The Latin East Collection: Latin American, Israel, and Palestine Solidarity
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After a deadly October 7 attack by Hamas fighters against Israeli civilians and soldiers, Israel launched a fierce bombardment against Gaza. In an enclave already under blockade, indiscriminate airstrikes, apartheid policies, mass displacement, and dehumanizing rhetoric amounted to a "textbook case of genocide" aided and abetted by the United States. In one month, Israeli bombing killed more than 10,000 Gazans.
As Western powers backed Israel, countries of the Global South largely voiced support for the Palestinian people. In Latin America, Colombian President Gustavo Petro called for peace talks and recognition of Palestinian statehood. Bolivia and Belize cut diplomatic ties. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva described the assault as "not a war but a genocide". In the streets, people joined calls for an immediate ceasefire and the liberation of occupied Palestine.
In a region that has resisted colonialism, genocide, occupation, and imperialism for centuries, the Palestinian struggle resonates. At the height of pink tide anti-imperialism, several Latin American governments recognized the Palestinian state. Peoples and communities, too, have long seen the parallels. As Gaza's death toll mounted, Mapuche rights defender Moira Millan empathized with her Palestinian sisters suffering "the injustice of dispossession, the pain of genocide, the desolation of being prisoners in our own lands."
There's also another cause for solidarity: the direct impacts of the Israeli security industry. During the Cold War, Israel exported weapons and counterinsurgency tactics to Latin America, arming U.S.-backed state terror in places like Argentina and Guatemala. Recently, governments in Mexico, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic have targeted journalists and activists using Pegasus, spyware developed by the Israeli NSO Group.
As chants of ¡Viva Palestina! ring out in the streets, this NACLA collection, spanning from the 1980s to today, highlights these connections.
Edited by
Karina Gamez(NACLA)
Heather Gies(NACLA)
Sponsored by
