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Friends of the freedom of Nicolas Castro
We, the friends of the freedom of Nicolas, are a group of different kinds of people that from December 2009 have gathered under the subject of being “friends of the freedom”. The group, at first conformed by fellowships and closer friends of Nicolas Castro, rapidly expanded itself in the local artistic community becoming even supported from abroad. The first communiqué which defines the reason of this community was send to the Web on December 3rd of 2009, date in which the press in Colombia gives the news of the capture of this young university student for facts that in the early days looks like a product of a media set-up, a farce that some people qualified as a “falso positivo judicial”[1]; the communiqué was the next:
Nicolas Castro Plested, a 23-year old fine arts student from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogotá, Colombia, was arrested by police on December 2nd, accused of creating a group on the internet social network Facebook named “Me comprometo a matar a Jerónimo Uribe hijo de Alvaro Uribe” (I pledge to kill Jerónimo Alberto Uribe, son of Alvaro Uribe). In Colombia, Nicolas is charged with “instigation to commit crimes”, according to article 348 of Colombian penal code. This would imply that Nicolas is encouraging others to kill the youngest son of the Colombian president; for this reason, Nicolas has been taken to La Picota jail, while he waits for his trial.
We, the Friends for the Freedom of Nicolas Castro, invite the national and international community to join this cause, having knowledge of the high moral values and background of Nicolas, which allows us to ensure that he would never harm any living being, nor incite others to do so. His expressions of discontent in relation to specific situations such as animal abuse, child abuse, and even his attitude towards consumption have always been peaceful, and have led him not only to become a vegetarian, but to participate in social development projects and anti-bullfighting movements. He has also promoted the consumption of fruits and healthy food within the university campus, among many actions carried out daily, and which can tell us the kind of person he is.
Nicolas made the following statement during his hearing of charges:
I’m only a student, not an instigator or a terrorist.
We want to invite you to become Friends for the Freedom of Nicolas, promoting actions from the different places you live on. Many people have expressed solidarity with the case of Nicolas through the creation of Facebook groups, or creating texts supporting the cause and generating spaces for debate. We are distributing this material through social networks and blogs, and also invite people to use the image of Nicolas in their profiles of different social networks and chat programs. Another way to help is to copy, forward and/or translate this message. Any contacts can be made through this email address: amigosdelalibertaddenicolas@gmail.com
We appreciate any help, feedback or action taken to make the case for Nicolas known worldwide, and to promote his release.
All those facts that this first communiqué quotes, were highly known by Colombian public opinion, generating a huge media boom that takes national and international news coverage in press, radio and television. For these December 3rd the face of Nicolas were known all over the country. The image projected on the TV screen and in the local press of the young Nicolas Castro, was the classic portrait of the Terrorist, which even seems to have “connections with Al-Qaeda and affinity with the Iran´s regime”[2]. These situation that for the people who knows him on his daily life of a local arts university student, was the shocking reflect of a huge lie, a macabre version of our friend made by that media state machinery, which was so big that have had eaten himself. From that moment he was a product packaged, labeled and offered to the consumer with the typical speech of fear and terror.
This situation takes us to join together as friends and partners of Nicolas. That union has its reason on the truly terror that produces on our body, the feeling of that immeasurable power, that the media and the state, could produce on our subjectivity as persons. From that fear and terror came up that union, friendship and force which face that stage where we were participating at that moment. In this way the small group of friends started to look for some ways to expand the message of our version (that in this case was official) about Nicolas Castro Plested, that became also a method to put us in free.
That message was also a system to expand the group of friends of the freedom, calling the stranger to take part of the community to be carter of our message. And in this way the friends of the freedom of Nicolas generated a net of communications on a grown group of people (artists, professors, students, etc.) whom during the next fourth months, time that Nicolas stayed in jail, made possible to create a place to face the fear and also, made possible listen to the university student voice, silenced for a long time by the mass-media.
