Grassroots mobilisations continue sweeping the world in condemnation of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and demanding their own governments take action to end support for Israel. This is no different in Latin America, where trade unions, students and Indigenous groups are standing in solidarity with Palestinians and drawing attention to Israel’s nefarious role in the region.
Historically, Israel has had military ties with almost all of Latin America’s most brutal dictatorships, supplying weapons and training to the army, police and right-wing death squads that are responsible for millions of deaths. These dictatorships included the Dominican Republic in the 1950s, Brazil in the 1960s and El Salvador and Argentina in the 1970s.
Israel helped arm the vicious Somoza regime in Nicaragua, which ruled from 1936–79 and was responsible for killing tens of thousands. Israel accounted for 98% of Nicaragua’s arms imports by the 1970s, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. After the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) toppled the Somoza regime in the late 1970s, Israel then supplied weapons to the Contras — who were trained by Israeli intelligence officers and retired army commandos — to wage a bloody war against the revolutionary government.
Israel supplied weapons, training and surveillance technology to various military regimes in Guatemala, enabling them to kill and disappear about 200,000 people — mostly Indigenous Maya — between 1960–96.
Colonialism, repression
Guatemalan elites drew inspiration from Israel’s settler-colonial model for seizing rural land, with many right-wing leaders even calling for the “Palestinianisation” of the Maya people. The export of Israel’s settler-colonial model to Guatemala was aided by the constant presence of hundreds of Israeli advisers.
Eduardo Wohlers, director of the euphemistically named “Plan of Assistance to Conflict Areas” in Guatemala during the Efraín Ríos Montt regime, explicitly referenced the connection with Israel: “Many of our technicians are Israeli trained. The model of the kibbutz and the moshav [Jewish settlements] is planted firmly in their minds.
“Personally I think it would be fascinating to turn our highlands into that kind of system.”
During Augusto Pinochet’s violent military dictatorship in Chile from 1973–90, Israel helped train the armed forces, police and intelligence service. Israel supplied weapons, such as tanks, missiles and aircraft, to prop up the regime and enable them to unleash violent repression against the Chilean people.
While the full extent of Israel’s involvement is not known because of its cover-up efforts and refusal to release records relating to it, enough is known to paint a grim picture of its support for brutal regimes.
Israeli ministers and officers were open about their willingness to supply weapons and training to anyone. Lieutenant Colonel Amatzia Shuali, an Israeli adviser to Guatemala in the 1980s, said at the time: “I don’t care what the Gentiles [non-Jewish people] do with the arms. The main thing is that the Jews profit.”
Even now, Israel is still a major supplier of weapons, surveillance technology and military training to Latin American governments. Israel sells surveillance technology, such as its notorious Pegasus spyware, to El Salvador, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic.
Grassroots organisations mobilising in solidarity with Palestine are emphasising Israel’s nefarious role in helping aid repression and violence in their own territories, pointing out that the same Israeli tools of oppression used on Palestinians have been exported to Latin America.
There is significant solidarity with Palestine from Indigenous peoples in Latin America, who are the most impacted by the violence and dispossession that Israel has enabled.
Condemnation
Some Latin American governments have been vocal in their condemnation of Israel’s latest genocidal attacks and have made symbolic moves to isolate Israel.
Bolivia cut diplomatic relations with Israel in October, with Deputy Foreign Minister Freddy Mamani explaining the decision was made “in repudiation and condemnation of the aggressive and disproportionate Israeli military offensive being carried out in the Gaza Strip”.
Chile, Brazil, Honduras and Nicaragua have withdrawn their ambassadors from Israel.
Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua have supported South Africa’s case against Israel for genocide in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
While not as widely publicised as South Africa’s case, Nicaragua has also brought a case before the ICJ against Germany, for their complicity in genocide by supplying weapons to Israel. About a third of Israel’s military imports last year were from Germany — the second-biggest arms provider after the United States.
Chile is home to the biggest Palestinian diaspora — about half a million — outside the Middle East, which partly explains the significant grassroots mobilisations and fundraising events in solidarity with Palestine.
Indigenous Mapuche people have also played a leading role in the demonstrations, while fighting their own resistance against colonisation and extractivism. The Mapuche have faced some of the worst violence and displacement at the hands of the state in South America. Now, Mapuche leaders have drawn parallels between the struggles for self-determination in their own territories with that of Palestinians resisting Israeli colonialism.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has been vocal in condemning the Israeli genocide and one of the first to take concrete actions against the Zionist state. Colombia recalled its ambassador from Israel in October in response to Israel’s war on Gaza. Petro announced in February that Colombia would stop buying weapons from Israel and cut diplomatic ties in May.
Petro’s announcement is significant, especially when looking at Colombia’s historically close relations with Israel. Colombia has had close military ties since the 1980s, when Colombia first started buying arms from Israel.
Previous governments have relied heavily on right-wing paramilitary groups — often working alongside the army — to violently put down guerrilla uprisings and inflict violence on the population. The paramilitaries, supplied with Israeli weapons and sent to Israel for training, were responsible for nearly half of the 500,000 people killed or disappeared between 1985–2018.
Petro has often highlighted this role that the Zionist state played in arming and training paramilitary groups in Colombia, posting on X on October 15: “One day the Israeli army and government will ask us for forgiveness for what their men did in our lands unleashing a genocide.”
Concrete action
Most significantly, Petro announced in June the suspension of coal exports to Israel, following a sustained campaign by an alliance of Colombian Indigenous groups and trade unions alongside Palestinian trade unions under the banner of Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.
Just weeks after Israel’s genocidal attacks began, Colombia’s biggest mine workers’ union, Sintracarbón, called on the government to stop coal exports to Israel and demanded that trade unions globally take action.
In their campaign, Indigenous leaders articulated the parallels between their struggles and those facing Palestinians, which are rooted in colonial dispossession and violence. They combined demands for mining companies to be held responsible for human rights violations in Colombia and Palestine and for the government to stop coal exports to Israel.
Indigenous people in Colombia are heavily impacted by mining interests through displacement, contamination of their land, water theft and violence from mining companies and right-wing militias when they resist.
Petro’s announcement came just days after a transnational day of action by the Global Energy Embargo for Palestine against mining giant Glencore, which, along with Drummond Company, supplies 90% of Colombia’s coal exports to Israel. Significantly, Colombian coal made up 60% of Israel’s total coal imports last year.
Colombia’s suspension of coal exports to Israel is just one powerful example of how internationalist struggles can be articulated in an effective way to turn the tide against government complicity and support for Israel’s genocide.
Grassroots campaigns are the key to forcing governments to take concrete action in line with the global movement to isolate the apartheid state of Israel.