By Airlin Pérez Carrascal
Between approximately 1534- 1850, around 12 million people were kidnapped in Africa, dehumanised, and brought to a "New World" called America, created by the Western colonies to consolidate the industrial development and capitalist systems in Europe.
Before this, the European colonies had already begun their genocidal project on the American continent with the indigenous native people, exterminating the majority of their population.
Massacres, labour exploitation and forced migration were justified through the invention of an ethnic-racial hierarchy -- in order to obtain the right of property from Black and indigenous people.
It was done with the objective to question their humanity, to turn them into merchandise and to dispossess them of their cultural identity.
The same thing has been happening for more than seven decades with the atrocious crime of genocide being committed by Israel in Palestine.
In historical Palestine, the Israelis have implemented a territorial and political occupation and a colonial process based on dehumanisation and the expropriation of ancestral land by a greater economic, military and imperial power to maintain the project of economic exploitation, expansion of market possibilities, and the monopoly of capital.
Anti-imperialist solidarity
There is a relationship and direct parallel between the situations experienced by the Afro-descendant communities of Latin America and the Caribbean and the native populations of Palestine.
Due to this history, our movements for liberation must build an unbreakable solidarity between oppressed peoples around the world.
Both communities resist foreign domination, struggle for sovereignty, and maintain their right for self-determination.
Furthermore, both resist historically false and dominant narratives of a "counterinsurgency and anti-terrorist struggle" -- used by the economic powers of Israel and the United States, to strengthen arms trade, criminalise native-led defence, and justify mass killings, bombings and ethnic cleansing.
Both neoliberal state apparatuses in Palestine and Colombia have dispossessed ancestral territories through categorising everyone that hinders their imperial, colonial and capitalist project as enemies and subversives.
United struggles
Colombia, has more than 4.7 million afro-descendants. The solidarity between the Afro Colombian and the Palestinian struggle represents an act of memory of the thousands of Black people in Colombia who were killed by neocolonialism.
This solidarity remembers and resists the role played by the governments of Israel and the United States in our collective tragedies, especially in the 80's with the arrival of paramilitarism in Colombia.
This paramilitarism was justified under an international context supported by extreme right-wing governments and their goal of defeating the progressive left as well as all practices of political opposition in the country.
The relations between Israel and Colombia were reflected in the training of Colombian military and paramilitary by Israeli mercenaries and former military officers.
This relationship also facilitated the genocide of political parties such as the Patriotic Union, the banishment and forced displacement of Afro-descendant communities, and direct relations with Israeli security companies.
Reports indicate that more than 51% of the murders that occurred during the armed conflict under state orders against opposition figures: social leaders, teachers, students and unions, were attributed to paramilitarism.
According to Les W. Field in his work published in 2017, the government of President Alvaro Uribe Velez elaborated the policy of "Democratic Security" under the support of Israel by replicating the same ideology of state and para-state security that has kept the Palestinian indigenous populations in subjugation.
Field also demonstrated how in particular regions, where a large population of Black and Afro-descendant people reside, such as Urabá, Chocó, and some areas of the Caribbean region, paramilitary action—supported by Israel and right-wing governments in Colombia—also resulted in the expropriation of land for the development of African palm monocultures and extractive projects by national and multinational companies for the benefit of an oligarchy.
It's a similar case in Israel/Palestine, with the agricultural products of Palestinian peasant communities in the Jordan Valley, by Israeli settlers for the growth of their plantations and exportation of date palm crops.
Both the Afro-descendant communities in Colombia and the indigenous communities in Palestine are witnesses to and victims of a system of colonial and imperial repression.
The temporality of mourning is intertwined between one tragedy and the next. For this reason, when tears and oppression are transboundary, the resistance to domination must transverse boundaries.
The Afro-Colombian people should continue to denounce the genocide in Palestine and continue to demand reparation for the genocide perpetrated on Black communities that Israel has supported in Colombia.
The author, Airlin Pérez Carrascal, is a member of the Afrodescendant Movement in Cartagena, Colombia and a professor and researcher focused on decoloniality and social movements.
Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of TRT Afrika.
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