[Encuentros] Repost of: Mate, Tango and Anarchism

[Clif Ross]

  (Note:  We´re trying this from another angle.  Sorry
that this post arrived at your box with many bogus
characters three times. We´re really trying to work
the bugs out here. This is another copy of the post I
sent out earlier as Mate, Tangos and Anarchism. I hope
it comes to you in a more readable form...)



           Anarchism, like the passion for tango or
mate, is a regional preference.  At the little beat-up
kiosk run by members of Barrikada, Esteban explains.
"Anarchism came to the Rio Plato region with the
immigration of the Spaniards and Italians. It's had a
rough history in Argentina, disappearing completely at
certain moments, but not here in Uruguay. Here it's
had its ups and downs, but it's always been alive in a
continuous development."

            I'd called Pablo a few minutes before and
he suggested we meet at the kiosk during his lunch
hour. I'd gotten his name from Jorge Zabalza, the
ex-Tupamaro recommended to me by Ruben Prieto. It's a
large circle, the libertarian left, and very
inclusive. Jorge, for instance, trained in Cuba in
1967, like many Tupamaros of the day, a Marxist
guerrilla with anarchist roots. Ruben (who Jorge, with
a large, affectionate smile, calls a "bourgeois
anarchist"), by appearance, seems to have been an
anarchist of a Kropokin variety: developing mutual aid
and cooperation in the context of an exemplary
community. The people at Barrikada, says Zabalza, are
more active in the current struggle. Pablo, who
eventually shows up, right on time, at the kiosk,
describes their ideology as "anarchism of the here and
now." 

The kiosk is only distinguishable from all the others
by its red and black colors, a few discrete stickers
calling for the release of political prisoners, and
the three large displays of anarchist books, most of
which have been published by Nordan, the publishing
arm of Ruben's Comunidad del Sur. Aside from that
there are the Playboy magazines and their clones, the
dailies of every variety from center left to right.
When I ask Esteban for a recommendation of a newspaper
he smiles cynically. "They lie. They ALL lie." And the
Republic, the newspaper someone recommended to me as
left? Esteban smiles and shrugs. "They lie. They don't
just slant the news, they lie." I have my private
doubts that Esteban is ever going to make it as a
salesman.

Pablo is a friendly young guy with short black hair
and a neat, but not overly clean-cut, appearance. He's
got a distinct and genuine innocence about him related
to an as-yet undamaged idealism, which is not to say
that he hasn't also, like most leftists in Uruguay,
been disillusioned and outraged by the betrayal of the
Tabaré Vázquez government. Yet unlike Jorge Zabalza or
Helios Sarthou, who experienced the betrayal first
hand in, as it were, a kiss of death on the cheek by
former comrades, Pablo appears to be too young to have
participated long in any movement, other than
Barrikada.

            The kiosk is on a broad sidewalk between
the National University and the National Library, two
state institutions covered with anarchist grafitti and
appeals for the release of political prisoners and the
punishment of members of the military dictatorship for
their role in the twelve year repression that left a
number of people disappeared and dead and many
surviving victims of imprisonment and torture,
including Jorge Zabalza and others I've met here.
Pablo suggests we go to a nearby cafe and we head off
down Navaja.           

It's a university neighborhood and the walls of
bookstores are also covered with anarchist grafitti.
We pass the offices of the Movimiento Liberación
Nacional, the MLN, also known as the Tupamaros. Now
the Tupamaros are in power, with the exception of
people like Zabalza, backing the neoliberal government
of Vázquez joining, most of the other leftists in a
soft turn to the right.

            Pablo asks me about Venezuela. I tell him
that just as Vázquez is a neoliberal dressed like a
leftist, Chavez is a leftist dressed as military.
Pablo smiles. He asks about my history and I tell him
about Red Star Black Rose and how the debates on the
shop floor tended to be dominated by a Catholic
Christianarchist and a Protestant Christian socialist
who were constantly switching roles. Pablo expresses
surprise. Their group also includes a number of
Christians. "We also have people who are admirers of
Che Guevara. We have a saying: Tabaré isn't Kirschner,
Kischner isn't Lula; Lula isn't Chavez; Chavez isn't
Fidel and Fidel isn't Che."

I add, "and Che isn't Jesus and Jesus isn't God," and
Pablo laughs.

            We enter the cafe and I get a coffee while
Pablo orders a Sprite. I see I have to talk to him
about the boycott of products made in the U.S.A. I
look around the cafe. It's the classic Uruguayan bar
with a high wood counter, lots of large glass windows
looking out onto the street, come of them, like the
one by our table, the kind that slide open to offer a
clearer view of passersby, solid wood tables and
relaxed waiters in white jackets moving around, taking
and delivering orders.

The Barrikada group was founded nearly eleven years
ago under what Pablo called the "represión del filtro"
(filtered repression) of the years following the
dictatorship, under so-called "democratic" governments
like what we have in the U.S., imposed on the people
through (in our case, fraudulent) vote. These were, in
a sense, an extension of the dictatorship, through the
law of impunity. Like in much of the Southern Cone
region where the U.S. found it convenient at the time
(the 1970s and early 1980s) to install and/or support
local military dictatorships (the most notorious being
Pinochet in Chile), when the dictatorship left power
in the hands of a fledgling "democracy" it also
insured that all members of the former dictatorship
would enjoy immunity from prosecution for all time to
come through laws known as "laws of impunity." Given
the immense power of the armed forces, (many members
of which were trained at our own School of the
Americas), mere unarmed civilian governments that have
come after have been hesitant to repeal such laws and
to go after the murderers and torturers who were in
the government before them. This is changing now in
some countries in South America, but not in Uruguay.
Among the many unfulfilled promises, lies and
deceptions of Tabaré Vázquez is the promise that he
would prosecute the perpetrators of the crimes of the
dictatorship. To the contrary, says Pablo, there are
now more political prisoners than before, but under a
new regime with new, "kinder, gentler" methods of
repression being implemented. 

"So for example," Pablo explains, sipping his gringo
poison, "these demonstrations of Plata del Mar, when
Bush came down here last November. Remember? We had
big demonstrations here in Montevideo, too. They were
very peaceful, but some bank windows got broken and
the police came down hard on protestors, beating
people and charging a few with "terrorism". Now a
couple of those are out of jail but they're caught in
a process of being processed, something that never
ends. The new model of repression, is this. They can't
get on with their lives. They can't do anything. They
spend their whole lives being processed." The
"progressive" Frente Amplio government, says Pablo,
has taken more political prisoners in less time, if
you take into account these who are technically free,
but imprisoned in invisible cells that they carry
around with them, than any previous governments.

There is a strong popular movement against the laws of
impunity and for the prosecution of perpetrators of
the crimes. One of the "autonomous" organizations with
which Pablo's group collaborates is a human rights
organization called "Memory and Justice Plenary"
(Plenaria Memoria y Justicia). Their grafitti is all
over the city and they seem to enjoy great popular
support since everyone here hates the former
dictatorship. There is also Crysol, an organization
made up of ex-political prisoners and their families.
The photo exhibit they have put up in the National
Library offers graphic images of the state terror
Uruguayans, and Argentinians endured in the years
between 1973 and 1985. The photos of the disappeared
have a central place in the exhibit, and the photos of
hooded prisoners being tortured in Uruguay are an
eerie portent of Abu Ghraib and the huge number of
Iraqis now being tortured by the occupying U.S. troops
and their mercenaries.

The anti-imperialist demonstrations of November in Mar
del Plata and elsewhere in the region (like
Montevideo) will long be remembered as a turning point
in Latin America. I watched it in Venezuela when I was
there: George  Bush looking all lost and clueless
about why everyone was ganging up on him while
regional leaders assailed the idiot prince and his
imperial policies. Chavez led the attack against the
Empire and its pathetic group of representatives led
by the fraud himself who listened in to the
simultaneous translation before leaving early in
dismay over the absence of any possibility for finding
signatories to a Free Trade Agreement, other than the
few quislings like Fox and Uribe and, of course,
Tabaré Vázquez. In Montevideo at the time -- well,
let's hear it from the mouth of Barrikada, the first
page of their Special Supplement which features a
photo of police beating protestors on their front
cover.

 

"On Friday the 4th in Ciudad Vieja a gathering of
organizations and groups of the resistance
coordinated, under the slogan, ALCarajo! an
anti-capitalist  day-long event (jornada). Three
mobilizations happened in the center of Montevideo
that same day. At the same time that the
anti-capitalist theater was finishing and the march
was beginning to pass through the center of the city
from Ciudad Vieja, the mecca of financial speculation,
in Mar del Plata the government was signing before
Bush a bilateral trade agreement with the USA. Weeks
before the government had confirmed its participation
in the UNITAS (military) maneuvers with the USA and
the sending of more troops to Haiti and the Congo. 
Weren't there sufficient conditions to suspect that
the demonstrations would require the surpassing of the
merely testimonial level? What followed a little after
four p.m. wasn't unlike what we're used to seeing in
any anticapitalist demonstration in any Latin American
country. A few pieces of grafitti on the facades of
military, financial and bank buildings. A few broken
windows. All the damages were certainly covered by
insurance and replaced before the following morning.
In any case, there was no absence (even within the
left itself) of those who were neurotically
scandalized by the damage.

