Decolonial Feminism

in Abya Yala
 GLOBAL CRITICAL CARIBBEAN THOUGHT

Series Editors:

Lewis R. Gordon, Professor of Philosophy, UCONN-Storrs, and Honorary

Professor, Rhodes University, South Africa

Jane Anna Gordon, Professor of Political Science, UCONN-Storrs

Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Professor of Latino and Caribbean Studies,

Rutgers, School of Arts and Sciences

This series, published in partnership with the Caribbean Philosophical

Association, turns the lens on the unfolding nature and potential future shape
of the globe by taking concepts and ideas that while originating out of very
specific contexts share features that lend them transnational utility. Works
in the series engage with figures including Frantz Fanon, CLR James, Paulo
Freire, Aime Cesaire, Edouard Glissant and Walter Rodney, and concepts
such as coloniality, creolization, decoloniality, double consciousness and la
facultdad.

Titles in the Series

Race, Rights and Rebels: Alternatives to Human Rights and Development
from the Global South
Julia Suárez Krabbe
Decolonizing Democracy: Power in a Solid State
Ricardo Sanin-Restrepo
Geopolitics and Decolonization: Perspectives from the Global South
Edited by Lewis R. Gordon and Fernanda Bragato
The Existence of the Mixed Race Damnés: Decolonialism, Class,
Gender, Race
Daphne V. Taylor-Garcia
The Desiring Modes of Being Black: Literature and Critical Theory
Jean-Paul Rocchi
Decrypting Power
Edited by Ricardo Sanín-Restrepo
Looking Through Philosophy in Black: Memoirs
Mabogo Percy More
Black Existentialism: Essays on the Transformative Thought of
Lewis R. Gordon
Edited by danielle davis
A Decolonial Philosophy of Indigenous Colombia: Time, Beauty, and Spirit
in Kamëntšá Culture
Juan Alejandro Chindoy Chindoy
Blackening Britain: Caribbean Radicalism from Windrush to
Decolonization
James G. Cantres
Systemic Violence of the Law: Colonialism and International Investment
Enrique Prieto-Rios
 Decolonial Feminism
in Abya Yala
Caribbean, Meso, and South
American Contributions
and Challenges

Edited by
Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, María
Lugones, and Nelson Maldonado-Torres

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www​ rowman​.com

6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2021 by Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, María Lugones, and Nelson

Maldonado-Torres

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any elec-
tronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages
in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9781538153116 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538153123 (electronic)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
 Contents

Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America:

An Introduction ix
‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, María Lugones, Nelson
Maldonado-Torres

PART I: DECOLONIAL FEMINISM: A CRITIQUE OF

EUROCENTERED REASON 1
Chapter 1: Gender and Universality in Colonial Methodology 3
María Lugones‌‌
Chapter 2: Toward a Genealogy of Experience: Critiquing the
Coloniality of Feminist Reason from Latin America 25
‌‌Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso and Translation by Carlos Ulises
Decena and Geo Maher
Chapter 3: ‌‌‌Constructing Feminist Methodologies from the
Perspective of Decolonial Feminism 43
‌‌Ochy Curiel and Translation by María Elizabeth Rodríguez

PART II: DEMOCRACY, CITIZENSHIP, AND PUBLIC

POLICIES: A DECOLONIAL FEMINIST CRITIQUE 61
Chapter 4: The Question of the Coloniality of Democracy 63
‌‌Breny Mendoza and Translation by Rafael Vizcaíno
Chapter 5: The Limits of Civic Political Imagination: Sexual
citizenship, Coloniality, and Antiracist Decolonial Feminist
Resistance 83
‌‌Iris Hernández Morales and Translated by Shawn Gonzalez

vii
viii Contents

Chapter 6: ‌‌Public Policies on Gender Equality: Technologies of

Modern Colonial Gender 107
Celenis Rodríguez Moreno‌‌‌ and Translation by Verónica Dávila

PART III: DECOLONIAL INTERPRETATIONS OF

VIOLENCE TOWARD WOMEN 129
Chapter 7: ‌‌Notes on the Coloniality of Militarization
and Feminicidal Violence in Abya Yala 131
‌‌‌‌Sarah Daniel and Norma Cacho and Translation by Jennifer
Vilchez
Chapter 8: The Killing of Women and Global Accumulation: The
Case of Bello Puerto Del Mar Mi Buenaventura 155
‌‌Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma and Translation by Carolina Alonso
Bejarano

PART IV: INDIGENOUS COSMOLOGIES, STRUGGLES

FOR LAND, AND DECOLONIALITY 173
Chapter 9: This Knowledge Counts! Harmony and Spirituality in
Miskitu Critical Thought 175
‌‌‌Jessica Martínez-Cruz
Chapter 10: Fighting for Life with Our Feet on the Ground:
Anticolonial and Decolonial Wagers from Indigenous and
Campesina Women in Mexico 201
‌‌Carmen Cariño Trujillo and Translated by Amanda González
Izquierdo
Chapter 11: Resisting, Re-existing, and Co-existing (De)spite the
State: Women’s Insurgencies for Territory and Life in Ecuador 217
‌‌Catherine Walsh

References 245
Index 267
 Decolonial Feminism in the
Caribbean, Meso, and South America
An Introduction

‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌ uderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, María

Y
Lugones, Nelson Maldonado-Torres

It has been more than a decade since the emergence of decolonial feminism
and much has happened since then. The Latina philosopher María Lugones
played a major role in the formation of the movement through her creative
combination and expansion of (a) Black and U.S. Third World women of
color theorizing, including her own, (b) the analysis of the impact of colo-
nialism in precolonial societies, particularly in Africa and Abya Yala, and
(c) the work of an array of scholars and activists from different parts of
Abya Yala, including Lugones herself, whose work explicitly thematizes and
explores multiple dimensions of coloniality and decoloniality. Also central
in Lugones’s formulation of decolonial feminism was a critical assessment
of intersectionality as a category for analyzing the imbrication of oppres-
sions and the possibilities of building coalitions, and the creation of and par-
ticipation in international and transdisciplinary spaces in the U.S. and Latin
America dedicated to flesh out the multiple dimensions of the coloniality of
gender and of decolonial feminism.1

INITIAL ENGAGEMENTS

Lugones put together the first network dedicated to explore the idea and
project of decolonial feminism in around 2006. This network included
participants from Bolivia and Mexico, as well as from two universities in
ix
x Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

the United States: the Center for Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture at
Binghamton University, where Lugones led a group of doctoral students
and faculty working on the topic, and the Department of Ethnic Studies
at the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley), where Nelson
Maldonado-Torres and Laura Pérez convened and facilitated discussions
with doctoral students.2 Binghamton and UC Berkeley had already become
important sites in the formulation of U.S. women of color feminism—with,
for example, Lugones’s presence at Binghamton and that of figures such as
Laura Pérez and Norma Alarcón at UC Berkeley—, and in the elaboration of
modernity/coloniality—e.g., Quijano taught regularly at Binghamton in the
1990s and visited Berkeley multiple times in the early 2000s.3 UC Berkeley
also became the scenario of various events and conversations on coloniality
at that time, including the 2005 conference organized by Maldonado-Torres
entitled “Mapping the Decolonial Turn,” which included the participation
of Lugones, Quijano, Chela Sandoval, Sylvia Wynter, Paula Moya, Walter
Mignolo, Linda Martín Alcoff and others.4
Lugones also participated in meetings and conversations organized by
the Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudios, Formación y Acción Feminista
(GLEFAS), founded by Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, who invited Ochy
Curiel and Breny Mendoza, among others, to be part of the group. GLEFAS
emerged in around 2006–2007 as a space to promote the formation of
counter-hegemonic voices in Latin American feminism. Other scholars and
activists who have joined the group since then include Aura Cumes (Maya),
Carmen Cariño (Ñuu Sabi), Bienvenida Mendoza (Afro-Dominican), María
Teresa Garzón (Colombian) and Lugones herself. After a restructuring,
GLEFAS conceives itself today as a “weave” that combines and connects
individual and collectives of intellectuals and activists. GLEFAS has been the
principal engine for the exploration and dissemination of decolonial feminism
in Latin America and the Spanish speaking Caribbean.5 Different from the
typical white and mestiza-led spaces of mainstream Latin American femi-
nism, GLEFAS was led by racialized women and by some mestiza women
who were committed with feminist forms of analysis that were not centered
on gender and that explored, instead, the ways in which racialization and rac-
ism as well as the various forms of domination in our contexts play a major
role in the understanding of the condition of women in lesser positions of
privilege.
The historical conditions that led to the formation of GLEFAS also help
to explain the context that prompted an impressive adoption of decolonial
feminism among an important number of Black, Indigenous, and racialized
women in Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, including the
contributors to this volume. Latin American feminism was highly invested
in the opposition to dictatorships in the region during the 1970s and 1980s,
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xi

and at least part of the movement had committed with popular struggles. The
spread of feminism among women from these sectors led to an increasing
awareness about the limits of a feminist discourse based on the unity among
apparently “equal” women with a common objective. There were episodes,
initially sporadic, through the 1980s when the differences in power and inter-
ests among white-mestiza women leaders and other women who came from
racialized sectors that had been negatively impacted by the republican proj-
ects of the left and the right became obvious and when they were contested.
Indigenous movement uprisings of the late 1980s and through the 1990s, the
land-back movements among Indigenous and Afro-descendent peasants, and
the increasing consolidation of an anticolonial, anti-imperialist and antiracist
movement through the 1990s and the start of the new century had a strong
impact in various spaces of the feminist movement. They led some feminists
to look for a different genealogy and different analytical concepts to do our
work. GLEFAS was founded as a space where to continue these pursuits.

