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Reading Che in Colonized Palestine: on Analyzing and Drawing Inspiration from Revolutionary Latin American Texts

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Reading Che in Colonized Palestine: on Analyzing and Drawing Inspiration from Revolutionary Latin American Texts See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324093620 Reading Che in Colonized Palestine: On analyzing and drawing inspiration from revolutionary Latin American texts Article · January 2018 DOI: 10.1080/10714839.2018.1448594 CITATIONS READS 0 4 1 author: Lena Meari Birzeit University 10 PUBLICATIONS 15 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Rithinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World View project Formations of Sumud View project All content following this page was uploaded by Lena Meari on 13 April 2018. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. NACLA Report on the Americas ISSN: 1071-4839 (Print) 2471-2620 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rnac20 Reading Che in Colonized Palestine Lena Meari To cite this article: Lena Meari (2018) Reading Che in Colonized Palestine, NACLA Report on the Americas, 50:1, 49-55, DOI: 10.1080/10714839.2018.1448594 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2018.1448594 Published online: 29 Mar 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 77 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rnac20 REPORT Palestinians wearing Che Guevara t-shirts JUSTIN MCINTOSH/ WIKIMEDIA COMMONS LENA MEARI Reading Che in Colonized Palestine On analyzing and drawing inspiration from revolutionary Latin American texts “Reading these texts relocated me from the present syllabus included texts on revolutionary theories and days’ political reality to another political space with testimonies of revolutionaries from Asia and Africa as distinct logic, affections, solidity, and hope.” well as from Latin America. As the quotes above sug- gest, the cumulative effect of reading and discussing “The texts opened for us a new political horizon, revolutionary texts from the three continents was a one that constitutes a radical divergence from the unique experience for my students and for myself. confines of current formal Palestinian political dis- Through immersing ourselves in revolutionary the- course and practice.” oretical and testimonial texts, we cultivated a space for discussing liberational forms of politics with radi- he above quotes are extracts from reflection cal conceptions and possibilities. One of the assigned papers by two Palestinian students at Birzeit texts in the Latin America module was Che Guevara’s T University in an anthropology course on revolu- testimony on the Cuban Revolution. Although most tionary movements that I developed in the 2016-2017 students were familiar with Che Guevara through school year. The papers closed a module in the course the wide circulation of his pictures on t-shirts, key on Latin American revolutionary movements—the chains, and walls, most students were unfamiliar NACLA — REPORT ON THE AMERICAS | VOL. 50, NO. 1 — 49-57, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2018.1448594 49 © 2018 North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) NACLA_50-1.indd 49 3/11/18 8:56 PM to the Zionist settler colonial project backed by the world’s superpowers. In this context, reading revolutionary texts consti- tuted a radical alternative to hegemonic liberal polit- ical frames and practices, equipping some students with frames of reference, concepts, and terminology to express their perceptions of contemporary real- ities outside of it. For other students, reading these texts fostered a perception of the Palestinian struggle as united with anti-colonial, anti-imperial struggles “Long Live Palestinian-Cuban solidarity!” Reads a for liberation and justice in Palestine and in Latin PFLP poster in Arabic and Spanish PFLP.ORG America. Very few students in the course were aware that Latin with the details of his revolutionary praxis. The fact American revolutionary texts were widely circulated that most students were familiar with the mythology among Palestinians from the late ‘60s to the ‘80s, not of Che’s portrait but knew nothing of his revolution- only in academic settings but also among the activists ary essence says volumes about how his memory, and of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), par- the memories of other revolutionaries, have been flat- ticularly those affiliated with leftist organizations and tened, shifted into empty signs. within prison walls. Further, the majority of students Reading Latin American revolutionary testimonies, were not aware of the Palestinian-Latin American con- including Che’s testimony on the detailed proceedings nections that went far beyond the circulation of texts, of the Cuban