In the 1960s and '70s, Palestine became a global cause for the first time, igniting the imagination of liberation movements across the world. Nowhere was this more keenly felt than Latin America. But Palestinians were not the passive recipients of a rhetorical solidarity, telegraphed halfway around the world. For the Latin American left, this was an active connection forged much closer to home.

From the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua to the Allende government in Chile, diasporic Palestinians were at the forefront of revolutionary change across Latin America. Here, Jacob Norris and Layla Zaglul Ruiz tell the remarkable story of these student activists, guerilla fighters and revolutionary intellectuals who simultaneously struggled for the liberation of both Palestine and their adopted countries in Latin America.

Through a rich array of personal testimony, documentary evidence and visual materials, Viva Palestina is a postcard from and tribute to an era enlivened by the spirit of Third World solidarity, and the ordinary and extraordinary revolutionaries who embodied it.