Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) was established in 1971 to educate and inform the public about contemporary Middle East affairs. A registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, MERIP publishes a quarterly print magazine, Middle East Report, as well as frequent articles, updates and educational primers on its website.

Independent and progressive in orientation, MERIP provides critical, alternative reporting and analysis, focusing on state power, political economy and social hierarchies as well as popular struggles and the role of US policy in the region. MERIP seeks to reach academics, journalists, non-governmental and governmental organizations and informed citizens who want knowledgeable analysis and critical resources about contemporary political developments. Informed by scholarship and research, MERIP is not a peer-reviewed academic journal, but rather a curated platform for critical analysis and discussion that brings informed perspectives to a broader audience.

MERIP has a central office and staff, an editorial committee and contributing editors, and our community of writers and readers comes from around the world.  Please join, contribute to and support our mission to promote critical thinking and debate about political and social developments in the Middle East.

Middle East Report is the foremost US magazine of critical analysis on the Middle East, and its international readership of 25,000 makes it one of the most widely read publications on the Middle East. Each issue features in-depth analytical articles on Middle East politics, culture and society, and US policy toward the region, as well as engaging journalistic dispatches, review essays and compelling photographs.

Articles from MER are reprinted, and translations have appeared, in more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish. Issues of MER are required reading in many college and university courses, and more than 700 libraries and research institutes around the world subscribe. Researchers can find MER cited in 12 different indices and abstracts. Specialists in a wide range of political, social and humanitarian agencies use MER in their work for research, education and constituency outreach.

The Latin East is a special double issue of Middle East Report resulting from an unprecedented collaboration between MERIP and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) that seeks to explore the roots of Latin American outreach to the Middle East, and the larger processes, problems and possibilities inherent in ties between the two regions.

Below you can find a list of the articles featured in the issue, including links to pieces through the MERIP website.

The Editors, “From the Editors (Winter 2017)”

Alejandro Velasco & Omar S. Dahi, “Latin America-Middle East Ties in the New Global South”

Sara Awartani, “Puerto Rican Decolonization, Armed Struggle and the Question of Palestine”

Kevan Harris, “Divergent Histories and Converging Inequalities in the Middle East and Latin America”

Paulo Farah, “South-South Solidarity and the Summit 
of South American-Arab Countries”

Paulo Pinto & Cecilia Baeza, “The Syrian Uprising and Mobilization 
of the Syrian Diaspora in South America”

Sinan Antoon, ”Reading César Vallejo in Arabic”

Roosbelinda Cárdenas & Hiba Bou Akar, “Writing about Violence”

Christina Civantos, “The Afterlife of al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia in Contemporary Arab and Hispanic Narratives”

Relevant articles from the back catalog

Hisham Aidi, “Juan Goytisolo: Tangier, Havana and the Treasonous Intellectual” (from MER 282, Spring 2017)

Cecilia Baeza, “Palestinians and Latin America’s Indigenous Peoples” (from MER 274, Spring 2015)

Hisham Aidi, "‘Let Us Be Moors’: Islam, Race and ‘Connected Histories’" (from MER 229, Winter 2003)

Milton Jamail, “Bahbah, Israel and Latin America” (from MER 150, January/February 1988)