its cousin dependencia, as Eurocentric, they replace demonization of US imperialism with demonization of European colonialism, and they have shifted the stakes in the global confrontation between the peoples of the Global South and the predatory forces of world capitalism onto the cultural terrain. Colonialism still refers back to the sixteenth century, but the ethnocidal culture and the epistemicide of that period is projected forward to the present and the word is applied to almost any structural power relationship. Latin America’s social polarization is conceived in binary racialized terms, perpetuated by cultural inauthenticity and a colonialist modernity inspired by ‘Europe’.
It cannot be denied that the decolonial has captured the spirit of the times. Their disinterest in economics mirrors the abandonment of the ‘neoliberal’ free market ideas by white nationalists in the United States and illiberal democrats in Europe, and the science-denying, COVID-negating ‘anti-globalists’ surrounding the current Brazilian president. But the decolonial, lacking the radio and TV stations and the billionaire funders to confront those machines, shies away from the politics of the street or the ballot box and confines itself to the podiums of academia.
COVID has arrived as if sent by the merchants of culture war to provide the most dangerous of battlefields the region has known since the Conquest itself, which brought an epidemic that killed 90 per cent of the indigenous population. More murderous than all the twentieth century revolutions, and counter-revolutions, the pandemic has not only revealed cruel inequalities of class and race in the light of day. It has also revealed intractable cultural rifts and has shown that these do not follow ethnic, let alone racial, frontiers. Rather they divide different concepts of religion (those who claim to know God and his will from those for whom religion is tradition and an ethos) and different epistemologies (those who trust science from those who trust only what they themselves are able or willing to see and hear). Today’s denialists are as guilty as the colonial invaders and, in response to those who think that adherence to indigenous knowledge and belief systems stands in contradiction to modern science, I have yet to hear that any are to be found among indigenous peoples, their leaders, their shamans or their healers. Denialists doubt the authority of modernity in the form of science, yet in the name of a perverted notion of modernity disguised as predatory development, they attack indigenous physical and cultural survival. The decolonial denounces modernity for its destruction of indigenous knowledge and the imposition of Eurocentric science, yet today’s ‘Eurocentrics’ seek to destroy indigenous societies in the name of science-scepticism while leaders of indigenous peoples look to the science of climate change and biodiversity, and of course to vaccination, to defend themselves.
As we have known ever since the founding of development economics in the post-war period, Latin America desperately needs a redistribution of income and wealth. By now, it is widely recognized that racial exclusion and gender inequality were missing from the reformisms of that time. But gender and race are neither precisely comparable nor stable categories, as Rogers Brubaker found in his sharply insightful Trans (Brubaker 2016). Brubaker was surprised to find that the two words have, so to speak, changed places, notably in the United States: whereas it was for a long time thought that race is a ‘construct’ while gender was taken to be a stable objective category, it was increasingly being claimed that race was neither a construct nor a matter of self-assignment, whereas gender had become much more fluid and a matter to some extent of personal choice. This controversy will come to the fore when we discuss the role of judges and committees in deciding whether Brazilian university applicants qualify for quota places reserved for blacks.
My argument in the coming pages is that women are a force in indigenous and Afro-descendant movements, and the advance of their feminism should continue to spearhead the undoing of structures of racial exclusion. Movements in defence of indigenous groups and Afro-descendant populations and of women’s movements ultimately look to universal values of citizenship and human rights and thus do not offer arguments in support of the decolonial denigration of human rights or citizenship as ‘Eurocentric’ or, worse, ‘neoliberal’. Gender cuts across – intersects – the most extensive range of social cleavages and, as the more universal category, it should lead the way in conjunction with classic measures of redistribution and with vigorous punishment of racial and sexual discrimination.
London
April 2021
Acknowledgements
My thanks go first and foremost to Maxine Molyneux whose unfailing encouragement has guided this project from its ragged beginnings as a short polemic to its present incarnation. I dedicate this book to her, and also to the memory of Guillermo O’Donnell whose unique combination of imagination and good sense inspired me and many others, and whose loss I still feel acutely.
I am extremely grateful to Fiona Wilson who read an early draft and, apart from encouraging me to continue, has also given some very sage and welcome advice.
Jean Khalfa generously gave precious time, enabling me to draw on his unparalleled command of the life and work of Frantz Fanon. Mónica Moreno and Rachel Sieder also gave generously of their time, and their detailed comments saved me from several errors of fact and judgement.
Julie Coimbra, moving spirit of the Cambridge Centre for Latin American Studies, has been willing to help in so many ways, especially during the COVID months.
Many other people have helped me, sometimes without even realizing it, by pointing to ideas or sources or stories that found their way into the narrative. Among them I thank especially Antoinette Molinié, Carlos Bolomey, Christian Gros, Claudia Dary, Dawn Ades, Fabiola Bazo, Fernando Calderón, Joanne Rappaport, Libia Tattay, Luis Vazquez†, Mara Polgovsky, Marjo de Theije, Mónica Moreno, Raphael Lehmann, Richard Chase-Smith, Sarah Radcliffe, Sian Lazar, Simon Susen and Véronique Boyer.
At Polity Press I want to thank John Thompson and Neil de Cort for their sustained encouragement and patience.
List of Abbreviations
CDI –Comisión para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas (National Indigenous Peoples’ Development Commission – Mexico; formerly INI, later INPI)CGEIB –Coordinación General de Educación Intercultural y Bilingüe (General Coordinating Body for Intercultural and Bilingual Education – Mexico)CIDOB –Confederación de Pueblos Indígenas del Oriente, Chaco y Amazonía de Bolivia (Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Oriente, Chaco and Amazon Regions of Bolivia)CIESAS –Centro de Investigación y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (Advanced Research and Teaching Centre in Social Anthropology – Mexico)CIS–INAH –Centro de Investigaciones Superiores del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Advanced Research Centre of the National Institute for Anthropology and History – Mexico)CLACSO –Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American Social Science Council)CONACAMI –Confederación Nacional de Comunidades del Perú Afectadas por la Minería (National Confederation of Peruvian Communities Affected by Mining)CONADI –Comisión Nacional de Desarrollo Indígena (National Indigenous Development Commission – Chile)CONAMAQ –Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas de Qullasuyu (National Council of the Ayllus and Markas of Qullasuyu, that is, of the land and territorial councils of the Qullasuyu, or southern region of the former Inca Empire)CRIC –Consejo Regional Indígena del Cauca (Cauca Valley Regional Indigenous Council – Colombia)CSUTCB –Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (United Confederation of Unions of Rural Workers of Bolivia)EIB –Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (Intercultural and Bilingual Education)ENAH –Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Anthropology and History School – Mexico)EZLN –Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista National Liberation Army)FLICA –Festival Literário Internacional de Cachoeira (Cachoeira International Literary Festival)FLN –Front de Libération National (National Liberation Front – Algeria)ICMBio –Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação
