Translated by Act for freedom now!
Received by email 4/08/2024
Switch Off! Campaign Claim of Incendiary Attack on “Melon” and “Río Maipo Aggregates” Cement Factory. (August 3. San Juan de Llolleo Sector, Valparaíso Region, Chile.
“We are the debris piles and the grains of sand in the gears of a machine which advances inexorably and with heavy steps. We are factors of disruption in the machine room”.
– Volcano Group
The night of Saturday, August 3, accompanied by the forces of the river, we decided to attack the “Melon” Cement factory and the “Río Maipo Aggregates S.A.” company.(1) located in the surroundings of the mouth of the Maipo River. We aimed to paralyze their functioning, entering both premises and igniting their lines of production, logistics and administrative offices using 10 incendiary devices, propitiating the total destruction of the facilities of the location, and so consolidating our third act of sabotage with significant damage to factories that pray on and threaten the life along the Maipo River. This act returns part of the decades of harm that they have caused to the land and the environments in which they operate, as a way of contributing to the struggle against devastation. To the destruction of the earth and our lives, the only way we can respond with dignity is through the total destruction of that which destroys it.
In this sector, as well as along other stretches of the river, the activity of cement and aggregate extraction brings ecological sacrifice and the degradation of the communities that inhabit the environment, converting it into another sacrifice zone (there are 4 total concrete, cement and aggregate factories that operate there). This hasn’t been irrelevant for the local population which has demonstrated against the effects provoked by the functioning of this nefarious industrial activity, though beyond this particular conflict in the zone, we become part of the same, putting our wager on revolutionary anarchic violence into practice with conviction as a concrete and necessary method for the sharpening of the conflict for the earth and total liberation.
Melon is a cement company operating in Chile which currently is in the hands of a powerful corporate conglomerate based in Peru (Breca Group, of the Brescia-Cafferata family), which proposes expanding their business of exploitation of the earth across the whole of southern Abya Yala, adding this activity to the rest of the economic sectors in which they already operate. In turn, the aggregate company “Maestranza y Planta de Áridos Rio Maipo S.A.” [Rio Maipo Aggregate Plant and Workshop] operates actively in the sector of the Maipo river of the Santo Domingo and San Antonio townships, Valparaiso region. This comes after attempting to establish themselves in the Navidad township (Rancagua, VI Region) commencing their activities without even having the respective approval of the environmental impact execution commission of the region, proving their total indifference to the harmful effects of the exploitation of the earth and the rivers. In addition to these two factories which were attacked, there are two other concrete/cement factories in the area; one of these is “San Juan Cementos” of the multinational group UNACEM, which also devastates the earth in various countries of Abya Yala (USA, Ecuador, Chile, Peru and Colombia).
The environmental impact that both activities have is well known, causes of the degradation of the rivers and environmental contamination, in addition to harming the life and ecosystems of the environments where they operate. It’s not without reason that other territories of the first world, models to which some aspire so much, prohibit the activity of extraction of aggregates in water basins. Extracting aggregates and minerals from the banks of rivers harms their course and velocity, generating sinkholes that are replicated upstream in a domino effect (a phenomenon called regressive or retrograde erosion). This destroys the flora and fauna that live there and promotes land slides or similar phenomena. The impact of cement production is not minor, bordering 7% of C02 emissions on a global level (three times that of air traffic, positioning itself as the third most contaminating industry). In addition, all of these absurd and enormous quantities of cement produced on a daily basis across the world (close to 150 tons are consumed each second) are created with raw materials such as gravel, pebbles and stones that they take from the mouths of the rivers or by drilling into the earth for extraction of minerals. Vast expanses of beaches are razed and devoured to extract the necessary sand.
These industries exist to proliferate the current civilized model of life, where each day cement imposes itself over more and more of the earth, crushing and hiding it to make way for the ingratitude toward what is native, raising enormous constructions through respective displacement or destruction of habitat of wild animals and vegetation that gives life to the ecosystems. This happens day after day without stop, expanding the city further and further into the edges and elevations, thus sweeping away what is natural in the territory. Where the parks are pleasing but only a simple functional bubble in the city in the middle of all the cemented shit. The rain water doesn’t adequately drain in the earth, the heat in the city of concrete is suffocating, and there is no longer even any earth to plant. All of this is cement and to maintain it and reproduce it they need these extractivist industries, destroyers of the environment. This gray and opaque form of life has grave consequences and these are not irrelevant to us.
Understanding that these companies make up part of this extensive extractivist machinery, present in the whole world and quickly converting all of Abya Yala into a sacrifice zone; that the exploitation of the earth is a vital artery of domination; that the industrial activity responsible for the changes to the climate caused by global warming have no real interest in halting their devastation but rather endeavor to feign environmentalism and new energy sources that are also harmful for the ecosystems and our lives; and above all, with the clarity that each of us is the only one who can fight the advance of devastation, we see the urgency of attacking the industry that destroys the earth. We add our initiative and action to the internationalist “Switch Off!” campaign, which we spoke of in a past writing called “The Conflict in Abya Yala and its Relationship to “Switch Off!”: Anarchist Words on the Necessary Struggle for the Earth”.
Switch Off! The cement factories and aggregate extraction!
Switch Off! The world of devastation and the system of destruction!
