the ceiling¹. 

After some reports made the existence of the center of public torture, during the protests, revolted people blocked the police station gate with sticks and stones and set the subway entrance on fire. A few days later, it was announced that the police station that operated there would be shut down, neutralizing the operation of the secret torture center, at least for a while. 

In both cases (depredation of the statue and fire in the subway and police station) the repercussions were immense, which even led the Chilean state, governed by Sebastián Piñera (a millionaire businessman and admirer of the dictator Augusto Pinochet), to take the decision to remove the statue from the square. But then the president changed his mind and built a huge wall around it to protect the image of the “defenceless” general. Members of the Chilean right, Pinochet’s widowers, said that the revolt was an act of violence against the country’s history, against the image of a figure who had been a national hero. 

This defense of the statue by the government and far-right activists shows how memory is a battleground that is fought in the present. The existence of statues in honor of torturers and murderers would continue as something “natural” were it not for the intervention of activists through direct action. This is not a symbolic issue, the naturalization of these figures and tributes to them make State violence in the present not only tolerable, but desirable.

The defenders of statues and guardians of the memory of national heroes know very well how to guarantee the historical legitimacy of their right to exercise violence against other people, the asymmetrical self-defense guaranteed by the state regime.

Pacification: a pseudonym for extermination

Manuel Baquedano, an army general, took part in the War of the Pacific in south-central Chile in the last decades of the 19th century, in what became known as the Pacification of Araucanía. This military incursion, the pacification, produced in practice an invasion of Mapuche lands (an original people who have lived and resisted for centuries, especially in that region and on the so-called “Argentine side” of Patagonia) and a series of killings in several of these local communities. In this sense, Baquedano represents a symbol of the advance of the army and the expansion of Chilean national territory, accompanied by the extermination of part of the Mapuche communities.

Baquedano also carried out military incursions on the island of Rapa Nui (or Easter Island), known above all for its enormous stone carvings, probably between the1250 and 1500. In one of the records from the time, Baquedano appears destroying one of the statues and writing his name on it, like the conqueror and murderer he was. 

Through these brief references to historical episodes, we can understand how, two centuries later, the statue in his honor continues to be the target of direct anti-militarist actions that take the statement “neither forgiveness nor oblivion” seriously.

If the defenders of the statues know that they are guaranteeing their right to self-defense and the continuity of state violence, the militants who take direct action against these monuments to death and torture, through their ode to the memory of the military, also know that they are an act of liberation from judgment in the present. Again, it’s nothing symbolic, it’s an urgent struggle of the present.

The unbearable weight of the military boot

Anti-militarist practices on the South American continent are not restricted to combat the tributes to the historical figures responsible for the killings and torture, since there has been no end to them.

They intensified in the middle of the 20th century, having as their apex the civil-military dictatorships that occurred from the 1960s onwards in countries such as Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay and maintained their violence in the current democratic period, as the military and agents continue to torture, kill even in the so-called Democratic State of Law. The cases are endless and it would be impossible to exhaust the reports on them in this bulletin.

The struggle never stops, because memory is a battlefield on which we have to fight with our most powerful weapons. So much that in Argentina and Chile, for example, it’s not uncommon to hear songs during street protests such as “ya vas a ver, las Balas que nos tiron, van a volver...” (“You'll see, the bullets they shot at us will come back to you”). 

In Brazil, the struggle for memory and truth faces the weight of the active Military Party, which seeks to impose its version of events during the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) and guarantee the continuity of the authoritarian state and its violence against people. It is urgent that we work together to reject the military doctrines imposed on us, as exemplified by various militant movements linked to the families and friends of people tortured during the period, such as the Tortura Nunca Mais in Rio de Janeiro² and the União de Mulheres in São Paulo³, to give just two examples. 

That’s why we bring you some events that marked and still mark the memory and the antimilitarist struggle on this continent. 

ARGENTINA/ August 1, 2017. In the Patagonian region of Chubut, a group of people block a road in repudiation of the repression of the Argentine and Chilean states against the Mapuche people in the context of the arrest of the lonko (political and ancestral reference) Facundo Jones Huala. “The Argentinian Gendarmerie⁴ attacked the group with shots and stones and chased them. Some of the hooded men tried to escape through the icy waters of the Chubut River, but one of them was captured, beaten and disappeared. It was Santiago Maldonado. For more than two months, he was listed as missing and his photo appeared in newspapers all over the world, along with the question: where is Santiago?”⁵. Only after 77 days was Santiago’s body was found in the River Chubut, where it had been dumped by the gendarmes who had executed him months earlier. 

Enforced disappearance is a common state practice in South America. During the dictatorships of the 20th century, bodies were tied up by the military and dropped from helicopters into the Rio da Prata, which runs through Argentina and Uruguay, as well as being buried in the vast Atacama Desert in Chile. In Brazil, they were buried in mass graves or clandestinely cremated by military forces. They even perpetrated these actions together in South America through Operation Condor⁶. Now, in democracy, bodies continue to be disappeared, thrown over cliffs, spawned in alleys and lanes.

URUGUAY/ 2019. The presidential campaign began focusing mainly on security policies. On voting day, October 27, in addition to choosing which president would govern the country, people also took part in a plebiscite called “Vivir sin miedo” (live without fear), headed mainly by the Uruguayan right. This consultation would decide whether or not there would be a constitutional reform to incorporate four articles into the current Constitution, linking the police, the military and the penal system. Among the points envisaged were: “home invasion at any time to search the house or detain the person on suspicion of a crime; formation of a national guard with public security tasks under the responsibility of the military forces to carry out surveillance, arrests and evictions; total enforcement of sentences, with no reduction in time; revision to introduce life imprisonment”⁷. 

