From Culmine (March 8, 2011):

During the week of February 22 to 27, we mailed two package-bombs addressed to the wardens of two prisons: the Northern Preventive Prison for Men and the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Center for Men (CEVAREPSI), both in Mexico City. Of course, the action was censored and suppressed. These packages contained a few variations compared to those previously sent to the Chilean embassy. A capsule filled with a small quantity of ammonium nitrate was added, and other technical aspects of the detonation were changed. This action is part of a countercampaign directed against the Mexico City Government’s (GDF) campaign to recruit citizens as prison guards. The packages were prepared with a larger quantity of explosive material, because this time we didn’t need to show any consideration for whoever opened them, given that everyone constituting the prison system is an accomplice to the tortures inflicted on prisoners. We are obviously referring to guards, wardens, and repressive tactical units, but also to doctors who supposedly do humanitarian work yet deliberately act in complicity with the state. In addition, the packages were made with greater precision in order to prevent accidental detonation.

On this occasion, we decided to address two types of prisons that hold human beings.

These sickening institutions have been around for hundreds of years and have NEVER managed to resolve ANYTHING.

As well as demeaning people, these horrid death camps subjugate them, torture them, degrade them, and treat them as if they were the foulest trash in existence. And if they’re lucky, a select few are able to walk away with their spirit and dignity intact, although traces of prison linger in the memory forever.

Many of our comrades are being held captive there right now, and many of you reading this communiqué must also have loved ones trapped in these terrible places. Maybe they’re innocent, or maybe they’re actually responsible for the acts they’re accused of. Ultimately, we all know that the vast majority of “crimes” committed are the result of this system, which tries to convince us that political and (especially) economic power will bring us happiness.

We’re fed up with a group of useless bureaucrats—whose judgments lead them to decadence and wealth—deciding who deserves to be free and who doesn’t.

And we’re not just talking about prisons with bars, but also prisons where rubber rooms, non-stop medication, electroshocks, and negligence are an everyday feature.

We also want to talk about these places, intentionally forgotten by society.

Mexico currently has 2.7 psychiatrists for every 100,000 inhabitants and dedicates 0.85% of its budget to mental health. Is that enough? Of course not.

Our intention is not to defend those who clearly can’t defend themselves due to their being strapped to a hospital bed, or inappropriately and unnecessarily medicated for 24 hours a day just to keep them out of trouble. No, our intention is to make everyone think about the reality experienced by thousands of people who are voiceless, or who don’t count because they’re “crazy.”

These people are also imprisoned, just because they’re depressed, because they don’t think like everyone else, because they view themselves differently, or simply because they don’t accept this absurd reality.

It’s necessary to fight these places, which obliterate minds and are just as abnormal as other prisons. But many people don’t realize this. Perhaps it’s simply because they or someone close to them aren’t suffering there, so it doesn’t directly affect them. Or maybe they think these very delicate issues are not their responsibility.

But this is reality, and it’s an error we keep repeating, dragging it behind us for so many years, yet another mistake weighing on our backs.

Yet if we all know it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever, why do we allow it to continue?

Which is really another way of asking: Who has the right to deprive us of our liberty?

Who empowered them to judge our lives?

We think it’s important to reflect on whether prisons really serve us or whether they are used only to instill the fear of being inside them, and examine whether the terror they sow is of any use to us. Either be rewarded for being a “normal, exemplary citizen” and obeying all the orders you’re given, or be punished: “If you misbehave, you’ll go straight to prison.” But in actuality, any behavior outside the parameters of “normal” is considered bad behavior and deserving of punishment.

That’s all. You must always be afraid of (and respectful toward) authority and expect the worst from everything that appears evil. But you should know this: Going to prison or going crazy are the worst things that can happen to you in life, and society will then either brand you a criminal or a pitiful lunatic for the rest of your days.

We don’t want to allow such institutions to continue existing. We can’t allow it. That’s why we firmly believe they should burn alongside those who keep them functioning.

Everyone pays eventually. For so many years, these people have been responsible for cutting our experiences short, overturning our lives at will, and murdering our freedom. They should pay as much or even more than those who are suffering in prison, just so they feel for themselves what it means to be a prisoner of this lethal system.

They absolutely must burn, not just with fire spread by our hands, but also with fires started by others.

There’s no shortage of fire and dynamite. All that’s missing are more hands with the courage to use them. And there are plenty of things out there that need to be destroyed.

Until they all burn!

Extreme violence will topple what extreme violence sustains!!

In memory of  Xosé Tarrío and everyone murdered by prison society!!!

Solidarity with the prisoners of the Chilean state, Yiannis Dimitrakis, Gabriel Pombo da Silva, Marco Camenisch, and everyone imprisoned in the state’s death camps!!

Evolution requires freedom, and we cannot be free if we are not rebellious. . . . You must arm yourself, not with a useless vote that will only ever be worth as much as the tyrant allows, but with shrewdly effective weapons, whose use will lead to dynamic evolution instead of the regression advocated by pacifist fighters.

Never be passive! Rebellion, now and forever.

—Práxedis Gilberto Guerrero, revolutionary anarchist who died in combat on December 30, 1910 in Janos, Chihuahua, Mexico

At war with the state and prison society.

—Práxedis G. Guerrero Autonomous Cells for Immediate Revolution