Two murals, at the center of which there is a portrait of a Zapatista rebel masked with the iconic Palestinian kuffiyeh, stand in two different geographical sites: a community center in caracol Oventic, one of the major autonomous Zapatista municipalities in the highlands of Chiapas in Southern Mexico and the other on the so-called Separation Wall in Occupied Bethlehem. Gustavo Chávez Pavón, a Guechepe artist from Mexico and a cultural promoter in the Zapatista muralist movement, painted these murals in 2004. At the bottom of both murals, he signed in big bold red font the words “To Exit is to Resist,” thus affirming indigenous steadfastness inspired by Palestinian ?um?d. How Chávez Pavón’s murals embody the shrinking distance between Mexico and Palestine is the key question in this presentation. Based on a critical visual analysis of Chávez Pavón’s murals in Palestine and Chiapas, and personal interviews that I conducted with him over Skype and in person in Mexico in 2017, I will first offer an overview of Zapatista cultural solidarity with Palestine. Next, I will illustrate how Chávez Pavón’s dissemination of ?um?d aesthetics in indigenous communities in Chiapas and beyond is, in fact, a visual performance of what I describe as “indigenous affinity”: a common thread between Mayan and Palestinian narratives of indigeniety and decolonization. This particular Mayan-Palestinian affinity, I proceed then to argue, contributes to developing a conversation with other indigenous peoples in the Fourth World; a conversation anchored in intimate resemblance and belonging to shared histories of struggle against dispossession, displacement, settler colonialism and internal-colonialism. Finally, I will conclude by showing how Chávez Pavón’s murals of “indigenous affinity” are a living testimony of the long history of solidarity with Palestine from Chiapas and the Global South at large, and a vision for future models of indigenous solidarity from Palestine.

In recent years, there has been a notable move from the “exceptionalization” of Palestine and its uniqueness in contemporary politics, to studying it in broader comparative perspective. An overwhelming number of these studies have focused on drawing analogies between Palestine and other case studies, especially South Africa and the applicability of apartheid. The main objective in many of these studies has been to develop organizing strategies and advance policy recommendations about possible resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To a lesser extent, but still quite common, scholars have also focused on parallels between Palestine and Native Americans, again as a way to help devise strategies and policy recommendations. Challenging these approaches, this paper will discuss the concrete limitations associated with “analogizing” as a way to develop strategies and advance policy recommendations, and especially related to theory development. Instead, it will illustrate how Palestine studies can benefit from a greater appreciation for the study of parallels, similarities and divergence in contributing to advancing organizing strategies and policy recommendations, as well as to theoretical development. Throughout the paper will address the importance of rigorous methodology in this endeavor. The paper will examine parallels in political and social movement organizing in Palestine and El Salvador and the impact of Western donor assistance in the first two decades after the signing of the peace accords in the two cases. In particular it will assess why a case like the Palestinian territories (which received relatively higher amounts of Western donor assistance, including substantial allocations to democracy promotion) lead to a more incoherent process, in which organizations had unequal access to resources, grassroots, and institutions to engage the state? And in contrast, why did other cases such as El Salvador (which had actually received substantially less donor assistance, and democracy and civil society assistance in particular) seem to result in a more coherent democratic development process. In answering these questions, the paper will illustrate how this comparative lens sheds light on different angles of inquiry, and affords greater opportunity for theoretical engagement and policy recommendation development.

