The left is missing a golden opportunity by not bringing the Chicano and Palestinian communities together.
We all know that in the 1840s the United States illegally annexed much of the American South West from Mexico in a war that was rooted in the interests of protecting slavery in Texas. The Chicanos were the Mexicans who had ended up on the United States side of the border after the conflict, they were and still are treated as second class citizens just like the Palestinians despite being there before the whites. While it’s not purely an indigenous struggle it’s in the interests of the indigenous peoples of America, the Chicanos, and the Mexicans to get the land back that was stolen from them by the United States.
The only problem is this movement is deader than Margaret Thatcher. The chicano political movements petered out along with the black power movements of the seventies. People gave into liberalism. Like Mexicans are okay with working for shit pay in a land that used to belong to them because anyone who speaks out runs the risk of getting deported or having their treats taken away from them. How do we put life back into this movement? We HAVE to tie it to the Palestinian one.
We need young people living from California to Texas to know that the land they live on is stolen, and sure all of the United States is stolen but if we can provide power to just one movement out of all them, this one would be the most important and consequential. The Puerto Rican movement is just one island, the indigenous movements are too fractured, the Black Power movement has had no success with its nationalist movements, but Mexico, if we could get the Mexican president on stage and say “United States, give us back the land you stole, or else” that would be completely justified in the same way Palestinians are justified in fighting their occupiers, because the United States citizens, are occupiers, and Mexico has a right to use the methods of resistance that Palestinians are using right now.
we could get the Mexican president on stage and say “United States, give us back the land you stole, or else” that would be completely justified in the same way Palestinians are justified in fighting their occupiers, because the United States citizens, are occupiers.
The United States has been worse for indigenous people. I don’t want to alienate indigenous people by saying Mexico ruling over them would be better, but I don’t see an easy answer for how we can get solidarity between the indigenous communities and Mexican government. Like if we could get that it would be amazing but I legitimately have no idea how we could heal the wounds between them. We probably can’t. But like, a stronger Mexico to fend off the US seems like a necessity.