The organization Plenaria Memoria y Justicia
understood completely what was happening and of course
was more concerned with human rights than with a few
broken panes of glass. The clearly foreseen repression
was then unleashed and a hunt, lasting over an hour,
went as far as to the principal avenue of the Center
of Montevideo. What followed turned out to be a
criminal attack against the social and political space
that had opened over time, revealing the incoherence
of the (present) government and the impunity with
which the ultra right had operated with its repressive
aparatus. This country will no longer be the same from
this moment." 

 

The article goes on to say that four people were
processed for "sedition", following what the author(s)
describe as the "Argentine mirror" where protest is
criminalized in such a way as to currently tie up,
effectively, two thousand people in that country
through the judicial processing without end.

 

Pablo and I go back to discussing anarchism and the
peculiarities of the Uruguayan variety. After I rant
on about my brief experience with the anarchist
community around the Bay Area, which was checkered or
chiaroscuro with enormous patches of light and equally
large patches of dark sectarianism, Pablo takes a turn
and talks about his experience and understanding of
anarchism.

"Anarchism here, at least among us, because there are
a lot of different groups and tendencies from the more
tradional FAU (Uruguayan Anarchist Federation) all the
way to punk rock anarchists (which is where I began),
but among our group we're autonomists, that is, based
in the reality of our neighborhoods and communities,
and our ideology is generated from our reality more
than from reading Bakunin, Kropotkin or Proudhon. So
our groups are more territorial and autonomous.
There's a kitchen in Villa Española, el Galpón, that
has been operating for ten years, feeding poor people
in the neighborhood and they're doing that work while
another group is doing community radio, and another is
working with a school and we're all separate but see
ourselves as connected, autonomous but part of the
same movement."

I muse on what might, again, be the differences
between our "Protestant" anarchism (or equally,
socialism) in the U.S., and the "Catholic" variety in
Latin America. The poet William Everson once
distinguished the two cultures to me in a conversation
in which he said, "Catholics are rooted in the symbols
and the sacraments to their faith. The images are
human and archetypal and based on a tradition of
understanding that extends back hundreds of years. The
Protestants are based on a book, on a set of
doctrines, a collection of ideas. While the Catholics
have a cross with a suffering, bleeding man through
which they comprehend reality, the Protestants look to
an empty cross, a pure geometric form." Could it be
that something similar is in play here with politics,
in this case, anarchism? Could it be, I ask myself,
that anarchists in the U.S. base their faith on a set
of ideas and doctrines and that the Latin American, in
particular, the Southern Cone variety is rooted more
in the community, in the catholic faith of the
community?

Pablo seems amused by the idea. But he offers a
simpler explanation. "Maybe we're more desperate. We
don't have the luxury to think about those things but
need to work with whoever is around to resist the
neoliberal attacks of the "progressive" government and
address the needs we face here." 

On the other hand, given the group's anti-imperialist
stand and its support, for example, of other processes
like the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, they've
had to make some tough decisions in terms of
alliances. "There was an anarchist group in Venezuela,
for example, you know them? The people who put out
Libertario?" Pablo asks. I say I know about them but
haven't met any of them. 

"Well, they were very critical of the Bolivarian
Revolution in such a way that we felt put them in the
opposition. We wrote to them and said we wanted to
have no more to do with them because of our support
for the Bolivarian process." Pablo smiles ironically.
"So we broke with a group of anarchists because of our
support for... a governmnent." He laughs. I decide in
that moment that I've at last found a group of
anarchists I could imagine joining, if I actually were
of a disposition to "join" anything.

            Eventually Esteban comes in to the cafe
but Pablo has to return to work as a graphic artist
and we all get up to leave. Pablo promises to take me
to El Galpón on Friday and show me around before the
event I plan to attend put on by Crysol.

I return with Esteban to the stall where I look
through the books, but I know I can't buy anything
because I'm traveling by land and can't carry away
even what I really want to read: the three volume
history of the FAU, which is, in fact, a history of
anarchism in the region. I eventually say goodbye and
wander past the National Library on my way to the
hotel. There, in front of the library and next to the
statue of perhaps the first anarchist thinker of
western history, Socrates, is the grafitti that one
imagines may have been written by one of the old man's
students: Liberar a los obreros graficos (Free the
graphic workers) and Arriba los que luchan, karajo!
(Long live those who struggle, damn it!). I imagine
myself painting under Socrates, "Think for thyself"
but I immediately dismiss the idea. I'm a middle aged
gringo who couldn't find such complex expression in
Spanish. Besides, I decide to leave the graffiti to
the younger comrades who, so far, have done an
admirable job of covering the city.

Clif Ross