This presentation explores the early history of the formation in Chile of a Palestinian diaspora community starting in the late 19th century. In addition to offering narratives of migration and settlement, I locate the nexus of diaspora formation in the interwar legal world order which saw the establishment of European mandates across the Middle East and the promulgation of nationality and citizenship legislation that had transnational consequences for migrant communities. Specifically, I examine how the 1925 Palestinian Citizenship Order-in-Council, promulgated by British mandate authorities, was designed to prioritize the naturalization of Jews as Palestinians over any other group, and how this ensured the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of Palestinians residing abroad from the same citizenship. This, in significant ways, is the early story of the formation of this migrant community, or jaaliya, into a distinct diaspora. Chile is today home to the largest number of descendants of Palestinian migrants, approximately 300,000. How did this community come to be? I explore Arabic periodicals from the 1920s, found in the Biblioteca Nacional in Santiago, to offer a portrait of this early community and how it grappled with its new transnational legal status following the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the British Mandate over Palestine. That is to say, I pose several questions: how did Palestinian migrants in Chile react to developments taking place back home, and to being told they could not return and stay permanently? How did they relate to one another and how did the loss of Palestine and the right of return impact this identification? The presentation concludes with a shift to the 21st century as I present an ethnography from my own travels in Chile. In addition to the Chileans I met who identified proudly as Palestinians, I explore the different ways in which this jaaliya of Palestinian-Chileans, and Chilean society more broadly, have continued to preserve and celebrate their Palestinian history through a range of organizations and centers, as well as through public activism in support of Palestine. To wit, the history of the formation of this community into a diaspora depicts an undeniably Palestinian story in which geographic Palestine is de-centered within a Latin American context. In other words, it is a Latin American story in which Palestinian sensibilities have been preserved in written records and in social practice as part of a Latin American national narrative.

The Arabic-language journal Al Karmel was considered to be the cultural, intellectual and literary wing of what used to be known as the "Palestinian Revolution." Edited by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and published by the General Union of Palestinian Journalists and Writers, the journal’s place of publication accompanied the poet’s exile: First it was Beirut, in 1981; later, following the PLO’s exit from Lebanon to the Mediterranean, Al Karmel started to circle the world from Cyprus; and finally, in 1995, the journal was to be printed in Ramallah after Darwish fixed his exile in the occupied city. As in the armed struggle, the Palestinian Cause attracted the solidarity and support of many individuals around the world. At the same time, the PLO and Palestinian intellectuals sought international, pan-Arab and Third World solidarity. Accordingly, Palestinians were a minority in Al Karmel, and on its pages while, through translation, we can find a variety of cultural and literary topics and languages through world-wide contributions. Latin America occupied a privileged place in Al Karmel’s the came from contributors around the world. In my presentation, I will exhibit and discuss the presence of Latin American writers and intellectuals in the journal. Who were the writers that were translated into Arabic and interviewed? Who conducted these translations and interviews, and when? I will examine how these work intersect with and represent the political struggles and conflicts that were taken place in the Arab world and Latin America at the time, as well as how literary translation, exchange of ideas, and intellectual networking were being formed through translation and immigration between the two areas and languages.

The Palestinian and Sandinista revolutions in Nicaragua were deeply intertwined during the 1970s and 1980s. A number of descendants of Palestinian immigrants in Latin America and the Caribbean, mostly in Nicaragua, Panama, Belize and Colombia, fought together with the Sandinista rebels. Some Palestinian fighters were killed, while others were imprisoned and/or exiled. And some are still alive and remember to tell stories from the Sandinista revolution, although their political activity have abated over the years because of age and the dramatic decline in the cooperation that existed between the two revolutions, especially after Oslo. This presentation will investigate the history of Palestinian-Nicaraguan relations since the first wave of Palestinian migration to Nicaragua through the troubled decades of Sandinistas revolution and its aftermath. The discussion of this history will be based on a series of several personal interviews that I have conducted myself with members from the Palestinian community in Nicaragua, such as Suad Morcos Freij, a former member of the Sandinista revolution who moved to Lebanon with Arafat and Fatah between 1980 and 1982 together with her brother Jacob Freij, who was at the time the chief coordinators of relations between the PLO and the Sandinista. I will also discuss the testimonies of Khaled Salameh, a 81-year-old Palestinian immigrant living in Panama, who traveled extensively in Central America and had close to the Sandinista revolution.In addition to these unpublished oral accounts, I will utilize material from the personal of archive of Walter Sandino, the grandson of the Nicaraguan national hero, Augusto Sandino. This archive includes rare papers and photos that document the history of Antonio Dahud, a Palestinian who was born in Colombia in 1909 and died in Kuwait in 1969. Sandino’s archive features important historical documents that trace the ties between Augusto Sandino and Dahud, the visits of the latter with Fidel Castro in Cuba and the Mufti of Jerusalem. After outlining the history of the Palestinian participation in the Sandinista revolution, I will conclude by discussing the reasons for the decline in Palestinian-Nicaraguan relations, despite what these interviews and archives reveal about decades of close collaboration.