We will not be silenced. We will speak in the name of our dead
Traducido por A Free Retriever´s Digest
We know this perfectly well. The hundreds of dead and missing are not the product of an uncontrolled nature. They are not the result of a fatality against which nothing can be done. We are not satisfied with the “meteorological” explanation, the liters of rain falling, the overflowing rivers… The causes are deep and are linked to the very foundations of capitalism: a system that crowds workers into marginal and low-income areas of cities in order to better exploit them, a system that protects and privileges productive and commercial activity, without worrying about protecting people, who are left to the mercy of their fate in the middle of the storm. And then there are the various “leaders” of the capitalist system, different dogs with the same collar. On this occasion, these bastards, these nobodies, whether they are called Mazón or Sánchez, without forgetting the Bourbons, add to their usual status of lackeys the responsibility for the deaths and the tragedy experienced. We will not forget their names and, at the first opportunity, we will make them pay.
Timeline of the disaster
Both the meteorological service and the Hydrographic Confederation had predicted the disaster. On Tuesday, October 29, torrential rains saturated the dry basins, caused rivers and ravines to overflow, flooded and submerged a large part of L’Horta Sud in Valencia (1) with water and mud. The tragedy was served.
From then on, and without the State (neither the autonomous region nor the central government) planning anything, it was the inhabitants who saved other inhabitants and helped them with the most basic tasks. Without water or electricity, they survived and organized themselves in the absence of the “government” and its military and police “forces”. The testimonies that have reached us are both moving and heroic: individuals and families who helped each other, even putting their lives at risk, and prevented the disaster from becoming much worse.
On Friday, November 1st, the “authorities” and their “forces” still did not show up, but the solidarity of the people was shown in an extraordinary way: Thousands of people organized themselves in the city of Valencia and descended in columns on foot to the villages of L’Horta to help, bring water and food, and support their fellow men and women with their presence. The State was alarmed and began to hinder solidarity, tried to structure it and give it the form that corresponded to its own interests. It began to disorganize solidarity in the form of volunteering and, in a catastrophic way (because it could not be otherwise on the part of the capitalist State), it tried to disarticulate it.
On Saturday, November 2nd, five days after the floods, the army showed up with heavy machinery and set in motion its strategy to unblock the streets and villages, uncovering the enormous tragedy still hidden by the mud, the rubble and the piled-up cars.
The “volunteers” began to be directed to disgusting tasks (cleaning shops and supermarkets), which they refused to do. They had not gone there to help businessmen and multinationals, but to help their own people, people like them.
At that time, the missing numbered in the hundreds and the dead too. The damage was considerable and thousands of people, most of them workers, had lost everything.
On Sunday, November the 3rd, the government of the Generalitat banned the influx of “volunteers” to the affected areas, invoking the orange alert – a way to avoid protests and confrontation with the politicians who were visiting the area that day, politicians hated and loathed by the population, regardless of the color of the party or the rank they hold in the state apparatus, whether royals or presidents. But despite the ban, people continued to descend on the villages of l’Horta. The confrontation took place and Felipe VI, Mazón and Pedro Sánchez had to flee the town of Paiporta amid cries of “murderers” and mud and stones being thrown.
Reasons for the massacre
This is indeed a massacre that could have been avoided to a large extent, because it is the product of a system, capitalism, that is catastrophic and is managed by a State (whether regional or national, it’s all the same rottenness) only obeying the laws of capitalist advantage and profit. Elements that favored the massacre:
- Developmentalism and absurd and unbridled constructions are not the work of corrupt politicians, greedy businessmen or clumsy urban planning. It is the way that capital has found to transport workers to the cities where work and consumption are concentrated, without taking into account the place and the way in which these constructions were built, constructions that are generally of very poor quality and located in natural spaces where water and rivers used to flow. It is not surprising that a city can be called Torrent or that a large number of streets are called cañada or rambla, (2) names that designate the place where the water flowed and where it will flow again if it rains too much. It does not matter where we build, what counts is the immediate benefit without measuring the consequences for the workers, we who are for them (the rich, the bourgeois, their politicians) only a commodity that can be replaced.
- The cold drop (3) has always existed in these regions, but the high temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea due to global warming are causing an increase in the intensity and frequency of torrential rains. Capitalism is the system that has accumulated the most knowledge about the effects of human action on its ecosystem, but it is also the most destructive mode of production towards it. Its need to accumulate capital leads it to require ever greater quantities of energy and raw materials, no matter what. It is an internal dynamic that cannot be stopped and that necessarily places us in a scenario where the catastrophe experienced can repeat itself over time.
- The lack of prevention was also part of the massacre, even the cruelest part. Despite the warnings, despite the forecasts and despite knowing the risk since Tuesday 29 October in the morning, nothing was done, the flow of labor-commodity should not be interrupted, stopping production is something unimaginable for the political administrators of capital. No one, neither the Generalitat, nor the central government, nor the opposition (which is now trying to take advantage of the situation) envisaged that people would not go to work, nor to the shops, nor to the educational centers; they did not envisage evacuating the inhabitants of the “flood zones” – which were however well-known! The world of commodity and value should not be altered, no human sacrifice is too much to quench the thirst for blood of capitalism and its bastard leaders.
And once the crime has been committed, the attention paid to the victims was crowned with chaos. The state has provided virtually no help until the fifth day and then prevents self-organization. The state makes it clear that its function is not to “take care” of people, but to take care of the world of money, commodities and the ruling classes, and in any case to control and repress any attempt at organization from below, any attempt at human solidarity.
