This piece appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of NACLA's quarterly print magazine, the NACLA Report. Subscribe in print today!
In April, as Israel’s longstanding genocide against the Palestinian people continued to intensify, protests against the carnage reached the halls of universities, first in the United States and then around the world. Israel’s unrelenting atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023, with the full economic and military backing of the United States and as part of a century-long Zionist campaign to wipe out Palestine, had incited a wave of marches and direct actions in solidarity with Palestinian life and land. Yet this new phase of campus “de-occupations” created conditions for other political possibilities. Recognizing the potential of insurgent actions in the streets, students, workers, and community activists opened the university doors, expanding geographies of struggle to demand divestment from the U.S. and Israeli war machine.
More than 130 colleges and universities in the United States erupted with the creation—and then swift repression—of Gaza solidarity encampments during the 2023-2024 academic year. But this was only part of the hemispheric story. People also set up encampments on college campuses in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere to condemn the genocide while making connections between the situation in the occupied territories and the colonial and imperial violence they face in their own contexts. Beyond calling for an end to Israel’s genocide, these actions also issued demands related to the collective control of the university and society, solidarity with Indigenous struggles, and the rooting out of corporate and local government complicity in the Zionist project.
This roundtable conversation brings together report-backs from university solidarity encampments in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a broader horizon of struggles for Palestine. Camila Azeñas, a political scientist and member of the National Committee of Bolivian Communist Youth (JCB) as well as the collectives Intifada of the South and Revuelta Malcriada (Disobedient Revolt), speaks about the encampment in May and June at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), Bolivia’s leading public university, based in La Paz. William Armando Hurtado Barrero, a sociology student, and Manuel Camilo González, an activist with the pro-peace collective Paz Noticias, give an update on the four-month-long encampment, from May to September, at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá. Camilo Godoy Pichón, a sociologist and a member of the Committee for Palestine at the Universidad de Chile, shares his experiences at that university’s encampment in Santiago, which lasted two months from May to July. Claudio Escobar, a philosophy student and activist with the Socialist Workers Movement of Mexico, talks about the camp at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), which began on May 2 and ended on May 22. And Natalia Ibrahim-Abufarah Dávila, a Palestinian Puerto Rican with a degree in political science, shares experiences from the encampment at her alma mater, the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus, which lasted about 14 days. The Río Piedras camp was named Hani Qeshta in honor of a Gazan baby who was born and died in the midst of genocide. Hani entered the world by Caesarean section when his mother was fatally wounded in an Israeli strike, only to be killed along with other members of his family in another bombardment six months later.
In this ongoing era of campus uprisings and street protests in solidarity with Palestine, now is an invaluable time to learn from others’ actions and to connect this historic flashpoint to larger, longer-running cycles of leftist militancy. In doing so, we can explore the critical differences in our national and regional contexts to thus make our axes and rhythms of solidarity across the hemisphere more effective. For comrades in the United States, in particular, these lessons hold the potential to catalyze new tactics for attacking and defeating Zionism and U.S. imperialism from within the belly of the beast. Now that the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank has spilled over into Lebanon and a broader regional war, a syncopated hemispheric struggle against colonial militarism is more urgent than ever.
This discussion was conducted over email beginning in August 2024. Our conversation has been translated from Spanish and edited for length and clarity.
Conor Tomás Reed: What is one of the key strategic takeaways from your experiences of creating a Gaza solidarity encampment that has shaped your understanding of the university as a site of anticolonial struggle?
Camila Azeñas (Bolivia): The university’s role as a bastion of anticolonial, anti-imperialist struggle and resistance has declined in terms of impact in our country. Ideological shallowness is a fundamental problem, subduing the student community into passivity as clientelist networks have taken over decision-making spaces, including the management of faculties. However, the indignation among many sectors of the student community in the face of the genocide in the Gaza Strip and the brutal repression of solidarity encampments on university campuses in the United States, France, Germany, and other countries was enough to call for emergency assemblies, sit-ins, rallies, and discussions.
These actions managed to get Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) to release a public statement condemning the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, demanding the full application of international law, and extending support for the lawsuit filed against the state of Israel at the International Court of Justice.
Camilo Godoy Pichón (Chile): One of the main strategic conclusions of our experience of establishing an encampment at the Universidad de Chile’s Casa Central [the main building] was that the relationship between university institutions is political and problematic, and that authorities of the university use division as a mechanism of governance. At the same time, we understood that it is crucial to call on a broad majority under the banner of decolonization, transcending the ethnic identities of those who participate.
This experience has reinforced our vision of the university as a space for anticolonial struggle, where unity and solidarity are essential to advance toward a more just and equitable university and society. It also became clear that, although academic authorities dictate internal legislation focused on social commitment, their main objective under a neoliberal framework is to sustain a model focused solely on academic capitalism and the growth of rankings and publications, without an ethical or political awareness.
William Armando Hurtado Barrero and Manuel Camilo González (Colombia): One of the main takeaways from our solidarity encampment on the campus of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia has been to reaffirm the crucial role of the university in anticolonial struggle. The physical space of the camp was fundamental for coordinating different processes in the city that support the Palestinian cause. The arrival of many different groups to the camp facilitated the articulation of joint actions.
The struggle for territory in Colombia, characterized by exclusion and complexity, is reflected in the perception of the encampment within the university. For many, the occupation of a university space with flags and symbols associated with the Arab-Israeli conflict was an outrage. The influence of mainstream media, which present Israel as a nation defending itself from extremist terrorists, contributed to this perception. Despite this, our goal was to highlight the importance of the university as an ethical beacon in the struggle for peace and life, not only in our country, but also in Palestine and around the world.
In this context, after fighting for a physical space within the university and remaining in the public eye during a university strike demanding greater democracy, we saw how the struggle for space was intertwined with political ideas and university values. This process legitimized our struggle and generated a growing academic interest in anticolonial approaches.
One of the most significant lessons has been about global solidarity, evidenced by the participation of thousands of young people and social processes in support of the Palestinian cause. Although the movement is still disjointed, the camp served as a reference point for those who wish to carry out Palestine solidarity actions, whether through murals, songs, candlelight vigils, dances, poetry, posters, t-shirts, slogans, and more. This space facilitated the articulation of these actions amid efforts to agitate for the defence of peace and life and against the genocide in Palestine, supported by the United States, the European Union, and the complicit silence of many others. Universities today, as during the movement against the war in Vietnam, rise up with one voice against colonialism and genocide.
Natalia Ibrahim-Abufarah Dávila (Puerto Rico): Universities are some of the first trenches in resistance struggles against oppressive systems and ideologies. Educational spaces are necessary and essential spaces to defend human rights. It is important to communicate to all people in solidarity the importance of creating alliances between collectives, student organizations, and neighboring communities to create networks of mutual support.
The University of Puerto Rico is facing cuts that limit its operations; possible privatization by the Fiscal Control Board [known locally as the Junta] or by the government of Puerto Rico is imminent. It is of utmost importance to understand how colonialism, Zionism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and racism, among others, are the great enemies of free and safe universal education for all.
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Conor Tomás Reed is a scholar-organizer of radical cultural and educational movements in the Americas and the Caribbean and author of New York Liberation School: Study and Movement for the People's University.
