Stand in solidarity for the immediate ceasefire of war in the Middle East

We, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, stand in solidarity with many academic and community organizations calling for the immediate ceasefire of war in the Middle East. We urge the United States to promote and foster non-military solutions; we support the call for Palestinian liberation and autonomy. We ask that Hamas’s actions against civilians cease and that hostages be released immediately.

As a discipline which includes the study of a war of aggression against Mexico by the United States in 1846, and as a community of descendants of many who resisted colonization and land takeover ever since, our sympathies lie in a history conditioned by injustice and inequality. As scholars, teachers, students, and practitioners of Chicana and Chicano Studies with a focus on a need, interest, and search for a homeland (Aztlan), we support diasporic peoples searching for safety and a home as Israelis and Palestinians have. Displacing long-term residents or dislocating them in settler-colonizer programs produces harmful after-effects that resonate over time, as was our own case in an historic and illegal 1930’s massive repatriation and deportation of Mexican-descent people in the US. Such discrimination has historical and human rights consequences.

The current situation in the Middle East, the many Latina/o people of Jewish and Middle Eastern heritage inclusive of Jewish Chicana/os, and our anguish in particular about the suffering and killing of Palestinian children in Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces inform our solidarity with other academic and community organizations to call for an immediate end to the war and the urgency for United States participation to achieve that end.

NACCS Board