AN ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION IN LATIN AMERICA

When Lugones’s article entitled “Colonialidad y género” was published in

2008 it immediately became obvious that it offered what many of us were
looking for: a new type of analytic, a new lexicon that would allow us to
develop our own voice and to express a series of political intuitions, grounded
on our unspeakable experiences of negation and wounds, that we were barely
prepared to outline in a coherent form.6 Since then, we called ourselves
decolonial feminists and took on the task of educating new and previous gen-
erations of feminists in this framework while also recovering the voices of
combative women who had been hidden and invisibilized by the hegemonic
feminism. We became actively involved in the production and amplification
of the analytical and theoretical bases of decolonial critique at the interior of
feminism, as well as in the production of new conceptualizations grounded
on an understanding of domination in terms of fusion.
Decolonial feminists in GLEFAS and a few other spaces in Latin America
and the Caribbean were then for the most part a small amount of racialized
and mestiza women who were committed with antiracist, anticapitalist,
Indigenous, and antiforced heterosexuality struggles. At that time, like it is
still the case now, they—including many of the contributors in this anthol-
ogy—entered the spaces for discussion within the feminist movement to
denounce hegemonic feminism and the hegemonic positions within the
sexuality movement. These positions interpreted “the women problem” and
represented our struggles from the position of their white and white-mestizo
privilege. In spite of the different trajectories from which they came and
xii Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

experiences that they had, and in spite of their differences, they were moti-
vated to produce other approaches to interpretation, different from those
of the most widespread feminism; other approaches to interpretation that
were based on their experiences and those of other women in less privileged
conditions.
In Latin America, they were not more than ten at the start, but they were
able to open a path that was useful for many others who came after them.
From very early on, they faced an opposition to recognizing their capacity
to produce knowledge and were accused of dividing the movement, of being
a danger for feminism and of falling into essentialism. They, including most
of the contributors in this volume, were labeled a transient trend. But their
and our persistence, passion, insistence, and rage rose to the occasion, as
well as their working capacity, and their faith in themselves, the forgotten
and rejected. Also important was their recognition of the contributions of
the few women who, coming from the unauthorized worlds of modernity,
were able to enter academic spaces, produced critical thinking, and write for
publications that would soon be forgotten if it were not because their desire
to remember them. The value that they gave to these other women’s words
and their warnings was so great that they stubbornly insisted in reading them,
listening to them, making them known to other women, and attempting to
extend their legacy.
It was in this way that decolonial feminists convened internal spaces of
debate and participated alongside other feminist groups in university halls
and activist spaces even at points when their work was barely valued. They
published anthologies with their own thinking and that of other women who
they found on the same path. They did research and called for the need to
do new studies and interpretations of the fundamental themes of feminist
theorizing. They wrote, wrote, and wrote. They offered interviews and spoke
at universities when they open their doors to us. They used social media as
a training method, facing the common racist and imperialist positions of the
known and established feminism. They committed themselves/ourselves
with the ample formation of an antiracist and decolonial consciousness at
the international level. They accompanied and relieved the voices of partners
who were involved in a wide array of struggles in the territories. They cited
each other and introduced their contributions to the training programs that
they created and to those where they were invited. They sought to demon-
strate the value of their wagers and of the knowledges that were rejected by
dominant feminist theorizing. They produced research projects that showed
the academic dependency of their southern feminisms. They committed with
the propagation of the voices that had been and continue to be silenced and
deauthorized by feminist knowledge.
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xiii

Now more than ten years after the call to shape decolonial feminism the
movement has increased exponentially. From permanent disqualification and
epistemic violence, little by little we have been transitioning into a movement
with more legitimacy, but, above all, into a moment where we can start to see
the specific impact of the movement in new generations and in the construc-
tion of new forms of leadership among women, lesbian, and non-normative
identities of gender and sexuality who are part of or descend from negatively
racialized groups. Decolonial feminism today is more valued internationally
and has an impact on the feminist movement inside multiple nation states and
at the international level.
Today’s decolonial and antiracist feminists are frequently found in univer-
sity hallways and they demand training programs that are less Eurocentered.
They also organize study groups outside of the official programs and
denounce the epistemic violence and racism within the university and within
the scholarship of gender and sexuality. Decolonial feminists plan, develop
and search for resources to finance other kind of research with new themes,
approaches, and methods that challenge the most known basic tenets of clas-
sic feminist research and theorizing.
There are certainly risks with the dissemination and incorporation of deco-
lonial feminism and of decolonial thought at large in universities, even in
small collectives, since universities are heavily institutionalized spaces that
are driven by liberal imperatives and neoliberal interests that preserve and
further solidify the modern/colonial order. Anyone who wishes to contribute
to anti-racist and decolonial feminist work must constantly work with others,
inside and particularly outside of the university, to avoid reproducing the elit-
ism, arrogance, and entitlement that has often been part of academic knowl-
edge production in universities. This is as true in the Global North as in the
Global South, which points to the importance of collaborations and solidarity
among decolonial feminists everywhere, crossing geographical boundaries
and linguistic differences. We hope that this book contributes to these efforts
and that it is read and studied with this epistemic and political goal in mind.
Much more needs to be done: we hope to generate not only critics and read-
ers, but also and most importantly co-participants.
If decolonial feminism has entered new spaces in universities in the north
and south, it clearly never left its presence among communities and collec-
tives outside the university. Antiracist feminist organizations have emerged
in multiple places and they are formed by Black, Indigenous, Romani,
Asian, and East Indian peoples as well as migrants and many others. These
organizations have incorporated the analyses and contributions of decolonial
feminism. In these and other ways, antiracist struggle has been strengthened,
revitalized, and radicalized. This has also led to modifications in main-
stream feminism, which has been forced to introduce changes in its public
xiv Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

representations, its discourses, and its agenda. We are no longer a small,

reduced, and unacknowledged group that remains at the entrance or the mar-
gins of the feminist field without saying anything. We have grown and we are
maroon women, men, and two-spirit peoples, as well as combative subjects,
collectives, and communities who are willing to reclaim our place in the pro-
duction of knowledge and to challenge and debate about the meanings of the
world that we want and to which we belong.
We cannot forget that decolonial feminism had been slowly coming to be
before it emerged as a project. We cannot forget the antecedents that made
its emergence possible, and the bases on which its basic tenets and goals are
founded. As it has been mentioned, there are two important traditions of criti-
cal thinking that combined and served as a foundation to our interpretations:
Black and women of color feminist theorizing, and Latinx, Latin American,
and Caribbean thought, particularly in its most recent decolonial turn. For us,
women of color feminism becomes decolonial when we struggle against and
when we seek to end the coloniality of gender. An explanation of the colonial-
ity of gender is then necessary to understand decoloniality.

HUMAN/NON-HUMAN, COLONIALITY OF GENDER

AND THE COLONIALITY OF FEMINIST REASON

The violence of the kingdoms of Castille and Leon against the peoples
they found in the sixteenth century in what they called America, and what
we call, following a great number of Indigenous and increasingly also
Afro-descendent organizations, Abya Yala, cemented and further transformed
a criteria for the classification of people on the basis of their supposedly supe-
rior or inferior nature. The prior and subsequent incursions and aggressions
of kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula, including what we call today Spain
and Portugal, in Africa also played a major role in the fabrication of race as a
paradigm at the center of defining relations among world habitants at a global
scale—the so-called civilization mission of Western modernity.7 Indigenous
people in Abya Yala were designated as Indians, and indigenous people of
Africa, particularly those who were taken from their lands and subjected to
racial slavery, were called Negroes.8 The Christian kingdoms of what we call
Europe today began to increasingly recognize themselves in their process of
expansion as civilized and white subjects and communities with their own
family of nations. They also considered themselves naturally superior to
the rest of humankind. Thus, only Europeans could be truly human, in the
account of humanity that was beginning to be drawn by philosophers like
Hobbes and Descartes.
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xv

The distinction between the human and the non-human became central
to the expansion of Europe to Abya Yala including the Middle Passage and
later incursions and conquest in other parts of the world.9 The non-human
included what the Europeans called “nature.” Nature was thought to include
earth, rivers, plants, animals, all to be used for the benefit of Man. Feminist
science historians have identified and commented on the use of sexist and
rape metaphors in influential Western scientists such as Francis Bacon.10 The
basic idea was that the earth should be raped for the benefit of man. Quijano
referred to this violence that encompassed all there was and the relations
among everything as “the coloniality of power.”11 Since animals do not have
gender, Lugones referred to the dehumanization of the peoples of Abya Yala,
as the “coloniality of gender.”
The coloniality of gender is about violence against body, mind, soul, heart,
spirit. Because the coloniality of gender is the violence of poverty for the
non-white women of Abya Yala, the violence of land dispossession, the vio-
lence of disruption of peoples and communities, of ignoring, de-authorizing,
destroying the peoples’ knowledges, including ritual knowledge, because
of its complexity that weaves capitalism, racism, colonialism and hatred
of non-white women, the coloniality of gender endured. The violence of
the coloniality of gender is also the process of deteriorating, with an aim
to destroy, peoples’ selves, their relations to each other and to the habitat.
Indigenous and African people’s labor produced surplus labor for capital
and exploited Indigenous peoples and African peoples, often to death. The
reduction of people to animals, a thorough dehumanization, conceived them
as highly and brutally sexualized, but their sex and their sexual difference
was not socialized, it was not gender. Gender became one of the marks of the
human. The Indigenous and African peoples of Abya Yala were thrown out of
civil society, without recourse to the protection of government, including the
law. The law negated their humanity. This helps to explain why today, in the
U.S.A. Black, Indigenous and women of color do not exist in the law as such.
Intersectionality and decoloniality are two philosophical understandings
of the dehumanization of the peoples of Abya Yala. It is clear that given the
coloniality of gender, non-white women, women indigenous to Abya Yala
and Afro-diasporic women are not women in the sense that white women are
women. Yet, for dominant, white, hegemonic feminisms “woman” is a uni-
versal. At the intersection of woman and race, we understand the falsehood of
that universal. It is Black, Indigenous and women of color, non-white women,
and their struggle against the coloniality of gender in all its multidimensional-
ity that is a fundamental moment of decoloniality. Several of the papers in this
volume engage this aspect of decolonial feminism.
The second aspect of decolonial feminism is the struggle against the mod-
ern/colonial gender system and the coloniality of gender, none of which was
xvi Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

