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Title: Writings Date: 2011 Source: Retrieved on April 16, 2013 from https://waronsociety.noblogs.org/?tag=gabriel-pombo-da-silva Authors: Gabriel Pombo Da Silva Topics: Spain, Insurrectionary, Prison, Italy, Germany, Letters Published: 2013-04-17 01:00:52Z
From [[http://culmine.noblogs.org/post/2011/07/10/gabriel-pombo-da-silva-texto-de-presentacion-del-libro-de-tarrio-en-francia/][Culmine]] (July 10, 2011) translated by [[https://thisisourjob.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/gabriel-pombo-da-silva-introduction-to-the-french-edition-of-xose-tarrio-gonzalez-huye-hombre-huye/][this is our job]]:
I like to sit down in front of the typewriter just as Iâm waking up, when I still donât know who I am, where I come from, or where Iâm going. My head is in the clouds, hazy and chaotic, beyond Space-Time or any Dialectic.
While I write, my sense of self (whatever that may be) gradually âreturns.â I open âmyâ cell window, take a deep breath of the cold morning air, and feel my lungs expand. I make coffee, and its aroma relaxes me, reminding me of âanother timeââmy childhoodâas well as my mother.
My mother woke up every day at 5 a.m. to go to work. She would put the coffeepot on the kitchen stove, and in a few minutes that familiar aroma I found so appealing was wafting through the air. When I was little, I was convinced that one of the reasons my mother was so âdarkâ was because of all the coffee she drank. Who knows why? Kids have crazy ideas.
On weekends, âclassâ wasnât in session, so I was usually able to go to work with my mother. I enjoyed helping her.
My mother was (and is) a âcleaning worker,â and to earn a living she had to clean other peopleâs shops and offices. She always took pride in her work. Or perhaps it just was pride in having a job. I never knew exactly which.
My father (now dead) was a construction worker, and he built houses for other people while we lived in a rented shithole. He also took pride in his work. Or perhaps it was also just pride in having a job. Again, I didnât know which.
Even as a child, a deep feeling of hostility was beginning to grow within me toward what we now call âwage-labor,â but what was simply called âworkâ back then. Somehow, my daily reality was teaching me that *those who had nothing were being forced to sell their time as well as their energy to whose who had everything.*
When I asked my parents why there were poor people and rich people, they told me it had always been that way since the beginning of time. My parentsâ âmentalityâ always shocked me: beggars were beggars because they were lazy, whores where whores because they were depraved, thieves were thieves because they were evil.
You had to work, obey, be honest, and be a âgood Christian,â always willing to suffer and turn the other cheek. Someday, in the âgreat beyond,â we would find our reward.
<strong>When I was a child, I was embarrassed to say that my mother was a âcleaning worker.â Now, I feel embarrassed for having been ashamed of my mother, for having been ashamed of being poor</strong> (I mean âproletarian,â since we never had to go begging)â<strong>as if having been born poor, in the heart of a proletarian family, was a âsinâ or something you chose.</strong>
No, I couldnât get used to that âorder of things.â I didnât want to accept such an order. I didnât want to be a proud worker who worked for âother peopleâ and sold his time, his strength, all his energy, and sometimes even his Soul for money...
To me, prison wasnât anything distant or mysterious. Half the people in my neighborhood had been or were currently locked up in some cell.
Very early in the morning on (prison) visiting days, I would watch mothers, sisters, and wives (why are women always the ones who unconditionally make trips to prison year after year, while itâs the âmenâ who disappear into thin air after no time at all?) set off with their little plastic bags full of food and clothing to wait for the bus that would drop them off near the prison.
