Israel, Guatemala, and the agricultural roots of an authoritarian internationalism

Abstract

On Christmas Eve 2017, less than a month after President Donald Trump unilaterally announced his decision to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Guatemala announced that it would become the second country in the world to make the same move. This article locates the historical background to the recent embassy move in the building of model villages throughout Guatemala during the height of the Guatemalan Civil War. Throughout the early 1980s, Israeli agricultural and military advisors helped to militarize the Guatemalan highlands by training Guatemalan police and military to construct plantation-style model villages. Employing the language of rural development, these model villages became a core counterinsurgent tactic for former General Efrain Rios Montt’s infamous “scorched earth” policy. The article concludes by discussing how we practically cross our own mental barricades to refocus Palestine/Latinx solidarity movements toward agriculture. What possibilities are opened up when we stand from our grounded solidarities and commit to refuse exceptionalist narratives and single-issue organizing, particularly in our shared commitments to more effectively combat the ongoing practices of war-making and imperial violence?