About the Statement of the Libertarian Workshop Alfredo López in Havana

from A las barricadas, English translation by Anarchist News

by Octavio Alberola

About the Statement of the Libertarian Workshop Alfredo López in Havana

Due to serious health reasons in my family environment, I was unable to comment on the recent Statement of the comrades of the Alfredo López Libertarian Workshop in Havana nor to the reaction of comrade Gustavo Rodriguez. I do so today because I consider it urgent to manifest that solidarity between colleagues should not impede criticism, if it is considered to be well founded; but also that it must stem from the (libertarian/anarchic) right to have a discrepancy in a fraternal debate and of mutual respect. 

Especially when there are no objective elements which would lead us to doubt the will and efforts of the comrades of the Alferedo López Workshop in Havana to openly promote anarchist ideas in the Cuban context that we all know. And even more so when the discrepancy arises from a phrase ( "We do not support provocations tending to social explosion".) that can incite doubts by not specifying which "provocations" are being referred to. Although, at least for me, it is clear why, in the event of a social explosion, "this would be tragic in the current circumstances of organizational deterioration of the working classes and the most precarious segments of society." 

Since it is obvious, at least to me, that given the current circumstances, in Cuba and the world, social explosions end tragically and are recuperated by political forces within the system if not by right-wing fascist populism. Besides not being, in most cases, the expression of a will for social change.

Of course, it is not enough to lament it and that should prompt us to debate what to do in such circumstances based on our real possibilities and not only based on rhetorical declarations.

My opinion is the same as regards the other points of the Statement which do not seem to me to express adherence to the current «institutional framework» in Cuba and in the world, but what to do in the meantime while we haven’t broken it... Which we can disagree on and it also deserves to be debated; since, how can we deny that we have not yet been able to change the course of history and that anarchy continues to remain a hypothesis?

In solidarity

Octavio Alberola

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