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Title: To Unknown Waters Author: Madrid Cuarentena City Date: March 2020 Language: en Topics: spain Source: *Madrid Cuarentena City* Notes: Translated from Spanish by Enough 14.
We’ve been in a state of emergency for over a week now. The destructive
capacity of the virus is no longer in question. But we would like to
make some notes on its non-clinical consequences and on its origins.
Whether the COVID-19 virus came about because of a bat or an American
attempt that has gotten out of hand, to disable the Chinese economy, we
think is irrelevant now. This virus, like others before in history that
massacred entire populations in the Amazon, Mesoamerica, Africa and
Oceania, is a biological phenomenon. But the context in which it was
born, how it spreads and how it is managed are social issues. This virus
is the result of a system that commodifies every process, object,
relationship or living being on earth. Spread rapidly across the
macro-concentration of labour and the consumer corpus of cities, which
feeds itself from agro-industry and intensive livestock farming. A flow
of human assets (5 billion people fly around the planet each year) at
frenetic speeds, reflected in 200 characters and 5000 likes.
It is precisely this effort to artificialize everything, even our
emotions, everything being driven by profit, seeing the world through a
screen, allowing our mind to be colonized by “efficiency”, which has led
to a gradual loss of the “human”, of the “living”. Facilitating such
extreme measures, in which there are only two reasons to get out of the
house (work and consume) have entered in a way that is not exaggeratedly
traumatic. At the same time, it is proposed to us as a way to escape the
same technophile dynamics that have led us to disaster. If we add fear
to it, the rule of fear, we end up losing our way and reinterpret
concepts like responsibility or solidarity.
You’ll be labeled irresponsible, for example, if you don’t submit to
voluntary house arrest. What a perversion of meaning, in reality it is
nothing else, than embacing between the heart and the head, between
analysis, decision and action. With that cry of “unconscious,” which you
will receive from the window if you go, for example, hand in hand with
your partner on the street, actually people are shouting to you, “obey
the norm!” The same is true of calls for solidarity that are translated
by collective voluntary servitude when make an acritic #yomequedoencasa
[1].
What about the hundreds of people who pile up in Atocha and Chamartin
between 6.30 and 8.30 a.m.? Why hasn’t construction work on buildings
stopped in a city that has an exorbitant surplus of houses? Are the
people crowded into IFEMA [2] no human beings? Is it shocking to be
locked up for a week and five, 10, 15, 30 years pass by and now you
can’t even see them? Is it crazy to be locked up for a week and spend
five, 10, 15, 30 years and you can’t get even receive a guest, not even
a short visit and in many cases calls and mail are absolutely
restricted? To refer just a few painful examples.
For those who are homeless it is no longer possible to survive
anonymously. Survival, can no longer be unnoticed when the jungle of
glass has become a concrete desert. They are, even more than they used
to be, forbidden people [3]. Which at best will be herded into plots
like IFEMA. It has also unleashed the, already exacerbated, police
impunity against other forbidden people, who cannot prove by means of
bureaucratic papers that they are people with “full rights”, or because
the color of their skin induce torturers in uniform not to think. (
Mainstream media reported numerous cases of police brutality in Lavapiés
[4], the city centre and other cities). Because a pandemic is still a
matter of class, of privilege, of not-so-random deaths.
We do not have the power of augury like Cassandra had, but we do, in
exchange, have the oath of Apollo. I mean, we don’t know for sure if
these forecasts are coming true (although there is unequivocal evidence
where he points out the power and shows, this kind of measure are
already in effect), however, we fear that we will hardly be heard. We
think that all these control measures will become permanent, or
recurrent like it already happened with the anti-terrorist laws after
9/11; No wonder that we will be called in confinement again in the
future
in circumstances such as storms, hurricanes and all kinds of climate
crises, which are sure to come, or new and old epidemics that will come
knocking at our door again. Tracking movement by phone, biometric and
temperature controls, limitations of movement according are a reality
already and have come to stay. In addition to this, the widespread
precariousness of the life that will come in the medium term, the
socialization of poverty…
At this point we would like to share the idea that the present, or
rather the past, world as we know it: based on domination, with its
structures perpetuating misery, its orthodoxy, its desire for freedom…
is not good enough for us. And in no way we want to go back to it.
Let’s start trying. Considering that there are people who don’t would
like to get infected, let’s break the isolation. Let’s act, if
necessary, on an individual level. In this reality even with a blind
strike it is very easy to hit the right target. Let’s communicate, talk,
share information and be critical, force curfews, map control (where and
when it is patrolled, what spaces have been banned, where having
supply…). Let’s encourage strikes and company closures. We don’t want
crisis management. We want to experiment, crash, fight, conflict…
Let us strive to influence the present even when when we do not see the
horizon when we look up. Perhaps it is precisely here that we will find
the key, let’s leave behind truths, convictions and securities, we will
sail with passion for adventure towards unknown waters, towards dawns of
freedom and revolt.
[1] #yomequedoencasa the spanish version of #StayAtHome
[2] IFEMA Ifema (short for Institución Ferial de Madrid; “Fair
Institution of Madrid”) is an entity charged with the organisation of
fairs, halls and congresses in their facilities in Madrid.
[3] Forbidden people, people without documents, like for example
migrants.
[4] Lavapiés is a city district in Madrid.