THE PALESTINIAN DIASPORA IN ARGENTINA: MILITANCY BEYOND ETHNICITY

MONTENEGRO, SILVIA

Rio de Janeiro

Seminario; PALESTINE INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR A DIÁSPORA PALESTINA, DESDE O ORIENTE MÉDIO À AMÉRICA LATINA; 2015

Universidade Federal Fluminense

The efficacy of militancy for the Palestinian cause spread from FEDERPAL to other political spaces is connected with its strategy for overcoming or transcending the appeal to an identity of origin, both Palestinian and Arab, and for constructing a language that might be appropriated by other militant groups within civil society. The history of the entity itself and its militants shows the shift from a categorical identity associated with a ?Palestineness? to a politicization that appeals to a plurality of sources of identity and articulates several overlapping dimensions: Latin-Americanism, palestineness and opposing past dictatorships, first the Chilean and later the Argentine one. In this sense, the Federation articulates its vindicating discourse by appealing to a political language that may be understood and adopted by militant actors from elsewhere.