part of the forms of social organization of the peoples of Abya Yala, who for
the most part ancestrally lived in relations of equality and reciprocity as well
as in non-heterosexualist communities. This includes contestations of and
opposition to social organizations premised on the centrality of gender, most
notably against the nation-state, which are different from forms of relations
organized on cosmologies that understand the plurality of beings in a habitat
as seeking a balance between equivalent opposites. Unless the opposites
are conceived as equivalent, no balance could ever be possible. Passing on
the cosmologically grounded systems of thought, the languages, communal
practices of creating life, fluid understandings of sexuality, communal under-
standings of the self in relation are all as constitutive of decoloniality and
of decolonial feminism as the struggles against the violences of coloniality,
the nation-state, and capitalism. Several of the papers in this collection of
decolonial feminist work exhibit this second aspect of decolonial feminism.
In addition to the combination of the borderlands experience where histo-
ries of migration and racism meet, and the Latin American and Caribbean cri-
tique of Eurocentrism and modernity/coloniality, for many of us who received
the proposal of decolonial feminism in Latin America and the Caribbean,
the ideas and analysis of decolonial feminism connected with long standing
concrete concerns. For us, decolonial feminism amplified the epistemic bases
for the understanding of the “women’s problem” through the acknowledg-
ment and legitimation of the local traditions of thinking in our lands and our
willingness to engage in the dialogue of knowledges.
Decolonial feminism has thus walked between the academic space, and
the experience in activism, social movements and in struggles for land that
are connected to world and ways of understanding and gathering knowledge
that are generally considered illegitimate. Decolonial feminists have become
bridges and facilitators in the crossing of specialized critical thought and
knowledge otherwise. From this crossing, from this “being in between,” have
emerged our most central questions and contributions.
Decolonial feminists have gone over old themes in feminist theorizing.
They have provided new approaches and interpretations on the basis of
historical experiences in the Global South. For example, we have reopened
the debate about patriarchy and the category of gender, which are two key
concepts in feminist analysis. Our critique of dominant approaches to patriar-
chy and gender is based on the decolonial feminist suspicion of universalist
analyses that reduce the historical experiences of women and people with
non-normative sexualities in the extra-European world to the history of
Europe. The concept of the “Colonial/Modern Gender System” shows the
connections and the inseparability of the history of the concept of gender and
patriarchy with the history of race, class, and the emergence of the project of
modernity.12
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xvii

Revealing and analyzing the complicity between dominant feminism and

Western modernity, as well as the commitment of the former to the latter, has
been another important task. Thus, Espinosa-Miñoso’s project of critically
revising the feminist program has been fundamental in demonstrating the
coloniality of feminist reason, and it has made it possible to unveil this com-
plicity in the foundations of explanation and the program of liberation of the
best-known feminisms. This task has led to the critical revision of the entire
conceptual framework of feminist epistemology. As part of this effort, explor-
ing the question of intersectionality and the need to overcome the fragmented
understanding of the world and domination has been a singular contribution.
These critical analyses have led to the review of other important theses in
feminist theory such as the old explanation of the sexual division of work
and the constitution of the two spheres of life that would separate the two
sexes: the private world/public world split. This split is the basis of an entire
analysis about care, as well as about sexual, physical and psychological vio-
lence toward women. This analytic serves as a ground for models of action
and social and institutional policies that pretend to be universal. However,
recent work inspired by decolonial criticism refute the fundamental ideas
that sustain this analytic, showing its limits and discussing its final goals. The
contributions in this anthology are part of this work.
Sexual domination is another important theme in decolonial feminist
analyses and contributions. These analyses have been demonstrating that
domination on the basis of dimorphic sexual difference, that is between men
and women, has not been eternal or universal. It also functions differently in
the sphere of the human and the sphere of the non-human, or dehumanized.
We have also emphasized the various ways in which Black women have pro-
vided historical responses to the problem of sexual domination in modernity/
coloniality that have been ignored or silenced by feminism.
Another important topic in our reflections has been the question about
the models for research and knowledge production, and as part of this, the
relation between the academy and local knowledges. This also involves a
return to a revision of feminist epistemology, which in turn is part of a criti-
cal analysis about the reproduction of the coloniality of knowledge and the
construction of truth on the basis of the propagation and imposition of ideas
elaborated by a small group of women with race and class privilege.
There is also the question of the control of the historical representation of
the world by modern institutions and the role of feminism in perpetuating it.
This theme has been at the core of various initiatives by researchers, activists,
and artists interested in aesthetics and visual production.
There are naturally many more themes. This introduction and anthology
aim to offer a glimpse into a rich variety of approaches, voices, questions,
and contributions that are part of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx
xviii Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

decolonial feminism recently, with an emphasis in the Spanish speaking parts

of Abya Yala. Nine of the eleven chapters in this anthology were exclusively
translated from Spanish for publication in this anthology. This volume will
therefore provide access to a large array of decolonial feminist questions,
concerns, sources, and projects that are not well known in English speaking
contexts. We are aware that much more work is needed to foment the kind of
intellectual production that we envision: more translations of work in Spanish
to multiple other languages other than English, and more translations from
English and other languages to each other, including Spanish. This volume
shares a multiplicity of analyses and a new bibliography for many readers
of this text. We also want to make more Black, Indigenous, and decolonial
feminist bibliography in English accessible in Spanish and in the many other
existing languages that precede Spanish in Abya Yala. This volume is not
the end of any analysis, but a point of juncture as well as an invitation to
continue making our critical analyses accessible across borders and linguistic
differences. We invite you to respond to the gaps that you will undoubtedly
find here with translations and analyses that seek to build connection among
related struggles against coloniality.
This volume is divided in four parts, the first of which is entitled:
“Decolonial Feminism: A Critique of Eurocentered Feminist Reason.” This
part focuses on major debates, key concepts, as well as on genealogical
and methodological aspects that help frame the decolonial feminist field of
discourse and intervention. Here we find contributions by María Lugones,
Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, and Ochy Curiel. In the opening chapter of the
anthology, María Lugones argues that while feminisms of women of color
have made major advances in the critique of the universality of the category
“woman,” that it is necessary to become critical of the category of gender
itself and of its supposed universality.13 Failure to do so can lead to a reasser-
tion of Eurocentrism and colonialism even in work that could otherwise be
described as anti-or decolonial. Lugones’s alternative is not relativism, but
a material and discursive critique of the many ways in which gender oper-
ates as a system that is intrinsically connected to capitalism, racism, and the
nation-state, among other areas of modern/colonial power. Gender reproduces
differences between men and women, while it serves to establish a prob-
lematic norm and aspirational goal to subjects regarded as lesser humans or
non-humans. Gender remains a possibility or a temporary, inconsistent, and
conditional attribute of colonized subjects in the modern world. Coloniality
includes gender as a strategy of control; decolonization, in turn, cannot mean
the equality of gender relations, but the overcoming of coloniality and the
gender system itself. This opens up a myriad of possibilities for the unfold-
ing of the multiple forms of resistance that can inform decolonial coalitions.
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xix

Multiple are the ways and subterfuges in which coloniality can reproduce
itself and compromise the work of decolonization. Like Lugones, Yuderkys
Espinosa-Miñoso is concerned about the reproduction of coloniality in the
assertion of the universal meaning of “woman” and in mainstream feminism.
Espinosa-Miñoso turns her attention more specifically to Latin American
feminism. She employs a genealogical approach to reveal ways in which
Latin American feminism has not only repeated problematic tendencies of
mainstream feminism, but also reproduced lethal dimensions of the colonial-
ity that is embedded in the very idea of Latin America. While Latin America
is sometimes taken as an “other” to the West and modernity, and therefore
as an alternative to the dominant West, a closer look exposes Latin America
as for the most part a project of “white-mestizo elites.” It is then not rare
to find a systematic elision of the voices, questions, and contributions from
Black and Indigenous women in the project of Latin American feminism.
These voices happen to be among the most critical of the alleged universal-
ity of feminism, of its commitment with Eurocentric rationality, and of Latin
Americanism.
A frequent question in explorations of decolonial thinking is the relation-
ship between postcolonial theory and decoloniality. Ochy Curiel explores this
question in the context of offering decolonial feminist methodologies. While
she notes that postcolonial criticism and postcolonial feminist analysis remain
for the most part caught within the poststructuralist linguistic turn, she none-
theless finds important contributions in it, such as Stuart Hall’s concept of
disengagement. For Curiel, disengagement includes a more critical distance
of the poststructural linguistic turn than what we tend to find in postcolonial
approaches, and a serious effort to recognize the epistemic viability and
relevance of knowledges produced by Black and Indigenous peoples. Curiel
does not primarily refer to scholars and other experts who happen to be Black
and Indigenous. For her, a decolonial feminist methodology has to consider
scholars and activists whose work aims to respond to challenges and ques-
tions that are central to Black, Indigenous, and Third World peoples. This
does not mean that any theory that is formulated by a committed scholar or
activist of color is devoid of problems or issues. Curiel warns us, for instance,
about certain limits of intersectionality theory, and proposes ways to over-
come these limits from the point of view of decolonial feminism. At stake is
a recognition of the formative role of coloniality in the creation of structures
of oppression in modernity.
The second part of the anthology, “Democracy, Citizenship, and Public
Policies: A Decolonial Feminist Critique,” explores the impact of coloniality
and the coloniality of gender in the field of law, in democracy, and in public
policies about women. Here Breny Mendoza, Iris Hernández Morales, and
xx Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

