THE BOMB (1915)

It had a strong charm within us, of Abyss and Sun. More than with Iron and Fire, we used to call with ideas and this was their charm.
We used to say: Their mobility was justice. We have to cry a lot before killing somebody.
Therefore, if one is the one who throws it, who loads them, we are all. Their loads are our sadness, blood, pain and tears. That’s why they blow up that way, always against the tyranny: Never against our people.
And the dynamite was like a big brother. Even more, like our father, killing to save us. Thanks to him, we can keep our hopes up, seeing how the bourgeois consternate, and be, at least for an instance filled with fear and respect.
Oh yes, it had a supreme abyss and sun. And it was ours. It’s explosion was like a cranium full of our sadness.
But now, no we talk about the embarrassed bombs. Now they are not loaded with sadness, but with fury. They no longer explode against the tyranny, but at children’s feet; they no longer justify, they are criminal. Any uniformed prick makes them blow from the machine to a city who sleeps, or to a countryside full of labourers, or to a village who are singing or praying: To fate, where they end up, they end up.
We are embarrassed. Yesterday…Yesterday?...Everyday the news talk about the bourgeois bombings. They are sown by plans and or zeppelins – from the sky. And they carry amongst our people the injustice, death and cowardness; like their own lives.
Oh, our bombs!....We are ashamed. ASHAMED!

(from ‘’Carteles I’’, a series of Spanish language anarchist texts circulating in the Spanish prison system and beyond. Translated into English by anarchist prisoner Rafael ‘’Jon-Bala’’ Martinez Zea.

Extrack from 325 Magazine n. 5 – February 2008.