“We are in a shared struggle:” CSJUP Teach-in Recap

On October 21, Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (CSJP) hosted a teach-in at the Pitzer Grove House titled “Solidarity and Resistance from Palestine to Latin America.” The teach- in traced the history of the Palestinian diaspora in El Salvador and Chile, and the struggles shared in Chiapas, Mexico. 

Zionist influence in the history of El Salvador

El Salvador has the third largest community of Palestinians in Latin America at approximately 100,000 people. The first wave of migration began under the Ottoman Empire when a 1908 conscription law and World War I drove many Palestinians to leave their homeland. “Upon arrival the Palestinians were recognized as turcos, and xenophobic sentiment and legislation ramped up in the 1920s and 30s,” a speaker said. 

“A lot of them didn’t know they were going to end up going to El Salvador and were actually intending to go to the United States,” a presenter noted. 

The second major wave of Palestinian immigrants came after the Nakba of 1948, the mass expulsion of Palestinians following the establishment of the zionist entity.

In response to this discrimination, Palestinian Salvadorans formed social clubs and advocacy organizations such as Club Arabe and the Salvadoran Palestinian Association (ASP). “These organizations placed a big emphasis on remembering Palestinians and the creation of physical spaces to do so,” a presenter said, describing a video that featured Plaza Palestina and the Museo Palestina de El Salvador.  

Presenters also highlighted the zionist occupation’s role in enabling the Salvadoran civil war from 1979-1992. Through funding arms to the Salvadoran army and training ANSESAL intelligence units that killed thousands of Salvadoran civilians, zionist forces helped enforce state-sanction terrorism in El Salvador for several years. 

Although Salvador recognized Palestine as a state in 2011, the current President, Nayib Bukele—himself of Palestinian descent—has aligned with the zionist occupation during the ongoing intensified genocide in Gaza. 

“There is virtually no public support for the Palestinian cause in the country,” a presenter said, adding that Bukele’s stance may reflect an appeal to El Salvador’s growing evangelical community. 

Chile and military funding

Chile hosts the largest population of Palestinians outside of the Levant region , with around 500,000 people. Migration occurred in three waves: during the Ottoman Empire, after the British Mandate, and in 1948 following the Nakba.  

“As a part of the British Mandate, there were citizenship laws that prevented Palestinians that were not living in Palestine from returning” a presenter said. “It’s important to recognize that the right of return doesn’t just apply to people that are living in the Middle East, it also expands across the world.”

Chile recognized Palestine in 2011. The current President, Gabriel Boric, has publicly supported Palestine, called for an arms embargo on the zionist occupation, and joined South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice. 

One presenter noted that “Chile continues to rely on the Zionist entity for weapons and technology.” Since 1977, Chile has purchased $850 million worth of weapons made by the Zionist occupation forces, making up 42.5% of Chile’s total import of weapons. 

The teach-in also emphasized the solidarity between Palestinians and the Mapuche, Chile’s largest Indigenous group. “This goes back to remembering that Chile is a colonial state and continues to inflict violence on indigenous communities,” a speaker said. 

They also shared a quote from a Mapuchan activist, Moira Millán highlighting the shared history and capacity for solidarity. “I am the daughter of a nation that is also under invasion, the Mapuche nation… Like your people, beloved sister, mine also know the injustice of dispossession, the pain of genocide, the desolation of being slaves in our own lands, the deportations of death, the forced relocations.”

Similar to El Salvador, a presenter explained that “during Chile’s U.S.-backed dictatorship, Israel became the regime’s main weapons supplier.” Israel also provided military training.

Chiapas’ resistance and solidarity with Palestine

“The land belongs to those who take care of it,” a presenter stated, referring to the autonomous Zapatista communities of Chiapas. “Indigenous communities deserve to be on the land that they have taken care of.” 

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), a militant and political movement, controls much of Chiapas and has long expressed solidarity with Palestinians. 

“The Zapatistas are intertwined with Palestinians and Gaza, because of their shared care for land and its dispossession,” one speaker explained. “The olive tree has become a symbol of resistance […] and an example of rootedness to the Earth and one another.” 

Between 2013-2014, the Zapatistas hosted the Zapatista Escuelita, three sessions that brought together Palestinian and Zapatista youth to exchange experiences and build solidarity.

“They were planting the seeds to cultivate shared knowledge so that history and culture can continue,” the presenter said, reading from their shirt:“Por que morir, morir no duele, lo que duele es el olvido” (“To die does not hurt; what hurts is forgetting”).

The presenters shared a performance of the poem “Chronologies” by Palestinian Poet, Rafeef Ziadah to illustrate how memory and commemoration are central to resistance. 

“Years have become only names for massacres, forty-eight, sixty-seven, twenty something, and we are still waiting the dead,” Ziadah recited.  

“Their points of unity are anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism – two of SJP’s fifteen political principles,” a presenter noted, linking Zapatista movements to Claremont’s own campus organizing. 

As the teach-in concluded, organizers reminded attendees that “Our organizing needs to be anything but immobilizing.” They continued, “We’re in a shared struggle for Palestinian liberation that also encompasses the liberation of so many other people.”