Off those women went, with clean clothes and food that were often bought on âaccountâ (credit), because in those days money and well-paid work were in short supply in my neighborhood. *Thatâs exactly why so many people were in prison. It had nothing to do with being âlazy,â âdepraved,â or âevil.â Not everyone wanted to join the diaspora of immigration (like my parents did) or exile, so instead of accepting the exploitation of wage-labor or the dictatorship of the post-Franco market, they decided to âstealâ or âtake up armsâ against that entire order of things.*
Those women who bought on âcreditâ and marched with their little plastic bags like a silent army toward prison, often depriving themselves of food so that their sons, brothers, and husbands would never have to do without their little package of food and clean clothes, *were the very embodiment of love and solidarity. I felt tremendous love and respect for them.*
One of those women (she was both a mother and a grandmother) was called, or rather we called her, Doña Cristina. She was a little old wrinkled lady with a kind, cheerful personality, but so tiny that the plastic bags she carried almost touched the ground, making each step she took seem like a superhuman effort. On more than one occasion I helped carry her bags to the bus stop.
Doña Cristinaâs son had been in prison for 12 years. He had stolen several cars (during the Franco era) that he later sold for parts to scrap yards and repair shops in order to make some money. He was one of those (thousands of) prisoners who didnât benefit from the âpolitical amnestyâ at the end of the 1970s. He was also one of the rebels who organized the Committee of Prisoners in Struggle (COPEL, which was already in decline by then), and no one wanted anything to do with them.
If my family was âpoor,â then Doña Cristinaâs family lived in the most abject destitution. The subhuman conditions in which that woman survived (together with her daughter and her childrenâs children, and without a âhusbandâ or any kind of economic support) infuriated me so much that I decided to help her out...
<strong>It was the summer of 1982.</strong>
Like every morning, a swarm of human beings was set in motion. They spread out in all directions like tiny worker antsâlittle rows and groups of men, women, and children on the way to their workplaces and schools. From their outfits and uniforms, it was easy to figure out their job, schooling, and even the âsocial classâ they belonged to.
Few workers went to work in their own cars. Most of them used public transportation or woke up a little earlier and went on foot.
I was sitting at the wheel of a Seat 131 Iâd stolen that very night from another part of the city. My friendsâ faces were tense, observing every movement on the streets adjacent to the Bankâevery car, every person, everything.
I watched a cleaning worker enter the Bank at this early hour: the headscarf covering her hair, the yellow rubber gloves, the little plastic bucket that probably held cleaning products and supplies. I was reminded of my mother, who was doing exactly the same thing as this woman, but in another country 2,500 kilometers away.
Toni tapped my shoulder and told me to move the car. Here, parked right in front of the Bank, we were drawing too much attention to ourselves.
Toni was known as âLefty.â Years later he was found murdered alongside his girlfriend Margot. Both of them had been shot in the head. Word on the street was that it was the work of the Vigo police departmentâs Robbery Squad.
Toni was 15 years older than me, so he must have been around 30 at the time. He had just recently been released from prison and was part of a group that was responsible for supporting and disseminating the struggle of prisoners.
I always liked his demeanor. He didnât talk too much, and when he did speak, he was usually very specific.
Moure (who committed suicide years later) was sitting next to me in the passengerâs seat. He winked at me, smiling while he cleaned the oil off the weapons he had in his lap.
Moure also belonged to the prisoner solidarity group. Like Toni, he was older than me and had been in prison.
We drove to the outskirts of the city since there usually wasnât any police presence there. After all, the poor didnât need to be âprotectedâ from their misery. The money was downtown, in the Banks.
Once we were out in the sticks, we got out of the car to stretch our legs a bit. Weâd spent the whole night driving around, and we were tired and needed sleep.
Toni picked up a twig. In the dirt, he began to sketch out the positions we would take up and the steps we would follow during the robbery. We also discussed the roads and routes we would use for our escape after the robbery.
During this first action, I would have to remain in the car and âcover our withdrawalâ in case the pigs showed up. For the task, Moure handed me a Winchester repeating rifle that very much reminded me of the ones âcowboysâ carried in Hollywood movies.
Once everything was sorted out, we got back in the car and headed for our target. Each one of us was immersed in himself. At such moments, there is nothing left to say. Everything has already been said. All that remains is total silence, complete concentration, and indescribable tension.