Celenis Rodríguez Moreno mobilize decolonial feminist concepts, analytical

frameworks, and sources to address these issues.
A central tenet in the idea of the superiority of Western civilization is
that the West is the home of the one and only viable conceptualization of
democracy, and that every political authority on the planet needs to adopt it
and apply it. Breny Mendoza finds this issue to be one of the most dangerous
dimensions of the coloniality of Western reason, and a major area of concern
for decolonial feminism. Failure to critically engage Western ideals, such as
democracy, can easily lead feminists to reproduce an imperial attitude in face
of non-Western societies.
Like Espinoza-Miñoso, Mendoza believes that genealogy is an impor-
tant conceptual exercise to unveil the coloniality of Western modernity. In
this case, for Mendoza, genealogy takes the form of exposing the mythical
character of the very concept of the West and of is political theories. She
draws from the important work of historians such as John M. Hobson and
David Cannadien, who offer a critical view of the triumphalist conception
of Western history. However, Mendoza calls for more radical and complete
critical examinations that consider the relationship between the West, Abya
Yala, and Africa, instead of solely the East. The critique of a failure to engage
in a more expansive and global critical examination of the myth of Western
civilization also applies to feminist studies of Western civilization, which
question the absence of a reflection on gender in major critical genealogies of
the West, but that also tend to ignore the relevance of Abya Yala and Africa.
Once Abya Yala and Africa are brought to the picture, then, it is impossible to
refer to gender and civilization without acknowledging coloniality. Mendoza
uses this argumentation as a basis to introduce an examination of colonial-
ity and of the coloniality of gender in accounts of democracy and in social
contract theory.
Along with the ideas of reason, civilization, and democracy, citizenship
is yet another key concept in the conceptual arsenal of modernity/colonial-
ity. Citizenship is a formal indication of belonging in a modern nation-state.
It serves to acknowledge and protect certain rights. While citizenship is
supposed to apply equally to everyone who receives it, the story of each
nation-state shows how incomplete and variable the recognition of the rights
that come with citizenship is. Struggles to obtain a better recognition of
rights and citizenship are oftentimes taken in critical scholarship as unquali-
fied positive contributions to the search for liberty and happiness, yet, Iris
Hernández Morales warns us that struggles for citizenship can easily repro-
duce the colonial dimensions that serve as foundations for the nation-state.
Hernández Morales takes the LGBTI movement’s struggle for rights as an
example of this serious problem and demonstrates how decolonial antiracist
feminist practices and genealogies of power, gender, and sexuality in the
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xxi

modern world contribute to a conceptualization of struggles that avoid com-

plicities with coloniality.
If social movements for citizenship and rights can reproduce coloniality,
one can anticipate the multiple ways in which institutionalized feminism
can also do so. Institutionalized feminism refers to offices, departments, and
ministries for women’s rights and other sites that focus on developing public
policies on women and gender. In her contribution to the volume, Celenis
Rodríguez Moreno’s offers arguments and concepts to understand the various
ways in which public policies on women and gender often reproduce the pat-
terns and roles that they apparently seek to challenge. In her acute analysis of
a large array of documents that seek to address women’s rights in Colombia,
she finds that policies of gender equality tend to work as “technologies of
modern colonial gender.” Problematic binaries of gender, the public/private
distinction, and the divide between center and periphery are reproduced in
documents that continue subordinating the most vulnerable among women
and creating impediments to advance decolonial responses to injustice and
right abuses in the state.
The third part of the anthology, entitled “Decolonial Interpretations of
Violence toward Women,” consists of two contributions—one by Norma
Cacho and Sarah Daniel, and the other by Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma—that
offer fresh and distinct but also related critical analyses of violence toward
Black, Indigenous, and impoverished mestiza women. These chapters chal-
lenge traditional interpretations of violence toward women in feminist
theorizing, exploring the linkages between coloniality, militarization, extrac-
tivism, and feminicides in the living conditions and struggles of mainly
racialized and impoverished women.
The struggles for rights fail to capture the grave condition of the most
vulnerable women in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than a struggle
for rights, many of them struggle for survival and for land in largely milita-
rized contexts. Militarization in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as
in the United States and other former colonies, one could argue, cannot be
divorced from practices of removal and control of indigenous populations and
undesirable sectors in the colonies. In their contribution, Norma Cacho and
Sarah Daniel, help us to understand the phenomenon of feminicide in rela-
tion to the coloniality of military organization and violence. Viewed in this
way feminicide is not a specific affront to women, but part of a way to shape
the world according to logics of colonialism and capitalism. What is at stake
in acts like feminicide and rapes of Black and Indigenous women is both,
the very existence as well as the collective and individual dignity of these
women, and the continued reproduction of a colonial order of things in Latin
America and the Caribbean. Recognition of these conditions, lead Cacho and
Daniel to propose a “decolonial and antiracist lesbofeminist” approach as a
xxii Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

way of “defending the territories—body, culture, and land—” of Black and

Indigenous women and peoples.
Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma also pays attention to the concrete forms of
brutal violence and murders of women in the ordinary heavily militarized
context of Buenaventura, Colombia. Lozano Lerma’s contribution provides
a lucid description of the systemic and systematic forms of violence in the
Colombian Pacific region with a strong Afro-Colombian presence. So-called
development projects led to the increase in the militarization of the region,
leading to forced mobilizations of Afro-Colombians and severe deterritorial-
izations. With land and life in peril, so it happened with the communal forms
of living in the region. Killings, rapes, and tortures became instruments of
deterritorialization. Feminism, therefore, has to take into consideration and
respond to the politics of development and to the effects of militarization in
the decimation of communities and the appropriation of land. Justice, repara-
tions, and decolonization need to be a central part of any such response.
In the fourth and last part of this volume, we find works by Jessica
Martínez-Cruz, Carmen Cariño, and Catherine Walsh, that explore “Indigenous
Cosmologies, Struggles for Land, and Decoloniality.” With these chapters,
which focus on Nicaragua, Mexico, and Ecuador respectively, the critique of
Eurocentered feminism that appears at the start of the volume reappears but
now in the form of a sustained engagement and exploration with Indigenous
cosmologies and movements. Attention to Indigenous cosmologies as well
as to Afro-descendent views of community and ancestral relations with land
demonstrates the existing plurality of epistemologies and forms of organiza-
tion that inform decolonial feminist proposals and interventions. These chap-
ters also highlight the indispensable work of “women” who struggle to live
in and who fight for decolonized community formations.
In her contribution, Jessica Martínez-Cruz carefully considers both, the
important perspectives and knowledges of Indigenous peoples, and the insti-
tutional practices that maintain them at the margins, including Eurocentered
feminist analyses. She focuses on the identification and treatment of Grisi
Siknis, an apparent mental condition and disorder that affects some members
of the Indigenous Miskito communities in Nicaragua, particularly girls, boys,
and young and adult women. Martínez-Cruz compares the Miskito approach
to understand Grisi Siknis with that of the primarily Mestizo experts that were
sent by the government to the region. She identifies and critically analyzes
the instrumentalization of Indigenous knowledge by the Nicaraguan bio-
medical system and the state’s naturalization of the point of view of scientists
and anthropologists. Here one can observe coloniality at work, not directly
through the military, but through the health institutions of the state and
through the university and scholarly disciplines. Martínez-Cruz’s also under-
scores the need of engaging Indigenous healers as producers of knowledge
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xxiii

and leading figures in the search for solutions, and of recognizing that vio-
lence against Indigenous and Black women is inseparable from other forms
of state violence, a point that is at the center of the concluding two chapters.
If violence that specifically or overwhelmingly targets Indigenous, Black,
and impoverished Mestiza women cannot be separated from other forms of
violence that affect entire communities or other sectors in those communities,
then, it should not be surprising that these women’s struggles tend to target
multiple and interconnected forms of violence. In her contribution to this vol-
ume, Carmen Cariño Trujillo shares analyses that are part of a dialogue with
her Indigenous and campesina sisters in Mexico. She focuses on Indigenous
and campesina leadership in struggles for the defense of lands and territories.
Expulsion from lands and territories is part of the violence that Indigenous,
Black, and campesina face as women and as part of their communities.
As a result, their struggles often involve the creation of community-based
women’s organizations against extractivism, dispossession, and pillage.
Indigenous and campesina women have taken important leadership roles, not
only in Mexico but through Abya Yala, in opposition to the destructive forces
of coloniality and its nexus with state “development” policies and neoliberal-
ism in the region. In doing so, they have tended to affirm a thought and praxis
of defending life in community and with harmony with the environment.
In the twenty-first century, most states in Abya Yala have been plagued
with either the legacies of dictatorships, the “adoption” of developmentalist
and neoliberal models, or both, none of which can be understood without the
role of the United States and other organizations such as the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund in the region. Since the 1990s, increasingly
visible forms of resistance to this order emerged, including renewed calls for
different forms of socialism, which led to the formation of explicitly “left”
governments in states like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. A long-time
decolonial intellectual militant in the United States and Ecuador, Catherine
Walsh, takes Ecuador’s “progressive” state to task, showing the ways in
which leftist politics can also reproduce the coloniality of state violence. Most
importantly, Walsh demonstrates the continued insurgency and leadership
of Indigenous and Black communities in Ecuador and other parts of Abya
Yala in face of their struggle against left-and right-wing Mestizo creole elites
in the region. Indigenous and Black women often lead these organizations,
which tend to reflect major tenets in decolonial feminism, including, to echo
Walsh, an acute awareness of systemic epistemic and military violence, and
the search for robust decolonial intercultural formations that seek to affirm
processes not only of resistance but also of re-existence—and therefore a re-
writing of norms and roles on the basis of collective wisdom and commitment
with the unfinished project of decolonization.
xxiv Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

It becomes clear in the various contributions listed so far that decolo-

nial feminism exceeds the interest in the critique of patriarchy and gender
discrimination. They reveal that there is a danger in pursuing these forms
of critique by themselves: reproducing imperial attitudes and coloniality.
Instead, for the editors and authors in this volume decolonial feminism has
to do with living and building community in spite of and against the violent
interventions of the coloniality that is part of state institutions, including the
university, systems of public health, and the military, as well as of hegemonic
private enterprises and supra-state organizations. We hope that these pages
contribute to the growth and continued inter-weaving of decolonial attitudes,
ideas, theories, and projects in Abya Yala and the Global South, particularly
the souths in the north and south.

