The Zapatista and Palestinian struggles share as signs of identity: territory, dispossession as a shared form of oppression, and the importance of memory and history to imagine other futures.
“I don’t know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar may not be able to stop a bomb, but they are as if a crack opened in the black room of death and a little light slipped in.”
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Mexico, January 4th, 2009.
With these words, the then insurgent Sub-commander Marcos spoke about Palestine in 2009, during the first Dignified Rage (Digna Rabia) festival, in the context of the fifteenth anniversary of the EZLN uprising. He prioritized this speech over the one he was going to give at the festival, reiterating that, for the Zapatistas, in Gaza there was a professional army killing a defenseless population. He added: “Who that fights for justice and equality can remain silent?” This speech, entitled “Of Sowing and Reaping” – taken up in a statement by Sub-commander Moisés in 2023 – linked the two struggles by showing the solidarity of the Zapatistas with Palestine and their position on the murder of the Palestinian population.
In a context in which international struggle and solidarity are more necessary than ever, Chiapas and Palestine have been beacons of continued resistance for social movements internationally. The Zapatistas, in the mountains of southeastern Mexico, have been since their uprising in 1994 a symbol of the fight against the capitalist system, a hope for social movements in a world increasingly devastated by savage capitalism. One of his ideas that has permeated these movements is the call to organize, “each” in their geography. Palestine, meanwhile, has been an example of dignity and resistance for social organizations around the world, resisting the occupation for 76 years and fighting for its liberation from the Zionist state, putting on the table the legitimacy of fighting against occupation by all means. Both movements are a reference, resistance and space for utopias to imagine and build other worlds.
Echoes between Resistances
The Zapatista and Palestinian struggle have very significant echoes of common resistance. The first of them is the importance and centrality of land for both movements, the second is dispossession as a shared form of oppression and finally, a third echo is the importance of memory and history to imagine other futures.
Land plays a central role in the Palestinian struggle. In addition to its meaning as a physical space, it has a very important symbolic power. Palestinian culture is conceived and transmitted around the land and all the activities of those who work the land: the Palestinian costume is originally that of peasants, as is the dabke, the traditional dance. The fruits of the earth are an integral part of culture and popular vocabulary. Olive trees and their roots, deeply rooted in the earth, are the quintessential symbol of Palestinian resistance. Every year, March 30 is commemorated as Land Day, remembering what happened in 1976, when the Israeli army murdered seven Palestinians during the strike that denounced the systematic theft of Palestinian land. A theft that has not stopped and that increases every year through the illegal settlements of Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine.
For the Zapatistas, their very name refers to Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary whose main demand was the distribution of the land. Thanks to his struggle, post-revolutionary Mexico saw an improvement in the conditions of agrarian distribution; the peasant movement achieved a change. However, during the rest of the century, state capitalism – and later in its neoliberal phase at the end of the 20th century – was responsible for privatizing the ejido, education and removing the fundamental basic rights that were in the Mexican constitution, which stood out for the social rights it granted compared to its time. Article 27 of the constitution is mentioned at various times in Zapatista history and in the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle of 2005 the progress that has been made thanks to the work of the Zapatista communities is recounted, and now in 2024 a new phase will be inaugurated with “the common and the non-property”, a new proposal from the communities for working the land.
Regarding dispossession, both the Zapatistas and the Palestinians recognize themselves as the dispossessed of the land.
The Nakba, a word that means catastrophe in Arabic, was introduced into the Arabic vocabulary by Constantin Zurayk and has already been incorporated as part of the vocabulary used around the world to refer to the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. However, the word Nakba is used not only to refer to the historical event of 1948, but as a constant process of dispossession by the State of Israel, which also involves the policies of apartheid, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and the constant arrest of Palestinians, among other policies that seek the oppression and extinction of the Palestinian people. Even now, in the context of the current Zionist offensive that began in October 2023, the genocide is spoken of as a second Nakba that is having more fatalities than the first in 1948. At the beginning of July 2024, The Lancet magazine published an estimate that places the real death toll in Gaza at 186,000 or even higher.
“The world that began to be built on October 12th, 1492 is the one that made May 15th, 1948 possible, and it has been a catastrophe for humanity…” the Palestinians told the Zapatistas in a 2014 statement.
A group of Palestinians who attended the first Zapatista Escuelita, “Freedom According to the Zapatistas,” held in three sessions in 2013 and 2014, with the participation of about 6,000 people, issued a statement they sent to the Zapatistas in which they spoke of the relationship between the Nakba and the catastrophe suffered by the Zapatistas. In said statement, they expressed their solidarity with the Zapatista communities after the murder of teacher Galeano in 2014:
“What Galeano taught is what the Zapatista men, women, young people and elders teach every day: that the world that began to be built on October 12th, 1492 is the one that made May 15th, 1948 possible, and has been a catastrophe for humanity. This is a world that requires the annihilation of those of us who refuse to live by its designs, and the only way we can win this fight, the Zapatistas teach us, is by creating a new world together. A world again, as they tell us, “where many worlds fit.”
The fact that people from the Palestinian youth movement were students at the first Zapatista School reveals a lot about the connection and inspiration between both struggles. In this 2014 statement, addressed to the Zapatistas, the Palestinians referred to the so-called “discovery” of 1492 as a catastrophe for humanity, describing it as a moment of extermination.