We arrived. When we were a few meters from the Bank, Toni told me to stop the car, but we hadnât yet come to a full stop when I saw him leap out as if propelled from a slingshot. With a ski mask covering his face and a pistol in his left hand, he shouted: â**Come on, letâs go, letâs go!â**
Moure followed a few steps behind, also masked and armed with a revolver.
I saw them disappear into the Bank. Some pedestrians were dumbstruck by the whole scene. They were staring at the Bank, and then they looked in my direction.
I didnât know exactly what I was supposed to do with these âspectators,â but to calm my nerves I decided to get out of the car and do something. I grabbed the rifle and approached them, saying something like: â**Move along assholes! Get out of here before I start shooting!**â
I wasnât wearing a ski mask, and the only thing partially covering my face was a pair of sunglasses. Luckily, it wasnât necessary to repeat my threats. The spectators left the scene. I remained outside the car, watching the Bank with my rifle pointed down the street in case the pigs showed up. My heart was beating furiously in my chest. I reached for my asthma inhaler, then remembered that I had left it at home. My hands were sweating. Each minute became an eternity. If the pigs appeared, I was prepared to shoot. Thatâs what we had agreed to. I told myself that next time I wasnât going to stay in the car. It was better to be inside the Bank. Finally, I saw my friends exit the Bank and come running in the direction of the car. I jumped in, threw the rifle in the back seat, and picked them up.
In the car, all the tension and energy that had built up during the robbery was released. My friends were all smiles, and so was I. They joked about how I looked with the rifle and sunglasses. We took the prearranged route at top speed, and I left them at a spot we had chosen in advance, where they hid themselves, the weapons, and the money. I had to get rid of the car far away from our âbase,â and I usually torched the cars we used.
A few days later, Doña Cristina found a bag full of 150,000 pesetas on her doorstep. Around the neighborhood, graffiti appeared in red paint: Total amnesty! All prisoners to the streets!
The neighborhood leftists talked about âpolitical prisoners,â but people in the neighborhood didnât understand them. After all, the âpolitical prisonersâ had already been released thanks to two partial amnesties. They talked about âsolidarity,â about âfreedom,â but only for prisoners from their organizations. What about the prisoners from the neighborhood?
I didnât attend âpoliticalâ meetings. I was 15 years old and didnât understand what the people there were saying. Also, it was always the same ones who spoke. They talked like âtelevision personalities.â
I said goodbye to my friends with an embrace. They had a meeting to go to. I was planning to rob a food warehouse in Revilla and then distribute the food throughout the neighborhood. It was an action I managed to pull off successfully.
â**Call me when youâre planning another action. Iâm just not interested in politics.â**
Over the course of two years, we managed to successfully expropriate over 20 bank branches and a dozen gas stations, along with other actions of that type...
Almost 30 years have now gone by since those events, those times, those âspeeches,â yet differentiating between prisoners still seems to be âtopical.â
Itâs absurd to think that only prisoners with political consciousness are worthy of our âsolidarity.â As if Doña Cristinaâs son wasnât also a result of the systemâs contempt. As if the âlumpenâ were incapable of drawing conclusions from their own experiences and circumstances. As if their lack of âeducationâ and âculture,â of money and support, wasnât punishing and ostracizing enough in itself.
In prison, those differences are meaningless and irrelevant, because the architecture of prison doesnât âmixâ prisoners according to their âpolitical ideology.â Itâs quite the opposite. Time, architecture, âemployees,â conditions, attitudes, and individualities are all artificially constructed in such a way that the âday-to-day operationsâ produce relationships of power and coercionâin other words, alienation, contempt, etc.
