The indigenous peoples revolution in Mexico .. Palestine borders in terms of international literature

Ghadeer Abu Sneineh-Nicaragua

“A good Aztec is a dead Aztec,” Mexican writer Juan Piro spoke when he interviewed three years ago about the situation of indigenous people in Mexico, and used them to describe how his government viewed indigenous people from the Maya, Natiel, and Aztec peoples.

"Mexico is proud of the heritage of these peoples and the effects they left behind, but it marginalizes their current children," he said in a private interview.

It is a reminder of those with which the Israeli occupation replaced the "Palestinian" character with the "Aztec", which makes the comparison and search for what is the rapprochement between the Palestinian people and the indigenous people in general - and in Mexico in particular - a remarkable topic.

The problem of rapprochement addressed the Palestinian researcher Munir Al-Akash in his book "A Palestinian State for the Red Indians", and his readings were numerous, as some saw that he was approaching the two peoples, while Akash expressed in one of his dialogues that he did not intend to make an approach between the two peoples, as their historical, geographical, and cultural conditions differ and differ in Lifestyle, and that in their approach is unfair to both.

In the literature, the poem of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, "The Indian Sermon of the Red", reflected a part of this rapprochement, but it is a controversial rapprochement between the Palestinians themselves. The late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat repeated the phrase "we are not Indians", meaning that we will not resemble them in the fate of genocide, while some refuse to compare the Palestinian with the Indian Red, describing the latter as a "minority."

On the other side, the researcher at Williams College in the United States rejects Aqaig's hope that he classifies "American Indians" as a minority, indicates that this is a colonial description, and uses the term "resignation" to explain the colonial mentality that makes these a minority in their lands.

Aqaq’s opinion came to Al-Jazeera Net as a result of her personal experience as a Palestinian holding an Israeli passport and treated as internal Palestinians like a minority in their country, and she considers it unfair to use the term “American Indians” to describe the indigenous people of the country, and it is better to call them “indigenous” or “indigenous peoples”, with Emphasizing that even this term is a product of the colonial conquest invasion, as these peoples were known by the names of their civilization and their tribes as the Maya and Aztec tribes.

The Resilience of History
Attempts at the literary approach compel you to see the history of the two peoples before the approaches. Ironically, the decision to divide the Mexican lands came in 1848, that is, nearly 100 years before the decision to divide the Palestinian lands in 1947.

The Guadalupe Hidalgo Agreement ended the US-Mexican war, and ruled that Mexico ceded a large part of its territory, including California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas.

In the wake of this division, the Mexican families were divided and a new nationalism became available to them, but the two occupying countries (the United States and Israel) were unable to eliminate the cultural elements of both peoples. The Palestinians of the interior still speak Arabic, while Spanish is the mother tongue in the lands that were once part from Mexico.

In the Mexican North, the conditions of the Palestinian and Mexican peoples intersect in terms of dividing the lands, creating walls and separating the borders.

And in southern Mexico - specifically in the province of Chiapas - the approach becomes clearer, as the Maya people still speak their native languages ​​and practice their traditions and customs in an ongoing resistance that did not end 500 years of the Spanish occupation, and some of them - even today - do not speak Spanish, which is what triggered It has the term "steadfastness" translated literally from the Tsutsel language, which is descended from the Mayan languages.

These peoples remained marginalized by the Mexican governments and were treated with extreme racism until it came in 1994, to surprise the government of Mexico and the world. The indigenous people rose up to form the "Sabbatista" army attributed to the Mexican rebel Emiliano Sabata.

This uprising changed others' view of the “indigenous” people even in comparative literature, and recognized their literature, culture, and steadfastness despite the Spanish burning many of their books and manuscripts, in what might be called a cultural catastrophe.

The difference between their literature and Palestinian literature is in the details, not the essence. The Palestinian literature belongs to a wider cultural geography and is written in Arabic that is understood by those outside the borders of Palestine, while the Mayan literature is written in many languages.

Literature north and south
In her thesis for postgraduate studies, Aqeeq approached between the novel "The Mashaal" by Palestinian writer Emile Habibi and Mexican-American writer Gloria Anzaldo, author of "Border Areas".

Emile Habibi is one of the first Palestinian writers to address the problem of carrying Israeli citizenship that was imposed on the Palestinians and made them foreigners in their countries. As for Enzaldo, she is from Texas, the state whose umbilical cord has not been cut off from her home country, Mexico.

In one of the excerpts of Emile Habibi Nimr, we pass on the following text: "I stayed, while I was later in Tire, a refugee. I yearn to visit the Daliyya at the border, until I heard Dr. Ashiq, my sister, one day saying: The Palestinians have become refugees, girls are alienated from them, and I turned towards refugees, so refugee women Unlike our case, I found them appetizers, so they became distracted from us, so I returned to the State of Israel while I was thirsty.

In the poem "Living on the Borders", Gloria Anzaldo says: "On the border, you are the battlefield, where enemies fuse together, you are at home, strange, border disputes are resolved, but the shooting blew the dawn of the armistice, you are wounded, lost, dead, and you resist." .

Aqeeq worked on comparing the two literary texts according to the "theory of borders". Those peoples whose families were divided and had to bear the nationality of the occupied country could not cross the border, but rather crossed the border.

This is evident through the penetration of the cultural, historical and linguistic extension of the borders, and my beloved and Anzaldua have distinguished - according to the realism - their historical discourse, explaining that they are not immigrants but from indigenous peoples, which deepened the idea of ​​the approach, while emphasizing political and Egyptian differences.

Compare the experience
These two experiences intersect with the IQQQ experience, which, like its counterparts, suffered from the racism of the occupied state and from being considered a second-class citizen.

It considers that the theory of boundaries applies to studies of comparative literature in relation to literary races in general, as comparative literature does not limit itself to the written text only, but "crosses the boundaries" to include the oral text, visual arts, folk dance and others.

And you see that it is wrong to be satisfied with the theoretical aspect of the topic of comparative literature, as it does not depend - according to the theories of modern literature - on what is written only, but - and talk to make - "what is required of a specialist in comparative literature is to master more than one language and to delve into anthropology studies and that Proficient in translation, and comparative literature leads the researcher to see literature in general with different dimensions and master networking with other cultures.

And she continues that studying this specialization made her see Palestine from the standpoint of international literature, not globalization, and she refuses to talk about the literature of the indigenous people, who have established a period between them and studied courses in their native language "Tsotsel", as a dead civilization trying to rise from its death.

Rather, they are "a civilization that was exposed to the catastrophe 500 years ago, and their catastrophe is still like our catastrophe, continuing. Although the Spanish burned their books, changed their religion, and tried to erase the language, they remained steadfast, and we should consider them as living civilizations, not extinct civilizations."