Another echo of common resistance has to do with the value of memory and history in their struggle to build new futures. For Palestinians, memory is very important; the stories, images, smells and sounds are transmitted between generations of the peoples who were ethnically erased in 1948. Third or second generation Palestinians, who have not experienced the initial expulsion directly, know the details about their native peoples. And there are a series of dates that remember and commemorate, such as the already mentioned days of the Nakba, the day of the land, the day of the Naksa or the defeat of 1967, the massacre of Sabra and Shatila, the battle of al-Karameh , the first Intifada, the second Intifada and Independence Day, among the most important.
For Palestinians, commemoration is very important, and memory becomes a weapon against the occupation and the narratives that seek to erase them from the map.
The Palestinian poet Rafeef Ziadah, in her poem Chronologies, makes a very emotional poem on the topic of dates, saying when she introduces this poem that Palestinians “love dates.” For Palestinians, commemoration is very important, and memory becomes a weapon against the occupation and the narratives that seek to erase them from the map. Showing that the martyrs are remembered, that the keys to the houses, the family stories, the songs, the traditional dresses are kept, everything that constitutes and makes up Palestine.
For their part, the Zapatistas have not stopped at any time from recognizing their history and locating themselves in it. They have told it through their statements, they share it in their little schools, they represent it in their plays. Just as they said in that first declaration of war: they define themselves as the product of 500 years of struggles: “TODAY WE SAY ENOUGH! We are the heirs of the true forgers of our nationality, the dispossessed are millions and we call all our brothers to join this call as the only way to avoid dying of hunger.” In the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, for example, they make a very detailed review of its history, of the steps taken. Evaluations and diagnoses are something very Zapatista. In each of the statements, which is the way in which they communicate with national and international civil society, they recount their own history, what they have been through and the path to come. Likewise, during the Journey for Life – European Chapter, the Zapatista delegates strongly emphasized the importance of their dead in the journey towards a future, which is now looking at at least 120 years.
On January 1, 1994, the indigenous rebels of southern Mexico emerged as a ray of light, inspiring social movements around the world.
Lighting the Way
One of the unmistakable shared elements of both struggles is the image of the engine of resistance in the international arena. Based on the example and tenacity of these movements, new movements have been mobilized and created. For example, if we think about the Tahrir mobilizations in Egypt in 2011 – one of the mobilizations that led to what is known as the Arab Spring – these were promoted by groups that came together to support Palestine, which constituted an initial articulating force that later took on a life and its own demands. The Zapatistas, for their part, marked the beginning of the alter-globalization movements at the end of the 20th century. Just in 1994, when the world thought that all was lost, that capitalism would end up swallowing us all, the indigenous rebels of southern Mexico emerged like a ray of light, inspiring social movements around the world.
In times closer to the present, the Zapatista journey through Europe meant a revitalization of the mobilization throughout the hundreds of territories they visited. The different social groups, in the midst of the global COVID pandemic, mobilized to receive the Zapatistas who traveled thousands of kilometers. This is not minor since, just at the time of the pandemic forced us all to stay at home, thousands of people in Europe chose not to remain immobile or silent and to organize to receive them. An organization was deployed from below and to the left of many groups that received the extemporaneous delegation made up of 177 Zapatistas and the CNI that accompanied the journey to share their struggles. The most important thing was that even after the departure of the Zapatista delegation, great ties were created that united the struggles throughout Europe. The Zapatistas sowed the seed of rebellion, which has flourished in mobilizations and has allowed Europe itself from below and to the left, which was very isolated and separated, to unite, now also to fight against the fascisms that want to subdue us.
Palestine today is a cause that is increasingly becoming part of all the agendas of social movements. In the wake of the bloodiest stage of the Israeli genocide that began in 2023, people have mobilized and included Palestine in their initiatives. This year, the 8M, one of the largest and most important mobilizations of the Spanish State, has made a human chain against the genocide, it has marched with the Palestinian kufiyas, the slogan ‘Patriarchy, Genocide, Privilege, It‘s Over’’ has been included as part of the feminist demands. The demonstration on Critical Pride Day in Madrid had a sign with kufiyas, against Israeli pinkwashing. More and more social movements are becoming aware of what Palestinian resistance means and what they are fighting against. It is also worth mentioning that one of the issues that has been put on the table during the Israeli genocide is the need to reclaim armed struggle as a form of resistance. Thanks to Samidoun, the movement that emerged to support and defend Palestinian political prisoners, assemblies are increasingly questioning how certain uses of force are legitimized and others are not, and how the discourse around legitimate defense has been hijacked.
The hope that exists is ourselves.
“We know, as indigenous people that we are, that the people of Palestine will resist and will rise again and walk again and will know then that, although far away on the maps, the Zapatista peoples embrace them today as we did before, as we will always do, In other words, we embrace them with our collective heart.”
With these words, Commander Tacho of the Zapatista National Liberation Army inaugurated the first sharing of indigenous peoples of Mexico with the Zapatista peoples in 2014. Framed in a speech welcoming the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Commander Tacho united Zapatistas and Palestinians as peoples who suffer destruction, death and dispossession. However, the most important thing is that these movements seek a solution in an alliance in which both are protagonists. Just as Tacho said: “The hope there is ourselves. No one is going to come save us, no one, absolutely no one is going to fight for us.”
These words not only resonate as a cry of resistance, but also as a call for active solidarity. The Zapatistas and Palestinians teach us that true hope lies in the union of peoples, in the joint construction of a world where many worlds fit.
Original article by Danae Fonseca at El Salto, July 14th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.