Spontaneous self-organization
Capital and its media are never tired of repeating everywhere that human beings are selfish by nature, that they only care about their own petty interests, that they care about no one else, that man is a wolf to man. They want to impose on us what they are themselves, what their system of exploitation, their class system represents. This refrain is as old as capitalism. Stories that scare.
But they will not be able to hide the solidarity and self-organization of people in the midst of tragedy. They will not be able to hide the spontaneous organization in the face of the massacre and the brutality of a system that hates life. Contrary to what they preach, we have seen thousands of men and women offering their selfless, passionate and active help in the affected areas.
They can’t stand to see how, in villages and cities, people organize themselves to meet their needs without waiting for the State’s approval. What scares them is that the cash register doesn’t ring, that many goods become use values, which can be enjoyed without purchase. The capitalists and their media, this servile and well-paid carrion, have rushed to denounce the theft and pillage of their properties. The State only appears to defend private property with fire and blood.
The mountain of corpses grows every day, every hour, the devastation is Dantesque, but they only think about saving their four fucking bags of madeleines, their two pairs of shoes and their television… We won’t forget that either.
At this point, the answer is obvious: this happens to us because we live under the thumb of the capitalist system, whether its political leaders are left or right.
Is this because of a ‘fascist’ regional government?
In the coming days, we will witness the circus of “reproaches”. Those who are calling to demonstrate against the “fascist” government of the Generalitat are opportunists who seek to make political profit from our deaths, from our misery. While the left-wing political parties, like the trades unions, are equally guilty and responsible for promoting and managing an unbridled developmentalism that turns its back on natural space, because the only thing that matters to them is the production of wealth (for the rich, of course) and the extraction of profits (surplus value) at the expense of the working class.
Because, let’s not be mistaken, the reason for the existence of the parties and unions is to defend the capitalist mode of production to the limit, to be the essential intermediaries, both politically and ideologically, who maintain the illusion that this system can be reformed, that it can be made more “human”. They cannot be asked to be anything different from what they are.
It is time to mourn the lost loved ones, to recover their bodies, to bury the deceased with dignity. It is time to remove the rubble and recover the little we have in this life of misery. It is also time to clench our fists and grit our teeth. But beyond the flood of sentiments, it is time to understand the real causes that led to the tragedy in depth. The essential thing is that capitalism cannot stop activity, that workers have to produce at their work places, and the “citizens” have to consume the goods produced. The wheel of capitalist valorization cannot be stopped, whatever the cost, even if it means transforming cities and villages into gigantic mousetraps.
Nature has not suddenly gone mad. What prevents the reduction of greenhouse gases is the profound alteration caused by the competition of capital and productivity itself, as well as by the accelerated production of superfluous goods, mere “trinkets” that make no sense. And even recognizing the natural character of floods and floods, which have always existed, the exponential increase and their appearance in areas where they did not occur before (let us recall the floods in Germany and Belgium in 2021 with their 167 deaths) (4) respond to causes that are social: capitalism.
Although at the individual level, anyone could have been “hit” in a car, and even a businessman could have been swept away by the flood, it is the workers who mainly pay the price, crammed into their neighborhoods threatened by floods, prey to real estate speculation and a precarious and miserable life. It is no coincidence that uncontrolled urbanization has crammed millions of workers, many of whom built their own homes, into rieras (old riverbeds that are now dry) or landfills for decades. These workers, originally from impoverished rural areas, are now paying with their lives for capital’s thirst for labor. What seems like a simple misfortune is in reality only the observation of the existence of a society divided into classes.
[What perspectives?]
In the face of so much pain, so much suffering, it is comforting to see the solidarity that has been demonstrated everywhere. Outside of the State and all kinds of administrations, people recognize each other as equals, as brothers and sisters in misfortune. We must concentrate this energy. There are difficult days ahead, in which the helplessness in the face of so much destruction will be aggravated by the action of all the supporters of the system, from the extreme right with its “national” and racist solutions, praising a so-called “people” that would include us all, to the extreme left, with its “new” proposals for “radical” reforms and its incessant harassment of the right.
But there is another option. We must bring reflection to those around us, at work, in schools, among friends and family. The tragedy concerns us all as a proletariat, whatever the sector. We must discuss the real causes in depth, placing the analysis of capitalist laws at the center of the debate. There is no half-measure, no intermediate solution. Anything short of attacking the capitalist system at its roots is to perpetuate its devastating effects in each of its manifestations.
The mud will be cleaned up, the cars and furniture will be removed. Let us hope that from this emerges a new class consciousness, a new dignity, that honors all the dead, present and past, that shouts to our enemies, all this cohort of politicians, cops, businessmen and beggars of the capitalist system, that what we want is a community without capital, without money and commodities, without a State. That we want communism.
It is probably not for today, but perhaps we can swell the ranks of those who want to wage a relentless combat.
Because we will not be silenced, we will speak in the name of our dead.
Source: PERSONNE NE NOUS FERA TAIRE. NOUS PARLERONS AU NOM DE NOS MORTS
Translation and annotations by H.C., November 8, 2024.
Note: We’ve preferred to translate the complete article instead of taking over the shortened English version.
Notes:
2 Cañada means “glen” or “ravine”; rambla signifies, next to “broad boulevard”, also “river bed”.
3 A “cold drop” (Spanish: gota fria) “is a term used in Spain and France that has commonly come to refer to any high impact rainfall events occurring in the autumn along the Spanish Mediterranean coast or across France. In Europe, cold drops belong to the characteristics of the Mediterranean climate.” (source: Wikipedia)
4 Read for instance “2021 European floods” on Wikipedia.