Acknowledgments and Dedication

We cannot conclude this introduction without expressing profuse thanks to
the translators and editorial assistants who made this possible. Most of the
translators were—and some of them still are—doctoral students at Rutgers
University, New Brunswick, when they translated six of the eight chapters
in this volume that were originally written in Spanish. All of these students
and former students had been part of seminars that explored different areas
of decolonial thought and are doing research in this area. They are Carolina
Alonso Bejarano (now at the University of Warwick), Shawn González
(now at Princeton University), Amanda González Izquierdo, María Elizabeth
Rodríguez, Jennifer Vilchez, and Rafael Vizcaíno (now at DePaul University).
They were joined by Verónica Dávila—a doctoral student at Northwestern
University—, Carlos Ulises Decena—faculty member at Rutgers University,
New Brunswick, and Geo Maher—visiting faculty at Vassar College—in the
translation of the other two chapters.
The translations of the chapters that were originally written in Spanish
went through at least two rounds of revision. Man Kaplan, Kelly Roberts,
and Alexandria Smith participated in the first round, while Amanda González
Izquierdo took a lead in the second. Amanda González Izquierdo and Rafael
Vizcaíno served as research and editorial assistants, a process that also
involved reviewing the chapters for style and content. Maldonado-Torres
actively coordinated and contributed to the translations, the comments on the
translations, and the review of the notes and bibliography. He also translated
Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso’s contributions to this introduction.
Clearly, the principal note of thanks goes to each of the contributors for
not only making their work available for publication in this anthology but
for working with the editors in responding to their comments—particularly
to María Lugones’s careful and sometimes extensive comments to their
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xxv

chapters—and to the comments and recommendations that they received

from the translators and the reviewers. All the authors and the editors feel
privileged that we embarked in this project with María, our maestra and
now ancestra, who we will always remember and to whom we will remain
grateful. In her absence, we counted with the extraordinary assistance of two
of her closest companions and interlocutors to make sure that this anthology
was published: Joshua Price and Gabriela Veronelli. We thank them for their
dedication and generosity.
The idea for this book originated in the context of discussions among
Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso and Nelson Maldonado-Torres about the impor-
tance of creating connections between decolonial and anticolonial feminist
work in Latin America and Africa. Espinosa-Miñoso was working on a selec-
tion and translation of works by African anticolonial and decolonial feminists
in Spanish for circulation among activists and engaged scholars in Latin
America, and Maldonado-Torres was contributing to debates about the decol-
onization of the university in the context of the 2016 Rhodes Must Fall and
Fees Must Fall protests in South Africa, where questions about gender and
intersectionality were prominent. They wished to help bridge the gap between
anticolonial and decolonial feminist perspectives in Abya Yala and Africa,
particularly among movement-based struggles, and by extension between the
Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Caribbean and Americas, including
the United States, where monolingualism unfortunately continues to domi-
nate in the academy.
While Espinosa-Miñoso and Maldonado-Torres had only met each other
recently, each of them had a close relationship and an ongoing dialogue
with María Lugones, who first coined and sought to develop the concept of
coloniality of gender and the project of decolonial feminism. They had also
participated with Lugones in various spaces dedicated to explore the signifi-
cance and potential of decolonial feminism in Latin America and the United
States respectively.
Lugones was the ideal additional editor, an invitation that she quickly
accepted. Her dedication to the curation and production of this volume was
highly significant, as she carefully read and commented on the great majority
of the works published here. Lugones also helped to craft the first draft of
this introduction, and she was developing one of her most recently published
writings for inclusion in this volume when she suddenly and unexpectedly
passed away.
María’s passing was and remains a profound loss for us and so many oth-
ers who have learned from her through her teaching and writing through the
years. María was a maestra and an interlocutor like no other. She was pas-
sionately invested as well as intellectually and politically committed to the
consistent, rigorous, and systematic exploration of ideas and practices that
xxvi Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

challenged the coloniality of gender and that promoted decoloniality in all its
forms. For this and so many other reasons, this book is dedicated to the mem-
ory and life of our dearest friend, teacher, and accomplice, María Lugones,
precursor and mother of decolonial feminism and co-editor of this anthology.
She did and so far has done more than anyone else to build bridges between
decolonial feminists in the north and south of Abya Yala and the Global
South, a goal to which this book seeks to contribute. María’s prints remain in
each of the pages in this publication as an infinite breadth that moves us and
reminds us of her words “I don’t want to talk for you, but with you.” Thanks
for your leadership, passionate engagement, and commitment with the cause
of the rejected, the dehumanized, the colonized, the atravesadxs and of Black,
Indigenous and women of color in struggles for liberation, maestra! We close
this introduction with what you shared with us about it:

“This anthology is a crossing toward creating a bond, from Abya Yalan

women to South African sisters involved in the fight against violence in its
complexity: the violence against our bodies, against our possibilities as cre-
ators of knowledge, of art, of music, of a world in which we can know the
experience of a freedom from violence, an experience that becomes an endur-
ing one. That is why we fight.
All the work in this collection is cognizant of the struggles that Abya Yala
takes on against the coloniality of gender, a pervasive violence that takes
many forms. Every author is committed to a new understanding of the situ-
ation of Afro and indigenous women’s, and of their own perception of the
situation of unbearable harm inflicted on them. In taking up the struggle from
a decolonial perspective in their analysis, the authors shift, often very explic-
itly, from a reality of domination that declares Afro and indigenous to be not
quite human, not capable of agency, not capable of analysis and direction to
the reality they inhabit as their own persons and as members of people who
share a history with them. The reality of violence thus moves in two planes.
On the one hand in their living in the violence that is one of the faces of domi-
nation. The other is that of understanding their world and situation of violence
with the knowledges from below, from their people, a world in which they
are active agents. . . . Because when seen from below, women can see a deco-
lonial account of their situation and of their possibilities, the authors can be
followed by the readers in their creative proposals. A sense of communality
and traditions of active engagement are among what many of the women have
even when the violence used against them seems insurmountable. The col-
lection gives a rich sense of what is happening in Abya Yala, both the horror
and the liberatory turns. A theorized understanding of decoloniality is present
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xxvii

in each piece. There are differences in the understandings which enriches our
discussions of what decoloniality can be.”

NOTES

1. Early essays that demonstrate these various elements include: María Lugones,
“Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System,” Hypatia 22.1 (2007);
María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise 2.2
(2008); María Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypatia 25.4 (2010). It is
worth mentioning in this context that Lugones published “The Coloniality of Gender”
in a special web dossier on “Gender and Decoloniality” that she curated for the open
access web publication project Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise (Vol. 2, dossier
2, 2008). The dossier includes a preface by Walter Mignolo, a short introduction by
Lugones, and three additional articles by Isabel Jimenez-Lucena, Madina Tlostanova,
and Svetlana Sharikova. Notable in this web dossier is the global and international
scope of the reflections, which include reflection on Abya Yala, Africa, Morocco and
Southern Spain, Russia and the (post) Soviet “Orient,” and Central Asia. Lugones’s
work was also central in the publication of a volume on gender and decoloniality
that Mignolo put together and published in 2008, also with widely international
contributions by Lugones, Jiménez-Lucena, and Tlostanova. It is also notable here
that Lugones participated in the translation to Spanish of “Coloniality of Gender” for
this edited volume and made changes in the process of translating the article, includ-
ing the title. This chapter, “Colonialidad y género: hacia un feminismo descolonial”
[Coloniality and gender: toward a decolonial feminism] is clearly part of the path that
led from the 2008 to the 2010 publications in the journal Hypatia, demonstrating the
multilingual context within which decolonial feminism emerged and the generative
role of translation in it. This multi-lingual approach was crucial for Lugones too,
who dedicated herself to learn Aymara. See María Lugones, “Colonialidad y género:
hacia un feminismo descolonial,” trans. Pedro DiPietro with María Lugones, Género
y descolonialidad, ed. Walter Mignolo (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Signo, 2008):
13–54.
2. The impact of this network dedicated to exploring decolonial feminism is
evident in publications such as a special dossier in the journal Qui Parle, in which
the editor, Marcelle Maese-Cohen, who was then one of the doctoral students who
participated in the decolonial feminism group at UC Berkeley, seeks to place postco-
lonial studies in conversation with decoloniality. Maese-Cohen pursues a connection
between decolonial feminisms as a category, and Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak’s con-
cept of planetarity. Maese-Cohen built from the international scope that was already
part of the conversations about decolonial feminism, which are evinced, not only
in the network that Lugones put together with participants in Bolivia, Mexico, and
the U.S. but also in Lugones’s engagements with the work of the African feminist
Oyeronke Oyewumi and her attention to coloniality and the coloniality of gender
as a global pattern of power that is constitutive of the globalized project of Western
modernity. That Lugones saw decolonial feminism as a project with global relevance
xxviii Decolonial Feminism in the Caribbean, Meso, and South America 

