In his piece, “On the Coloniality of Being,” Nelson Maldonado-Torres acknowledges the existence of les damnés, los dalmados, the damned, who are “the subject who cannot give because what he or she has has been taken from him or her.” (Maldonado Torres. P. 19.) This idea can be further extended to encompass the lives of Latin Americans, who have had even the most fundamental aspects of human identity stolen and stripped from them through colonization. The legacy and supremacy of Western colonialism is not dead; instead, it has transformed and normalized into a more sinister complexity that controls everything from labor, to the basic evolution of knowledge. Today, however, this man-made phenomenon can be addressed and combated through decolonial philosophy. Decolonial philosophy is an evolving strand of philosophy which questions the domination of Western thought on Latin American knowledge, and it can be applied to the US by disconnecting Latinx identity from a Western scope, and by challenging the legitimacy of US political practices in the southern hemisphere.
As expressed by Maldonado-Torres, decolonial philosophy emerged from a turn in the 20th Century. Decolonial philosophy is a new path of philosophy which puts into question the dominance that Europe has wielded on culture, society, politics, but more importantly, on knowledge. Decolonial philosophy, “introduces questions about the effects of colonization in modern subjectives and modern forms of life as well as contributions of racialized and colonized subjectives to the production of knowledge and critical thinking.” (Maldonado-Torres. P. 22-23.) Decolonial thinking took hold in Latin America, and was a way to affirm that Western European models of thinking are not universal ones. This strand of philosophy accompanies ideas of liberation, and hopes to voice the concerns and the pain of the colonized, whose identity-- and even the narrative and validity of their experience-- has been manipulated by the mainstream influence of Euro-American philosophical thought.
In the US, there are many complexities that accompany questions of identity and its association with race and nationality. For example, American thought has enforced the myth of the, “American model,” in which American citizenship is directly linked with an English-speaking, heterosexual, able-bodied, white male. This is the evolution of the European model, and its normalization as a comprehensive standard is detrimental to POC, WOC, disabled people, and anyone who does not meet these criteria.
As a Mexican-American with full US Citizenship, I sit on the periphery of American identity because I am not a reflection of this myth. I am not, and will never be, fully “American,” because of my skin, my heritage, and even my accent. Here, decolonial philosophy can be applied by exploring a new basis for identity in early schooling, that is not racialized to keep people of color on the fringes of community. Decolonial philosophy is a push for new means of education, and in the US, it should take the form of “ethnic studies,” courses presented in elementary schools. Instead of perpetuating a learning culture where Latinx identities are not taught about, and are kept in the shadows of this country through selective historical teachings, decolonial philosophy would argue for immersive, diverse teaching that would acknowledge the effects of colonialism and North/South relations on the foundations of Latin American identity.
Furthermore, because decolonial philosophy is interlinked with notions of liberation, the political and economic vice-like grip the United States has on Latin American nations must be addressed. Maldonado-Torres writes, “the decolonial attitude...demands responsibility and the willingness to take many perspectives, particularly the perspectives and points of view of those whose very existence is questions and produced as insignificant.” (Maldonado-Torres. P. 23.) When it comes to North/South relations, the experiences of Latin nations have always occurred in a paternalistic context because of institutional forms of legislative domination like the Monroe Doctrine, like the Washington Consensus, like NAFTA and CAFTA, which stem from American imperialist thought processes and American overt militarization.
In his piece, “A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy,” Ramon Grosfoguel states, “Their economic and political systems were shaped by their subordinate position in a capitalist world-system organized around a hierarchical international division of labor.” (Grosfoguel. P. 23-24.) Decolonial philosophy understands that Latin American nations did not have the opportunities to develop, to democratize, to become as advanced as Western ones because it was their labor being exploited. Under the triads of coloniality, myths about race and gender and labor have all been constructed by the West to keep Latin America in a place to be dominated, and the consequences of these ideological constructions are present in the poverty, political instability, and general inferiority complexes experienced by most Latin American countries.
For years, in elementary school, kids are taught that colonialism ended when Mexico and every other Latin American nation declared its independence and drafted their constitutions. However, colonialism and its destructive nature live on. As a Latin American woman, I’m realizing that colonialism is a ghost still haunting our homes; it is the way in which we are still picking at wounds, always wondering why they’re taking so long to heal. Colonialism is the graveyard of my family, of my history, and we are still burying bodies, still making gravestones for the parts of ourselves that Western ideologies want to erase. Colonialism is present-tense, and decolonial philosophy hopes to address the myth that colonialism is legacy. Through reforms in education, and the analysis of Euro-American constructions that have perpetuated the injustices of capitalism, this strand of thinking aims to evolve in real time, and disentangle Latin American identity from inferiority complexes. Decolonial philosophy not only addresses the pain of the damned, but it gives us a way to save ourselves.
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