During the electoral process, there were demonstrations in Uruguayan cities against the possibility of such a reform to the constitution and for the reactivation of antiterrorist legislation. In the polls, an ironic result followed: the majority rejected the reform. The presidential contest was to the second round, when Luis Lacalle Pou, a businessman from the right-wing National Party, was elected. On the streets, the fight against security policies continues. It didn’t begin or end at the polls. Or rather: it didn’t even pass through them, it didn’t allow itself to be pacified. 

No agreement can hide the blood.

CHILE/ In an attempt to pacify the ungovernable force that took to the streets during the 2019 uprising, the Chilean state, after pressure from leftwing parties, decided to hold a plebiscite on whether to hold a constituent process that would put an end to the constitution promulgated during the Pinochet dictatorship. This process forged a polarization between those who would vote for the apruebo (approval) option, left-wing and progressive parties, and rechazo (disapproval), made up mainly of the Pinochetist right. However, while these two poles were fighting over the direction of the constitution, the prisons were still full of people kidnapped by the state, not just in the context of the uprising, but from decades of previous struggles. 

The plebiscite was held almost a year after the explosion of street protests in 2019, more specifically on October 26, 2020, and it was the forces calling for a constituent assembly that won, in what was considered one of the biggest pacts to pacify the struggles in that territory. There has undoubtedly been a softening of the multitudinous demonstrations that took place in previous months. However, for some people, the struggle continues with or without a constituent assembly, because they understand that no code can hide the blood, the deaths, the people who have been mutilated by the police and who are in prison with the possibility of sentences that could reach decades. What’s more, they are well aware that this constituent process, like all the others, has served to silence and mask the repressive processes that continue through dictatorship and democracy, as well as leftwing governments such as the socialist Michelle Bachelet or the right-wing Sebastián Piñera. 

Since March 22, 2021, a group of imprisoned anarchists and subversives have been held in four different units in the Santiago region and are on hunger strike. Mónica Caballero, Francisco Solar, Marcelo Villaroel, Juan Flores, Joaquín García and Pablo Bahamondes remain mobilized against an amendment to Decree Law 321, which modifies access to parole for people imprisoned in all Chilean prisons⁸. In general terms, the amendment transforms what would be the right of every prisoner into a benefit to be granted to those who meet certain requirements, including good behavior (assessed by the gendarmerie itself), an increase (in serving the sentence), among others, covertly establishing a type of life sentence. Added to this is the fact that the law is retroactive, that is, all people convicted before its approval are now subject to it, which would be considered a legal aberration in any territory⁹.

One of the people most affected by the change is Marcelo Villaroel, a subversive who has been in prison for more than 25 years for his participation in Mapu-Lautaro (a guerrilla group that fought the Pinochet dictatorship and continued its anti-capitalist struggle even during the “redemocratization” period) and for bank expropriation actions that took place in 2007. Under previous legislation, he could have accessed parole in 2019, but the date was changed to 2036. The Chilean State’s argument is that it would still have to serve a sentence of approximately 40 years for actions carried out against the Pinochet dictatorship, judged by the military court. This makes Villaroel the only prisoner held behind bars who was sentenced by military justice throughout Chile, which goes against the country’s own post-dictatorship legislation, which prohibits the trial of civilians by military personnel.

The struggle against these repressive measures unfolds day by day and spreads to different regions, overflowing Chilean territory. Actions in support mobilizations have been registered in Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay, Sweden, Greece and Spain, and an international day of agitation and dissemination is being called for Saturday, April 17, 2021, the date that has marked the “International Day of the Political Prisoner” since the early 2000s. In relation to the struggle in Chilean prisons, the anti-prison campaign for this day also recalls that every prison is political and seeks to abolish not only prisons, but to confront all forms of relationship based on submission, command and obedience. 

In tune with the mobilizations around the world, we consider it urgent to dismantle the security apparatuses that have been in place for decades and maintain the weight of the military boot on this territory. 

Solidarity with the struggle in Chilean prisons! 

No forgetting, no forgiveness!

¹ CHILE: THE PEOPLE VIOLATED BY THEIR OWN STATE. 28/10/2019. 

² See Tortura Nunca Mais.

³ See União de Mulheres.

⁴ “Argentina's main security force. Although the country’s police force does not formally follow a military structure, Argentina does have a Gendarmerie, which has a dual character and acts in the “defence of borders”, in the “national interest” vis-à-vis other countries and in the fight against the “internal enemy” (drug trafficking, groups and practices considered terrorist, “organized crime”, uprisings and insurrections that attack “public order”, etc.).

⁵ Quote taken from the presentation of the zine “Mapuche Resistance: Excerpts from the book Wenüy - for the rebellious memory of Santiago Maldonado”.

⁶ Operation Condor was an alliance of politicians, military officers and businessmen from the dictatorships of the 1960s to the 1980s in South America that relied on the collaboration of US government agents and funding from businessmen to combat subversion on the continent under the fog of the Cold War. The aim was to train and finance security and secret agents in counter-insurgency tactics such as torture techniques in interrogations.

⁷ MARTINEZ, Adriana. andarilhos. Verve, São Paulo, PUC-SP, n. 36:, pp. 96-124, 2019.

⁸ To know more about the movement, access: Buscando la kalle and Edições insurrectas.

⁹ See MUÑOZ, Pascual. Dignidad tras las rejas.