was also already clear in the open access special dossier on “Gender and Decoloni-
ality” that Lugones put together and published in 2008 for Worlds and Knowledges
Otherwise. See, María Lugones, “Introduction,” Worlds and Knowledges Other-
wise, 2.2 (2008): https:​//​globalstudies​.trinity​.duke​.edu​/projects​/wko​-gender; Marcelle
Maese-Cohen, “Introduction: Toward Planetary Decolonial Feminisms,” Qui Parle:
Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 18, no. 2 (2010). The international scope of
decolonial feminism and the impact of Lugones’s teaching in Binghamton, including
the involvement of her students in the decolonial feminist network, is also transparent
in Pedro DiPietro, Jennifer McWeeny, and Shireen Roshanravan, eds. Speaking Face
to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones (Albany: SUNY Press, 2019).
It is also important to note that Lugones was working in at least two anthologies with
a clear international component when she passed away: this one, which focuses on
bridging the gap between decolonial feminist scholarship in different parts of Abya
Yala, including the gap between English and Spanish, and a second one on various
forms of feminism in the Global South, which Lugones was preparing for the book
series “On Decoloniality,” co-edited by Walter Mignolo and Catherine Walsh.
3. For an account of several activities at Binghamton University and UC Berkeley
that played an important role in the development of modernity/coloniality and deco-
loniality as a transdisciplinary theoretical framework, including the emergence of the
conceptualization of the project as a “decolonial turn,” see Nelson Maldonado-Torres,
“El caribe, la colonialidad, y el giro decolonial,” Latin American Research Review
55.3 (2020), and Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “The Decolonial Turn,” New Approaches
to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power, ed. Juan Poblete (London: Routledge,
2018).
4. Maldonado-Torres later served as guest editor of two special issues that included
papers originally presented in the “Mapping the Decolonial Turn” conference. For an
introduction to the special issues see Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Thinking Through
the Decolonial Turn: Post-Continental Interventions in Theory, Philosophy, and Cri-
tique—An Introduction,” Transmodernity 1, no. 2 (2011), and Maldonado-Torres,
“Decoloniality at Large: Towards a Trans-Americas and Global Transmodern Para-
digm (Introduction to Second Special Issue of ‘Thinking Through the Decolonial
Turn’),” Transmodernity 1, no. 3 (2012).
5. One of the most important anthologies on decolonial feminism in Spanish is
largely the product of GLEFAS in collaboration with supporters and participants at
the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the press of the Universidad del
Cauca in Colombia, among others. See Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Diana Gómez
Correal, and Karina Ochoa Muñoz, eds. Tejiendo de otro modo: feminismo, episte-
mología y apuestas decoloniales en Abya Yala (Popayan, Colombia: Editorial Uni-
versidad del Cauca, 2014).
6. As it was pointed out earlier, “Colonialidad y género: hacia un feminismo
descolonial” was not only a translation but also an expansion of the 2007 article
“Coloniality of Gender” that anticipated ideas that were later going to appear in the
2010 “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” In this section the “we” refers principally
to the individual women and collectives in Latin America and the Spanish speaking
 Espinosa-Miñoso, Lugones, and Maldonado-Torres xxix

Caribbean that adopted the concept of decolonial feminism to identify their work and
who called themselves decolonial feminists.—Eds.
7. See, among others, Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,”
Cultural Studies 21 2–3 (2007): 168–178; Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,
Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” Nepantla: Views from South 1.3 (2000); Sylvia
Wynter, “1492: A New World View,” in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Ameri-
cas, ed. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex Nettleford (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1995): 5–57.
8. See Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,”; Aníbal Quijano, “Que tal raza!”
Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales 5. 1 (2000).
9. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power”; Wynter, “1492.”
10. See, for example, Sandra Harding, The Science Question on Feminism (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986); Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowl-
edge? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991).
11. See Quijano, “Coloniality of Power.”
12. See María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender Sys-
tem,” Hypatia 22, no. 1 (2007).
13. Note that Lugones was in the process of revising this chapter when she passed
away. We are reproducing the published version of the chapter in Critical Philosophy
of Race with some notes indicating the paths that Maria was taking when revising it.
See María Lugones, “Gender and Universality in Colonial Methodology,” Critical
Philosophy of Race 8, nos. 1–2 (2020).
 PART I

Decolonial Feminism: A Critique

of Eurocentered Reason

1
 Chapter 1

Gender and Universality in

Colonial Methodology

María Lugones‌‌

I understand the concept of gender as a central organizational element of the

modern neoliberal nation-state that continues to be at work.1 Anibal Quijano
argued that since the sixteenth century race became constitutive of the con-
quest and colonization of Abya Yala. A central element of the racialization of
the peoples of Abya Yala, which came to include Africans who were sold and
worked as slaves, was their reduction to subhuman beings, referred to in the
chronicles, for example, of Diego Encinas, Francisco López de Gómara, Jose
de Acosta among others as animals, beasts, primitives. Sylvia Wynter has
argued that Africans came to be later conceived as the missing link between
apes and human beings.2 I have argued elsewhere that the gender system that
came to the colonies, organizing the relation between European (later white)
human beings as part of what Quijano calls the modern colonial capital-
ist global model of power, included a veiled sinister turn: neither male nor
female Indigenous people nor people kidnapped from the African continent
and enslaved were considered and treated as gendered. Since animals are not
gendered, gender became one of the marks of the human. The Spanish Crown
itself found Indigenous people not to be human. The lack of gender was left
implicit; my argument demonstrating the coloniality of gender unveils it.3
This piece goes further than the above summary of my views. It takes up
another important aspect of the question of decolonization: What allowed
for resistance by the peoples of Abya Yala against their violent conquest and
colonization by the Europeans? Here I shift from naming them colonized and
slaves and think of them as, and name them as, the peoples of Abya Yala,
including the peoples of the Caribbean and the southern and central regions:
Mapuches, Onas, Sirionós, Chimú, Aymara, Diaguita, Tehuelche, Chiquitano,

3
4 Chapter 1

Tlaxcala, Aztecs/Mexicas, Maya Quiche, Guaraní, Toba, Chiquitano, Taino,

Yanomami, Carib, Pueblos such as Taos and Santa Clara, the Anishinaabe
in Canada, and the people of the British colonization of what came to be
called the United States such as the Cherokee, Sioux, Piute, Muskogee,
Cheyenne, Crow, Comanches, Osage, and many others who were not wanted
for their labor, as were the Africans and the peoples from the South, but for
their land. Under the “Indian Removal Acts” across the United States, the
Sioux and many others were removed from their lands and forcibly relo-
cated to urban sites without any place of their own. Despite these genocidal
attempts, the Indigenous peoples of what came to be called the United States
resisted continuous attempts at extermination by settler colonials and the
ferocious destruction by the armies of the colonizing government and of
the “independent Americans.” Those armies included people who were kill-
ers and admired by the settlers and the rest of the white population, such as
Andrew Jackson, nicknamed “Indian killer,” who became the president of his
country and is called by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a “genocidal sociopath.”4
African peoples were bought or abducted into a new economy away from the
Mediterranean through the triangular Atlantic trade—European ports, African
ports, Caribbean ports and back—were also dehumanized and bestialized in
all of the aspects central to the idea of race. When Bartolomé de las Casas
argued that the peoples indigenous to the colonial territories were human, he
did not assert the same for the African peoples. In time, he came to believe
in their humanity.
The Haitian rebellions showed at many levels how mulattoes and Africans
had different interests in the plantations and different relations to the planta-
tion masters. Marronage also showed different attitudes and possibilities to
those of the Indigenous peoples.5 The development of new religiosities and
language expressed not just their intelligence, creativity, and their fundamen-
tal rejection of slavery but also their capacity to create communal relations.
The brutality of their treatment by the colonizer, the clearest expression
of a non-seminal economy, attempted to thoroughly dehumanize enslaved
Africans. Slavery presented the captured and enslaved Africans with only one
alternative: “to work to death in a plantation without respite or to struggle
for their freedom and independence from a small society.”6 “The plantation
system has two poles: the planter and the captive subjected to slavery. [The
planters] do not distinguish between bambaras, mandingas, ibos, ashantis, or
congos. The 1804 State limits the origin of the population of African origin to
the color of their skin. The planter is not interested in the knowledges brought
from Africa.”7 As they did struggle, the relation to whites is well captured
by Casimir’s reference to articles 6 and 7 of the Constitution of 1846: “All
Africans or Indians and their descendants are entitled to be Haitians [. . .]. No
whites, whatever their nation, will be able to acquire the condition of being
 María Lugones 5

Haitian.”8 Casimir’s central position is, “The Haitian nation is the result of a
cultural synthesis, which is the product of the collective exercise within the
same medium of those diverse features from Africa’s many ethnicities.”9
Both the Indigenous and the African peoples were constituted culturally by
preconquest societies of great age. Their encounter with the Europeans placed
them in systems of coloniality so that now something crucial becomes clear:
By seeing coloniality, one sees the territories and the peoples in the double
visions/realities: the ways of being, relating, and knowing of Indigenous and
African peoples and the ways of knowing, being, and relating of Modern
Europeans in relation to the inhabitants of Abya Yala whom they reduced to
beings inferior by nature. By seeing coloniality, one sees both the reduction
and the resistance of people instead of dependent nation-states. By seeing
coloniality, one comes to see the resistance exercised by Indigenous and
African peoples as a complex fabric that includes transculturation as well as
the keeping of some beliefs masked through the process of taking Catholic
liturgy and imbuing them with their own religious meaning.10 This point
connects to my previous work in Pilgrimages: the coloniality reveals more
than one reality.11 The reality of the dominators who imagine the peoples to
be animals, beasts, dangerous cannibals and aggressive sexual beings; the
realities of those who see and resist the coloniality within it and are as resis-
tors constituted by the cultural, relational, cosmological shared practices,
values, knowledges that animate their resistance. Though they change, the
changes are not out of the creative control of their constitution as peoples of
Abya Yala.
This piece offers a decolonial methodology that is frankly political in its
confrontation with feminism in its universal face. Yet, I offer it as a conver-
sation with social scientists, feminist philosophers, and theorists to think
together about gender. I mean gender, the concept, not specific instances
of use or unexamined common usage in which “gender” has become inter-
changeable with “women” in many contexts. Here, I am questioning the
universality tied to the concept, not the characteristics of particular gender
systems. I am not questioning that the modern/colonial capitalist gender
system is an oppressive, variable, systemic organization of power, I am just
arguing that it is not universal, that is, that not all peoples organize their
relations in terms of and on the grounds of gender. This gender system that
applies most forcefully to bourgeois white women has been resisted, but this
resistance continues to retain two egregious faults: (1) it does not address the
conditions of subordination and oppression of non-white women,12 and (2)
it fails to offer another humanity, another sense of being a woman, if such
a being should continue to exist under that name. That is, it fails to offer a
sense of being a woman who does not follow the positions and aspirations of
white men, but rather is a being different, distant, and at odds with whiteness,
6 Chapter 1

