Solidarity with Kukutza!The cultural center Kukutza III in Bilbao has been squatted for 13 years. But on wednesday the 21st by order of the court, police initiated an operation to evict the squatters from what had previously been an abandoned factory.
Kukutza shares with many of its European counterparts a spirit of self-management and an objective to introduce life into neighbourhoods that are under threat of degrading into homogenized urban deserts. In fact, the occupation of abandoned spaces, whether it be soil for cultivation or a building for the development of a social center is arguably often the only sensible strategy left in order to resist the pressures of corporate development interests and consequent gentrification and loss of cultural diversity. Squatters frequently reject those options that resort to institutional and government frameworks on ideological grounds. But just from a practical perspective, such options may be considered of little use as they involve dealing with the entities and people that were sold out to the above mentioned pressures in the first place.
Occupation is a form of direct action approach which implies the acknowledgment that in the current sociopolitical setting we have to physically interfere (and not ask others to interfere!) in order to try guarantee all aspects of our own well-being. For that it is necessary to integrate mechanisms of both cooperation and coexistence. Or in other words, to maximize mutual solidarity in the wake of a shared objective while accepting and respecting diversity of individual needs.
Kukutza has been quite an exceptional adventure. And that it is mainly because of its dimensions. Since this old factory consist of many floors and halls, it naturally came to house many collectives and associations. As a consequence it has gained a central role in the cultural and social life of Bilbao and the neighbourhood Rekalde. A mobilisation video released on the internet in July when the threat of eviction became immenent, kills any doubt one might have about this fact1. The protest on the 16h of July brought 7000 people on the city's streets.
Still, however not unsurprisingly, big property interests dominated any other argument of public interest in the decision of the court to order the eviction. The site's legal owner is the real estate company CABISA S.A. The company has always refused any communication with the squatters, but once stated in a newspaper that their objective is to tear down the building. The local government so far has not shown any signal as they would somehow not issue a license for the destruction of the building. Moreover it has previously denied the relevance of Kukutza to the people of Bilbao. It is clear that both judicial and executive powers through their actions or attitudes are complacent in the repression of this grassroots iniciative which has grown to become of large local public interest.
What does public interest mean anyways to those in power? When a dam need to be constructed or a high velocity train line need to be built, numerous small households can be legally expropriated while being compensated only for a fraction of the value of what those families previously owned, just for the sake of public interest. When one real estate company wants to tear down an abandoned factory in the middle of a city, the issue of legal ownership prevails above all else, and justifies a brutal police attack in order to put dozens of associations and collectives on the street.
In this current situation of profound injustice, Kukutza may or may not reveal itself victorious. But one thing is certain, the spirit of those that occupied Kukutza will continue to live and give origin to new iniciatives in Bilbao and elsewhere. The strength shown by thousands of people that came on the streets in the afternoon during the eviction to protest or to resist against state police and to attempt to reoccupy the building, reinforces and inspires other people working in other projects even as events in Rekalde still unfold.
CasaViva
Porto, September 22, 2011