One defense mechanism (or even better, self-defense) against these false âdichotomiesâ (compartmentalizations), inside as well as outside (the System is the same on both sides of the walls), is informal organization based not only on action, but on *any activity in accordance with a âdistribution of tasksâ that pursues two simultaneous ends: âliving our lives in the here and now,â but also defining more âambitiousâ goals that âtranscendâ our own âindividualityâ without dehumanizing or alienating anyone in the name of some hypothetical âcommunityâ or âcommunism.â*
What we want, or at least what I want, is the disappearance of power relations based on coercion: to live and act according to the principles of our hearts, to see âothersâ not as âobjectsâ and/or âsubjectsâ but as individuals.
<strong>Freedom doesnât mean âalienatingâ ourselves. It means understanding our common âinterestsâ and desires in pursuit of a shared liberty,</strong> and in that sense living/organizing and acting/thinking in concert without having to âsacrificeâ oneself to <strong>delegation, participation, dirtying oneâs hands, getting involved, accepting âresponsibilities,â etc.</strong>
No single organization takes precedence over my individual liberty, and I donât want to be part of any revolution that doesnât let me dance.
words from [[https://waronsociety.noblogs.org/post/tag/gabriel-pombo-da-silva/][Gabriel Pombo da Silvia]] via [[https://culmine.noblogs.org/post/2011/08/03/esit-gabriel-pombo-da-silva-no-hay-nada-que-reformar/][culmine]], translated by [[http://waronsociety.noblogs.org][war on society]]:
<em>I am not so naive as to believe that what I am living here is something exceptional⊠and since âthe prisonersâ are not born here but come from a very concrete social context I do not look for the directly responsible âonlyâ among the salaried jailers and the jailing administration which, in the end, reproduce on a microcosmic scale the politics and the ignobilities of the System and its âSocietyâ⊠There is nothing to reform; everything must be demolished down to the foundationsâŠ</em>
<em>They are mistaken who believe (or imagine) that my radicality comes from the indigestion of âutopiasâ and various âtheoriesâ⊠actually, in the end and from the beginning I owe âmy radicalityâ to the System and its miserable Society⊠or, if someone wants to look for the âtheoristsâ responsible for my radicality, they can start in the offices of Department of Corrections and leave in peace the poets of the dynamite⊠:)</em>
<em>(âŠ)</em>
<em>For me, I have never been left indifferent to the beggars who fill the metropolis, those who, brutalized by a whole life of wage slavery end their days taking refuge in programmed leisure activities, alcohol and/or drugs⊠or those who, in order to survive, sell their bodies to satisfy the pleasure of those who can buy bodies as if they were commodities⊠but it has not been all this legion of miserable and exploited who have filled me with the strength, inspiration and dignity necessary to combat the system that generates all this⊠for that my brothers in struggle are responsible: some were âbanditsâ and others were revolutionaries⊠that is the fundamental difference between the majority of âanarchistsâ and me⊠I do not need âexcusesâ and revolutionary âsubjectsâ in order to confront the System⊠I hate the System because it taught me to hate it⊠and in this path of frontal war against the System I am learning who are my accomplices and who are my enemies, beyond âismsâ and âconceptualizationsââŠ</em>
<em>Aachen, July 2011</em>
I express my total fraternal solidarity with the anarchist comrade **<strong>Gustavo Rodr</strong><strong>Ă</strong><strong>guez</strong>**, for the continual attacks that he is receiving from the authoritarian and reformist trash.
I express also my solidarity with all the groups and individualities of action (from the **<strong>Autonomous Cells for Immediate Revolution</strong>** to the **<strong>Individualists Tending toward the Wild</strong>**, and all other groups) and insurrectionalists of Mexico and of the World, regardless of whether they adhere to the project of the **<strong>FAI/IRF</strong>** or not.
I salute with pride each action of our sisters and brothers in struggle⊠all of them!