capitalism, and neoliberalism; a sense of being a woman that arises from an

understanding of and dealing with the travails, difficulties, and possibilities
of the times we live in. They fail to conceive the possibility that other peoples
have knowledges that constitute “woman” and the “human” with very differ-
ent, appreciable meanings.
Feminist anthropologists of racialized peoples in the Americas tend not to
think about the concept of gender when they use the term as a classificatory
instrument, they take its meaning for granted. This, I claim, is an example of
a colonial methodology. Though the claim that gender, the concept, applies
universally is not explicitly stated, it is implied. In both group and confer-
ence conversations I have heard the claim that “gender is everywhere,”
meaning, technically, that sexual difference is socialized everywhere. The
claim, implied or explicit, is that all societies organize dimorphic sexuality,
reproductive sexuality, in terms of dichotomous roles that are hierarchically
arranged and normatively enforced. That is, gender is the normative social
conceptualization of sex, the biological fact of the matter. The claim regard-
ing the necessity of gender in the organization of social, political, economic
life is sometimes justified or explained in terms of the nature of humans, their
experiences, and the nature of biological and social reproduction. No charac-
terization of particular social, political, economic, religious, or moral life is
given as necessitating gender given the assumed facts of sex or of reproduc-
tion. The claim is not about desirability of oppression but about a descriptive
fact: gender is a reality of social, economic, and political organization, though
the forms it takes are variable.
The position is stated briefly, for it is treated as obvious—“gender is
everywhere, of course.” It is the “of course” that betrays the universalism. It
is not a claim that results from a critical use of gender, the concept. Indeed,
to claim the necessity of gender is quite different from claiming the neces-
sity of sex. The latter, sex, is a given, assumed to be dimorphic as a fact. The
former, gender, is the socially necessary regulated version of sex, necessary
because sex needs to be regulated as the case of the colonized and enslaved
makes clear: without regulation sex is wild. Though variation among soci
eties is quite possible, gender is generally understood to take a normative,
dichotomous hierarchical form. The term “gender” was introduced into the
vocabulary of feminism and psychology with this meaning rather than the
prior grammatical one of the early 1970s. For example, in Spanish words
which end in “a” are feminine while those ending “o” are masculine. Thus,
ciruela and máquina (plum and machine) are feminine and cuadro and perro
(frame and dogtractor and color) are masculine.13 Before the 1970s there was
no sex/gender distinction, gendered social roles as well as biological marks
were thought to be natural.
 María Lugones 7

New thinking about gender has accompanied the critique of the binary
provoked by focusing on intersexuality, transgender, transsexuality, and the
introduction of “queer” as a non-binary understanding of gender. Yet, the
critique of the binary has not been accompanied by an unveiling of the rela-
tion between colonization, race, and gender, nor by an analysis of gender as
a colonial introduction of control of the humanity of the colonized, nor by
an understanding that gender obscures rather than uncovers the organization
of life among the colonized. The critique has favored thinking of more sexes
and genders than two, yet it has not abandoned the universality of gender
arrangements. So, given the critique of the binary, one can think of gender as
the socialization of reconceived sexual differences, remembering that not all
sexual differences have been unambiguously socialized.
In giving attention to gender, the concept, the direction of this piece is
to theorize the relation between the user of the concept and the one being
referred to as situated in particular geographies, times, and worlds of mean-
ing that permeate the structures and institutions of particular societies. My
focus on methodology is an attempt to offer a decolonial methodology to both
study colonized people who live at the colonial difference, but also to engage
in decolonial coalition. To see the colonial difference is to see coloniality/
modernity as the place the colonized inhabits and the situation of oppression
from which the colonized creates meanings that are not assimilated; meanings
that are not the “original” Indigenous meanings but new meanings that reject,
resist, and decry the coloniality/modernity relation and its logics. Thinking
about this direction, I need to answer the question I ask myself when I address
this task: Why am I spending so much of my time and intellectual energy
addressing a question that seems banal or misguided to people? Why am I
not happy with letting go and telling myself, “There is gender everywhere, of
course. I see it. It is obvious”?

WHY METATHINK GENDER

I can state why I am keen on scrutinizing gender in this direction briefly:

1. Indigenous and African people in the Americas were denied humanity,

and thus, gender.
2. Their struggle against the denial of humanity did not lead to acceptance
of the colonial culture’s gender system by Indigenous women and
women of African descent.14 Even when their ways transculturated, the
“hard core,” as Sylvia Marcos calls it, that is, the cosmological ground-
ing, continued to have vitality, particularly in their ritual knowledge.15
8 Chapter 1

3. If we take seriously that the denial of humanity of the people of Abya

Yala and the people of the African diaspora is still very much with
us, then using gender when entering into a study of people who have
been dehumanized is to deny or hide the colonial denial resulting in a
double denial.
4. Understanding the group or people under study with gender on one’s
mind, one would indeed see gender everywhere, thus imposing an order
of relations uncritically as if coloniality had been completely successful
both in erasing other meanings and in people having totally assimilated.
The claim that “there is gender everywhere” thus becomes a necessary,
if unfounded, denial of my claims.
5. The emphasis on the human/non-human dichotomy was accompanied
by the imposition in Abya Yala and other colonized territories of the
structural differences of modern/colonial life. Differences understood as
dichotomies in the organization of life in terms of the knowledge, eco-
nomics, politics, institutions, and practices of modern/colonial thought.
Paradoxically the emphasis on the human/non-human dichotomy also
emphasized the logic of quantities and of the same. The logic of quanti
ties is in the language and understanding of the production of profit/
surplus value of those who produce it, where it is produced, what is its
value, a non-seminal economy where seminality conceives an economy
“uniformly tinted by sentiment,” in which the individual accepts regula-
tion by the community. Labor is sacred.

Through these logics, the people of the African diaspora and the colonized
of Abya Yala have come to be conceived as not-quite-human. Elizabeth
Spelman clearly expresses the logic of the same as she says, “[W]hite kids
like [her] were taught that blacks are just like whites but that whites are not
like blacks.”16 The same and yet fundamentally different.
Without further development, these five reasons will probably be dis-
missed as contrary to good reason and very much in need of argument, so I
begin by elaborating them. It is in relation to the process of argumentation
that I welcome dialogue. Understanding the forms of organization and rela-
tions that people who were and continue to be racialized had and have in their
own habitat is a complex task that requires the intelligence, energy, and desire
for interculturality of many people. It is a necessary task toward decolonial
coalition and toward the study and learning of people with a history of colo-
nization and racialization. In what follows I provide my reasoning and further
clarification in correspondence to the points raised above. The unveiling of
the relation between “gender,” colonization, and race is a decolonial task, one
that I pursue because I continue to be interested in questions of liberation,
and possibilities for those of us who have survived in spite of the coloniality.
 María Lugones 9

REASONING AND CLARIFYING POINTS 1–5

Point 1
Spanish and Portuguese colonizers perceived, conceived, and treated the
peoples in the Americas as non-human. What I think of as the “modern, capi-
talist, colonial gender system” includes the conception of the human of early
European modernity, thoroughly developed during the sixteenth, seventeenth,
and eighteenth centuries. In this system, the human was separated from the
non-human emphatically. “Nature” is non-human in this view and it is to be
treated so as to reap the greatest benefits from it for the Man of Reason.17 To
the colonizers, the Church and the Crown, the people they encountered in
what they came to call América, after the Italian Amerigo Vespucci, were ani-
mals and so they were classified as inferior by nature to European men.18 As
animals, they could not be gendered, that is, they were not men and women;
they were like other animals classified as male and female only based on their
sexual organs.19 They were also property and, as property, useful bodies to be
bought and sold on the block.
In the fully developed understanding of man as human under this system,
it is rationality that is the central characteristic of humanity, and what enables
men to govern, to know, to separate the body and the mind. Because Rousseau
understood European bourgeois women as properly charged with the moral
education of children,20 and Hobbes understood them as instrumentally ratio-
nal,21 I think of bourgeois modern women as gendered and human, for moral
education is seen as a human task, and, most importantly, they are seen as
capable of reproducing the human, namely, the men of reason as well as capi-
tal, and during coloniality, also race. Even at a time when their reason was
not considered fully functional in the respects necessary for producing knowl-
edge and engaging in moral decision making, they were still considered able
to teach right-and wrongdoing to their children. Thus, the human/non-human
distinction plus the gendering of bourgeois European women made gender a
mark of the human heterosexual couple. This is what I call the “coloniality
of gender,” the dehumanization of colonized and African-diasporic women
as lacking gender, one of the marks of the human, and thus being reduced to
labor and to raw sex, conceived as non-socializable sexual difference—their
offspring also slaves from birth and thus not their own, as Hortense Spillers
says, the female slaves were denied mother right.22
This denial of humanity, or of full humanity, is still alive in the Americas.
People, both men and women, who are racialized with a history of colo-
nization are criminalized and denied authority, including the authority of
knowledge. They are taken to be ignorant of how to conduct themselves with
respect to the duties of citizenship, of the family, of health. They are also not
10 Chapter 1

considered rapeable, that is, their violation is not a crime. They were sexual-
ized as predatory animals—as females and males—given the recent sexual
dimorphic model. Thus they were males and females, not men and women.
The gender system introduced by the colonizers only constituted European
bourgeois men and women as gendered, their sexual difference socialized as
emphatically heterosexual. The sexual difference of the colonized was not
socializable; rather, it was understood as raw, animal biology, outside civil
society. Thus, gender became a human trait that was codified and normed in
the social, political, and economic structures of European modern societies.
However, gender did not become a category of thought, an a priori without
which the human could not be human for a thinker like Kant, like the neces-
sary relation between cause and effect.23 Indeed, Kant did not try or think it
valuable to derive gender through transcendental argumentation, even when
the experience of being gendered could not be separated from the lives of ani-
mals except through the pairing of men and women given the a priori concept
of being human in modern European eyes, outlined above.

