In 1968, Chilean artist Roberto Matta gave a speech titled The Internal Guerrilla at the Congreso de la Cultura in Havana. It’s a speech about art and revolution. Prior to his departure, Matta left with poet Jean Schuster, executor of André Breton’s will, a collection of notes titled Infra-réalisme.

For Matta, infrarealism is a defense against alienation.

Alienation is of course at the root of the problems we see today in our digital lives. The discourse surrounding platform decay and the state of the web is a reaction to a new reality: we have built a digital infrastructure hostile to meaningful human development.

We find ourselves at a strange crossroads, where conventional wisdom tells us that the internet is a tool and not an end in itself, but after 2020 something changed. To keep the world running in the wake of the pandemic, the digital sphere took on new responsibilities. Forced to stay away from each other physically, we moved part of our lives online.

Today the consequences of that move continue to be felt, and alienation becomes almost inevitable. In the words of Paul B. Preciado, the individual “is not a physical agent, but a digital consumer, a code, a pixel, a bank account, an address”. In technology circles we see appeals to a vintage web, rejection of AI tools and praise for projects that highlight the human aspect of social interactions. We see the defense of free speech and privacy rights and conversations about where we go from here.

With an understanding that alienation comes from the type of work we produce and the form in which we consume it, in Matta’s speech we find a reminder to do the kind of work inherent to all of us.

The following is my translation of Roberto Matta’s speech The Internal Guerrilla.

A Spanish reproduction appeared in print in Prometeo magazine in 1987. I found a transcription at Mecánica Celeste.

In my opinion, one of the most important topics proposed by this Congress is the one referring to the Integral Development of Humankind. Allow me to expose my views regarding this point, especially in relation to one of its essential aspects: the development of the creative imagination, of an intelligence that builds from poetic imagination, of a subversive imagination, of an erotic imagination also.

I understand that just as Revolution is a collective endeavor on the social plane, it is also a process which must be verified in each individual. For intellectuals and artists, for all people, I consider this personal revolution wholly necessary. Especially so if the intellectual, if the artist, if that person is conscious of belonging to a world which finds itself in the complex stage of building a new social organization, in which the Integral Development has an importance of the first order.

It is not about only being with the revolution, but about being revolutionary. And being revolutionary implies, of course, being free, or consequently fighting for liberty. Just like people free themselves through the fight against political and economic oppression, individuals can only free themselves through the fight against internal tyrannies: hypocrisy and fear. Prejudices, false pretenses, self-criticism, conventional and schematic ideals constitute the invisible (often mercenary) army against which the internal guerrillas set out to defend creative liberty. As with more consciousness there is more light, so too there is more light with more consciousness.

To achieve a cultural revolution there must be a cultural revelation, humankind’s possibilities must be seen. A high sense of responsibility does not mean practicing self-censorship systematically. In the field of imagination, one must be brave as in the field of battle. The builders of a new world, in the social sphere as in the cultural, intellectual, and artistic spheres are characterized by generosity, for commitment to their work, but also by defiance, by the capacity to assume, with necessary courage, the risks undertaken by all creators and innovators, by all true revolution.

This problem does not concern the poet exclusively. I think a true person is a poet, an integral person ought to be a poet, because poetry means clinging to more reality, all reality. In the end, an intellectual, an artist, only differentiates themselves from others by their capacity to experience the world more intensely, dealing not only in facts but with imagination also. Stimulating the creative imagination of people, creating conditions for which all have access to true culture (that is, more than accumulating knowledge, but the profound interpretation and appreciation of that knowledge) is the goal of a revolutionary process prolific in its cultural field. A person forged this way will be an integral person, that is to say, a poet, even if their job is not explicitly to write poems.

Art is not a luxury but a necessity, and just like in the social landscape, Revolution confronts new problems and finds new ways to solve them, in the landscape of artistic creation and intellectual labor a truly creative imagination will propose solution to a renewed set of problems, and will find the means of investigation and expression to resolve them.

Art is the desire for what does not exist, and it is also the tool for achieving that desire.

I hope this Congress will not only meet the undeniable need to harbor information and exchange of ideas dear for artists and intellectuals. I hope for more: a discussion on how far we will let our victory over internal guerrillas depend on fruitful development and that an integral person, a poet, a new person, can become reality.

Havana. Congreso de la Cultura. 1968.

La guerrilla interna (PDF)

The Internal Guerrilla (PDF)