revolution—the obstacles, comradeship, and involved the passage of revolutionaries between sacrifices, and collective victory—was eye opening for Latin American and Palestinian movements. many of the students. Immersion in these revolution- My experience teaching the course provoked my in- ary texts in some ways liberated its readers’ political vestigation into the history of the circulation of Latin imagination from the confines of present-day indi- American revolutionary texts in Palestine, its place vidualistic liberal logics, opening up a new political and relevance in Palestinian politics, and its poten- horizon characterized by other logics, affections, and tial for instigating a revolutionary Palestinian political collective hope. imagination and practice. This exploration aims to en- The participants in the course were born in the lighten present day Palestinian political imagination post-Oslo era, characterized by the transformation of and reopen a horizon for the revolutionary Palestinian the Palestinian struggle from a revolutionary anti-co- liberation struggle. lonial liberation struggle into a state-building project bound by legal and administrative liberal logic and Comrades in the War for Liberation: neoliberal economic and political rationality [see Tariq The Passage of Revolutionaries Dana’s piece in this issue.] Within this project, the Palestinian Authority (PA), established in 1994 after “The Palestinian cause is not a cause for Palestinians the Oslo Accords, monopolized political legitimacy, only, but a cause for every revolutionary, wherever turning the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) he is, as a cause for the exploited and oppressed into an empty structure, and transforming Palestinian masses in our era.” –Ghassan Kanafani politics from a revolutionary mass politics that chal- lenged local, regional, and world colonial power struc- “The Palestinian liberation movement is a progres- tures, into a politics aimed at the international recog- sive national movement against the forces of aggres- nition of a Palestinian nation-state within the confines sion and imperialism. The link between the interests of those same colonial geopolitical power structures. of imperialism and the continued existence of Israel The post-Oslo Palestinian political praxis of the PA will make our war against the latter basically a war in the West Bank has been unable to confront ongo- against imperialism.” –Leila Khaled ing violent Zionist settlements.1 This form of politics has alienated many Palestinians, including Palestinian 1. This article refers only to the West Bank experience with the PA, and not the youth who perceive its accommodationism as complicit developments in Gaza under Hamas. 50 NACLA — REPORT ON THE AMERICAS | VOL. 50, NO. 1 NACLA_50-1.indd 50 3/11/18 8:56 PM The above quotes from the early 1970s by Ghassan Latin American-Palestinian struggles. Kanafani and Leila Khaled lay the ideological frame- Other revolutionaries also reflected these en- work for the connection between the Palestinian liber- tanglements—like Shafik Jorge Handal, who was a ation movement, Latin American revolutionary move- high-ranking member of the communist party in El ments, and other Third World anti-imperial struggles. Salvador. Like Daoud, Handal’s father had emigrat- Kanafani, a Palestinian revolutionary, novelist, and PFLP ed from Bethlehem to El Salvador in 1921. Handal leader who was assassinated by Israel’s national intelli- traveled to Beirut in support of Palestinian Liberation gence agency in 1972, highlights the international sig- Organization (PLO) factions in the early eighties. nificance of the Palestinian struggle, and positions the Patrick Argüello, meanwhile, was a Sandinista born Palestinian cause at the heart of every struggle against in San Francisco, California, to a Nicaraguan father exploitation and oppression. Khaled, a Palestinian rev- and North American mother. His story speaks to the olutionary who joined the Arab Nationalist Movement, depth of the Latin American-Palestinian joined strug- and later the PFLP, and was the first woman to hijack an gle. Argüello participated in hijacking an Israeli El-Al airplane, emphasizes the intertwinement of the anti-Zi- plane in September 1970 along with Leila Khaled, to onist and anti-imperial struggles. draw international awareness to the Palestinian cause. Though there were important divergences in the They intended to use the hostages they held as “pris- contexts of each, anti-imperialism was a node of con- oners of war” to pressure for the release of Arab and nection among Palestinian and Latin American revo- Palestinian detainees. lutionary struggles in the 1970s. Revolutionaries like In her 1971 memoir, My People Shall Live, Leila Antoine Daoud and Patrick Argüello—who simulta- Khaled,
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