The message that takes the friends of the freedom of Nicolas was sent to the public by some artistic actions, made on the urban space of the city and on the web too, where we look to enlarge the action effects that where developed on the streets. Into that actions that we did in Bogota we could mention “Es major dar poquita papaya” (“is better to give a few of papaya”[3]), where we give to the passer-by a small newspaper with our message of Nicolas while we play some music and give little pieces of papaya, talking about this popular Colombian expression. We also made a plastic action called “The Carter”, which take place in collaboration of the artist Mario Opazo. In this activity we invited the public to became a “carter” of a message of the reality of Nicolas, which were delivered on the streets and putted under house doors, in order to do that we made a letter that conceptually was defined as a jail. The message invited to put in free that letter, in order to be duplicated in the community and in the surroundings of the person who has received it.
In the same way we made a “t-shirt print-day”, with messages of support to Nicolas in the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University campus, during the first day of classes in the first period of 2010, academic time in which the young university student stayed imprison. This activity took place in the action “The Carter”, to which also join the discussion talk “The freedom of speech at art”[4], taking place in the ASAB (Bogotá’s Superior Academy of arts) as part of the activities that where implemented into the show of the students graduate projects, with Mister Jose Gregorio Hernandez, ex-judge of the Constitutional Court, Mister Guillermo Hoyos, director of the Instituto Pensar at Javeriana University and Victor Laignelet dean of the faculty of Arts at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University.
At the same time of these activities the artist Mario Opazo, who has already join to the friends of the freedom of Nicolas in the action “The Carter”, made a performance that he named “Aqui falta alguien” (“Here someone`s missing”), at the campus of Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, as a resistance and rejection for the detention of the student. Blindfolded and with a Plato philosophy book on his left hand, he moves around the corridors and different places of the university on the class timetable, from nine o’clock in the morning to five at the afternoon on January 29nd of 2010.
To this active support of a local artist another one joins to us a little while later, the Internacional Errorista (The International Errorist movement), that from the collective artists “etc” from Argentina, have created a worldwide movement which principle is based on the recognition of the mistake (error is the word in Spanish) as a principle of the freedom of man. The Internacional Errorista made a protest demonstration at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, where they made visible the support to the urgent freedom of Nicolas.
International Errorists
First Declaration
"we are all errorists"
"errare humanum est"
(extracts from the international errorists' manifest):
1. "Errorism"Concept and action are based on the idea that "error" is reality’s principle of order.
2. "Errorism"is a philosophically erroneous position, a ritual of negation, a disorganised organisation: failure as perfection, error as appropriate move.
3. The field of action of "Errorism" contains all those practices that aim at the LIBERATION of the human being and language.
4. - Confusion and surprise - black humour and absurdity are the favourite tools of the "errorists".
5. "lapses" and failed acts are an "errorist" delight.
internacionalerrorist@yahoo.com.ar
Etcetera…[5]
Having passed almost two months since the day in which a judge gives to Nicolas Castro the “house as a jail” in a trial that has seen how all the pieces of evidence that the Fiscalia pretended to use to accuse him, and that uses to put him in prison during fourth months, have fallen one by one for procedure mistakes and manipulation, where even the lawyer of Jeronimo Uribe, son of the president Alvaro Uribe and alleged “victim” of the threats that took place on facebook, have decline his intention to keep going with the case, having mention his interest to see the young student back on his daily life without talking about the fact that even today there are not any piece of evidence that associates Nicolas to the foundation of the facebook group “I pledge to kill Jeronimo Alberto Uribe, son of Alvaro Uribe”, the friends of the freedom of Nicolas are still waiting to the end of the trial that from that Wednesday (December 2nd 2009) face up a young 23 years old Fine arts student, to the bigger media and state power, that a common person have never think to see, even on the most cruelty nightmares. This circumstances that looks like a Kafka´s book are still on the headline, waiting to close this hard chapter of a narration that could appear again on your television screen or in your nearer cinema, very close to you.
Notes:
[1] “Falso positive” is a term that in Colombia describes the use of innocent people by the government military institutions, which they kill taking them from daily life and putting into the mask of guerrilla or delinquency in order to receive benefits as money or promotion.
[2] For more information you can look these local news in Spanish on the website of the friends of the freedom of Nicolas, on section Blogroll : http://amigosdelalibertaddenicolascastro.wordpress.com/
[3] In colloquial Spanish in the region of Colombia “give papaya” means to “give the chance to someone”.