<strong>For a black Christmas against the consumption, capitalism and repression!</strong>
A black Christmas that recalls our incarcerated sisters and brothers of the *<em>CCF</em>* and the *<em>FAI</em>* (Indonesia), those of the so-called â*<em>bombs case</em>*,â *<em>Tortuga</em>*, and the *<em>prisoners of the Struggle in the Street in $hile</em>*, those who were *<em>murdered in San Miguel prison</em>* last December, *<em>Marco Camenisch</em>*, *<em>Juan Carlos Rico</em>*, *<em>Tamara</em>*, the antifascist *<em>Jock</em>* and all the anarchist prisoners of the world.
<right>
<em><strong>Gabriel</strong></em>, December 2011
</right>
Don Pedro was (and may still be) a âtrue Stoic,â a âUniqueâ and âEgoistâ being who ended up in prison for killing or stabbing someone (I have never been able to find out the entirety of that chapter of his life)âŠ
I met him in the âSpecial Departmentâ (FIES module) of âEl Acebuche,â in AlmerĂa. Physically, he was a person who perfectly matched that stereotype we all have of Don Quijote: relatively tall, thin, in his fifties, with a pointy grey goatee and short hairâŠ
He walked very erect, exaggeratedly majestic, but most remarkable of all was his tone of voice and manner of expression. He spoke very slowly and he conscientiously selected each word while fixing his gaze (which oscillated between arrogance and irony) on a person, trying to uncover whether or not his interlocutor was worth his time and would comprehend what he was trying to expressâŠ
They say that he had been a professor of literature (which is plausible enough) at some institute in Valencia. The reason why he ended up in FIES was not, certainly, for participating in protests, riots or escapes⊠That would have gone against his âvaluesâ and âphilosophical principles,â not in vain and aside from considering himself a âTrue Nietzschian,â I would presume because of his misanthropyâŠ
No, Don Pedro took out the eye of a prison guard when he put it up to the doorâs âsnitchâ to see what he was doing in the cell⊠From this incident on, the existence of Don Pedro was a long drawn-out pilgrimage through the special prisons of the Spanish democracyâŠ
It is obvious to say that he did not âlowerâ himself to âdenouncingâ the innumerable times that he was the target of beatings and torture by the guards.
Even though we (the FIES) had the habit of laughing at him (or more than him, at his âphilosophy of lifeâ) we fell âsympatheticâ to his âparticularity,â and because his hatred for the guards was real and whenever they gave him the opportunity he sought confrontation with them.
Don Pedro liked to converse with me⊠he could never understand how âsomeone like meâ (a student of Philosophy with a great knowledge of/about the works of Nietzsche) could âbe a Marxistâ (he could never understand the differences between Anarchism and Communism; and even less so Anarchist Communism) and âembrace metaphysical illusionsââŠ
So we killed the time: sometimes we spoke (philosophized?) about the philosophers of Mileto, about Diogenes Laertius, Socrates-Plato-Aristotle, to wind up with his MasterâNietzscheâand his favorite work, âThus Spoke ZarathustraââŠ
Sometimes I lie in bed with my gaze fixed on the ceiling and I imagine Don Pedro speaking about this philosophical fusion of his master with a political âideologyâ like Nihilism⊠and I laughâŠ
Don Pedroâa stoic and misanthropic âOver-Manâ so consistent with himself that he refused to allow any kind of âtranscendenceâ to live over him, enemy of humanity and of humanism, egoist and uniqueâno one who has not met him personally knows about his life and his work materialized in himselfâin his ethicâŠ!!
And for him everything was reduced to this: the âover-manâ was his ethic and his moral, his attitude before and in the face of adversity and the existentâwithout regret or gloryâŠ
Because, obviously, if there is no ethic and moral (which is, in sum, a way of conceiving oneself to oneself and acting consequently) then itâs all the same anyway* and we would end up in a ârelativismâ that has nothing to do with the philosophical current of modern stoicism.
I imagine him all erect saying: Those are âcharlatans,â âDon Pombo,â charlatans!!
It is worth mentioning that Don Pedro referred to those he respected as âDonâ and to the rest as âyouâ⊠He was (and/or is) a true Stoic: Don PedroâŠ
Gabriel,
Early September 2012,
Aachen.