May this fire be an embrace for the comrades who have dealt blows in other territories across the world like the attacks in Germany against the cement plants of “HeidelbergMaterials AG” and “Cemex”, to the comrade saboteurs of the Mountain Valley U.S.A. gas pipeline, to the perpetrators of the attacks against Tesla, among various other acts of sabotage and destruction across the globe. Knowing that attack must be immediate and in all territories where the facilities and means of those responsible for the devastation are found, contributing to dialogue through direct and confrontational action, without any shade of hope in institutional processes or savior entities. For those who we find on the offensive, encouragement and love <3
We also act in solidarity with the struggle for Mapuche autonomy that consistently remains with head held high despite the colonizing offensive of the chilean and argentine states, responding to excractivist industry with fire and bullet and without faltering.
But the state offensive hasn’t only been in Wallmapu; the repressive situation in the whole territory has heightened in the hands of social democracy, which has intensified its authoritarian policing policies against the whole sector which is antagonistic to the interests of capital and the State. It puts a nice face over its anti revolutionary actions, raising false flags of struggle pretending to be environmentalist, pro human rights, pro “original peoples” and to be against gendered violence, proving not only to be a fraud in each of these areas, but also reinforcing the opposite. We see this in the repressive escalation in Wallmapu, in the disproportionate and vengeful sentence against our anarchist comrade Francisco Solar, in the mediatized repressive hunt in the historically combative Villa Francia neighborhood, in the anti-squat law that indiscriminately criminalizes and punishes land occupations of residents without houses, in the construction of new high-security prisons. All this among so many other blatant actions that benefit the powerful to the detriment of the exploited and the fighters, like the release and total impunity given for the acts of police bastards like the pigs Crespo and Sebastian Zamora, to the assassins of Cristián Valdebenito and those of Pablo Merchant, among many other cases. Our solidarity to all those who suffered the consequences of repression including prison, mutilation, persecution and murder.
All of this is no more and no less than the work of the “popular” government that came to halt “fascism”, a government commanded by they who, in a key moment, lent a hand to power to agree to suppress the revolt and stop any possibility of popular violence escalating. All of this is the work of they who counted on the support of illusive votes of supposedly combative sectors. Faced with this, we demonstrate our total rejection of the complicit silence, victimization and immobilization of those self-proclaimed revolutionary sectors when the time came tried to convince us that participating in democracy could be a good idea. We abhor anyone who under the wings of the struggle actively sustains and participates in the electoral system and representative democracy that only defends the structure of the neoliberal and police regime, because institutionalism and its justice will always look out in favor of those who govern and their repressive arms. We are disgusted by those sectors which call themselves “anarchists” or “revolutionaries” and were part of the electoral show of the constituent and of this government. Those who today, instead of making a profound self-critique and arousing the determined step into offensive action, keep silent after bitten their tongues and today succumb to immobilization and sterile discourses that do little to end this reality that rattles us. The only response faced with brutal repression, the imprisonment of our comrades, political executions and the police state is and will be autonomous struggle and direct action, far from institutionalism and democratic traps. It was said in advance, counting on centuries of historical experiences of struggle, and today, by spitting and throwing it in the faces of those delusional participants in democracy, we repeat once again: there’s nothing to negotiate with the enemy, the only path is conflict, without half measures nor timidity, fire to progressivism and open war against all authority!
In this month of august, charged with memory for Santiago Maldonado and Macarena Valdés, we continue walking the path of direct confrontation, spreading fire against devastation, giving life and continuity to combative memory for our dead.
In addition we connect with the call for the week of international agitation for Francisco Solar, comrade currently imprisoned by the State through an 86 year sentence and in a vengeful isolation regime. We leave aside the victimist discourses and attack Power where it’s found, since this is the only way we have to get Francisco out of isolation. And the more frequent these attacks are, the greater there impact will be and, moreover, their capacity to have an erruptive impact will grow, which will certainly strengthen expressions of anarchist solidarity.
“We understand that the only way to stay alive is striking the oppressors. We know that Power won’t fall with these attacks, but this isn’t a reason for us to sit on our hands. We strike because we don’t envisage citizen passivity in our lives. We distance ourselves from formal combat structures to take the pleasure of attack into our own hands, united in affinity.
Let’s unleash destructive hostilities!”
-SEDITIOUS COMPLICITIES /FACTION FOR VENGEANCE
A strong, warm and tight embrace to Francisco Solar, Aldo, Lucas, Mónica Caballero, Tomás, Joaquín García, Panda, Rusio, Tortuga, Mapuche prisoners, Villa Francia prisoners and anarchist prisoners around the world. A push, a breath, a gesture and a wink, translated through fire against the industries of domination and devastation, making them part of this expansive fire of liberation.
Immediate freedom for the lonko Facundo Jones Huala who is on hunger and thirst strike in the prisons of the State of chile.
From Wallmapu to palestine, armed resistance is necessary against colonial occupation. Action against genocide is viable on all continents, to destroy colonialism wherever it’s found. From the river to the sea, palestine will be free.
“We attack industry and the economy which benefit from colonialism and the destruction of nature and make a future worth living less and less possible!”
Switch Off! The system of destruction.
Switch off the machine. Destroy the machine.
Bau, Claudia, Mauri, Angry, tortuguita and all anarchists who died in action, you walk with us on the offensive.
For anarchy, for the earth, for our lives.
Insurrectional Cell for the Maipo. New Subversion.