Yoly Zentella PhD is a Chicana researcher and writer from New Mexico focusing on El Norte’s culture and attachment and their loss of land and place. She is the editor and publisher of La Platica del Norte.

She points out the common connection between Chicanos and Palestinians is the loss of land through racist colonization. Chicanos lost their lands in the southwest, Texas and surrounding areas in 1848. 100 years later, Palestinians were experiencing the same dispossession and colonizer violence. Murder was a part of both scenarios. Looking at the map of New Mexico, one can see the shrinking of land holdings, from 1848 to the present, as with the Palestinians.

As a supporter of Palestine liberation and Palestinian farmers she shows solidarity by buying Canaan olive oil, learning the history of the oil itself, telling friends about this organic product, and giving bottles of olive oil along with Jonathan Cook’s article on Agro-Resistance as holiday presents.

She says “In my cocina no other olive oil plays a part and each time I use it, I’m sending an anonymous message to not only olive growers in the West Bank, but all Palestinians living under occupation, ‘You may not know me, but you are very much a part of my life and of my familia, you have not been erased and could never be forgotten.’ “