Point 2
When someone is oppressed, particularly in the brutal ways that the colonized
and enslaved in the Americas have been oppressed, they resist. For human
beings not to resist the dire circumstances of being dehumanized, their ways,
practices, personalities, selves, ways of relation, access to cultural and shared
social backing, and practices of ritual knowledge would have been erased.
Not resisting means the person’s motivational structure must have been
undermined. It is to be expected that those who are in the process of being
disintegrated and feel it as something terrible will resist, even if in impercep-
tible ways to the oppressor. Indeed, the communal feeling of pain at the lashes
inflicted on a member of one’s oppressed group is a form of resistance that
does not issue from a calculated strategy.24
Foucault’s account of resistance coincides with my argument in thinking
that oppression calls resistance forth, but he misses what I think is crucial to
resistance.25 He does not see that the agency of the resistor in these cases is
what I call “active subjectivity,”26 a minimal form of agency that includes
habit, reflection, desire, the use of daily practices, languages, ritual knowl-
edge, a thinking-feeling way of decision making, which may not be part of the
meanings of the institutional and structural meanings of the society but may
be part of the meanings in the resistant circle. Thus, the meaning of the resis-
tance will be unintelligible to the oppressor and may be done with or without
critical reflection, but always without an understanding in common between
oppressor and oppressed. In the terrible encounter with the conqueror and the
colonizer, Indigenous and African resistors were fully formed as people in
 María Lugones 11

communities and worlds of sense. So, their resistance is thoroughly informed

by that constitution and by the communal circle of meaning that permits the
exercise of oneself as a person.
In her description of transculturation, Mary Louise Pratt tells us that
“though subjugated people cannot readily control what emanates from the
dominant culture, they do determine to varying extents what they absorb
into their own and what they use it for.”27 Transculturation speaks to the
multifaceted process in which hegemonic cultures influence subjugated ones,
in which subjugated cultures give up old and acquire new values and mean-
ings, and in which completely new cultural forms are created.28 The creation
of new cultural forms, then, needs to be understood through accessing the
process of the creation, the process of transculturation, rather than taking at
face value the organization of the social. Here questioning one’s locus will
disallow interpreting the new as acculturation. Transculturation always brings
in the shared culture, ways of life, ways of knowing, understanding of the self
in relation that are not static, rather they are always changing and transform-
ing the meanings of colonial, modern, capitalist structures of meaning.29 That
is, not passively taking those meanings in toto from the colonial direction.

Point 3
If something has been broken, to call it “whole” hides or denies the breakage.
Paradoxically, then, if a human being has been denied and continues to be
denied her humanity, that person has been made real as an animal in a version
of reality that is Western, colonial, and powerful. Thus, for a person from the
outside of her history of resistance to that denial of humanity to come into
her community and say, “You are human,” in the sense of “human” of the
version of reality controlled by power, will hide something since the denial
of humanity is itself being denied without the necessary move of joining the
resistance. That is, this person is just taking up the Western, modern, capital-
ist understanding of “human” and thus of gender.
When Sojourner Truth asked her famous and powerful question, “Ain’t
I a woman?,”30 she was uttering the question to a group of white women
going for the vote for white women. It was certainly clear, then, to Sojourner
Truth that “woman” is not a universal term. The used and abused body is
not socializable as that of a woman. Sojourner Truth interpellates the white
women powerfully, exploding the sound WOMAN with the meanings of her
body: her body is just as strong as a man’s, thus she is a producer of surplus
value, her body and work quantified. She also reproduces, but what issues
from her body is not hers, it is property, and the extremity of reaping her off is
that white women’s babies suckle the milk that should make her baby strong.
The white woman benefits from the black slave woman’s bodily productive
12 Chapter 1

coercion. So, is she a woman? How can the meaning of the word include her,
a quantity, productive, non-human? The desire for an organic creation of a
new meaning can be heard as an echo in her invasive interpellation. When
Fanon, in the inescapable split between black and white, asks whether he
is human, he calls for an alternative understanding of the human, since the
human/non-human distinction in the modern/colonial matrix of power denies
his humanity.31 Following that alternative understanding of the human, I am
also calling for a new understanding of human relations toward what Fanon
called for, a new humanity and thus new men and new women, or not neces-
sarily men and women but new people—gente—the peopled habitat.32 Gender
as a concept does not belong in this alternative vision; thus to presuppose
that standing at the colonial difference the new men and new women would
understand themselves in terms of a socio-economic-legal-political-Western
modern/colonial form of society is to make the wrong presupposition. I want
to repeat that it is within our possibilities to desire a sense of being a woman
who does not follow the positions and aspirations of white men, but rather
is a being different, distant, and at odds with whiteness, capitalism, norma-
tive heterosexuality, and neoliberalism, who arises from an understanding of
dealing with the travails, difficulties, and possibilities of the times we live in.

Point 4
Understanding the group with gender on one’s mind, one would see gender
everywhere,33 imposing an order of relations uncritically as if coloniality had
been completely successful both in erasing other meanings and people had
totally assimilated, or as if they had always had the socio-political-economic
structure that constitutes and is constituted by what Butler calls the gender
norm inscribed in the organization of their relations.34 Thus, the claim “There
is gender everywhere” is false, given my elaborations in points one to three,
since for a colonized, non-Western people to have their socio-political-
economic relations regulated by gender would mean that the conceptual and
structural framework of their society fits the conceptual and structural frame-
work of colonial or neocolonial and imperialist societies. The only way they
could be seen to fit is when they are already looked at as attachments to those
frameworks, erasing them as the people they have been, are, and are becom-
ing in a line of continuity woven by resistance to multiple forms of coloniality
and in so doing maintaining their belief system or transculturating it to some
extent in resistance to colonial domination.
 María Lugones 13

Point 5
The distinction between human and non-human beings is at the center of my
concerns in this article. Indigenous and Afro-diasporic peoples are not human
in the colonial logic yet they produce surplus value and thus they fit in the
logic of the same through the quantification of labor and its products.35 In
the colonial imagination they are active but not agents, certainly not autono-
mous agents as are wage earners. The Argentinean philosopher of liberation
Rodolfo Kusch finds in the Indigenous people a way of thinking and of pro-
ducing that he calls “seminal.” A seminal economy is an economy not tied to
the ego, non-quantifiable, guided by an organic vision of reality “uniformly
tinted by sentiment, in which the individuals are regulated by the community
and labor is sacred.”36 In contrast to the urban economy, for Kusch, the urban
South American acts and understands his world in terms of causes, activity,
individual autonomy, quantities over qualities, the value of work and produc-
tion in terms of rationality, solutions, money, science. Kusch explains: “In
indigenous society the individual cannot use his ego as a weapon, but rather
allows himself to be led by custom, which in turn is regulated by the commu-
nity. Furthermore, his regimen will also be irrational, and thus the individual
will not quantify either his labor or his production.”37 Thus, labor cannot be
quantified and there cannot be a separation between the individual and the
community. Labor exists in the tension—opposition—between the favor-
able and the unfavorable, germination on the one hand and disease, death,
devastation on the other. The community in the habitat enacts germination
through labor. On the other hand, the fiction that separates a person from his
labor in the causal living of the urban South American informs the fiction of
autonomy.38 But the fiction is central to who the worker is, an autonomous
individual. As such, his individual labor and production have a quantifiable
value. The autonomous individual is split, not active, not an agent except as a
seller of his own labor. This is not a communal act, it cannot be. He does not
acquire worth through the value of his labor, his rationality does not lie in the
market, his price is fixed, the price of his labor is his autonomy. But labor is
not, as it is for the Indigenous people, sacred. “A seminal thinking humanizes
the habitat in which one lives”;39 “in South America there is an indigenous
cultural structure mounted on a thinking through inward directness which
personalizes the world; it emphasizes its globality because it faces the origi-
nal tearing between the favorable and the unfavorable.”40 The contrasts are
ubiquitous, they permeate everything, and they are, as Kusch says, imperme-
able to each other. A seminal economy and seminal thinking constitute the
person who resists the reduction to a working beast who produces surplus
value, reduced to a quantity both in terms of what it produces and in terms of
its being a piece of property. Food and people are quantified. “It is most of
14 Chapter 1

all a reaction to a quantitative economy that places a price on bread.”41 Kusch

seeks to understand the possibilities of their interaction.
The relation of opposition as tension that transcends a causal logic is for
Kusch present in many Indigenous peoples. I think that one such opposition
is between sexed beings who produce together the food for the community.
“The” sexes are opposites in this sense of tension seeking for balance and
germination. The colonizers broke this relation in production. The commu-
nity was thus seriously broken, split in colonial halves and thus placed in a
situation of disintegration.

A Decolonial Methodology Toward Decolonial Coalition

I am ready, then, to suggest a decolonial methodology in the study of colo-
nized people who live at the colonial difference with respect to the attribution
of gender, and thus with respect to an understanding of their relations to self,
to others, to their community, to their habitat, and to the cosmos in a historical
line that takes into account their resistance to the denial of their humanity and
to the complexity of what decolonial thinkers such as Walter Mignolo, Anibal
Quijano, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Arturo Escobar, Madina Tlostanova,
Rolando Vazquez, and Catherine Walsh call the coloniality of power, knowl-
edge, being, and gender.42 I am also suggesting that this methodology is
important if we want to form decolonial coalitions among colonized peoples.
As coloniality is constituted by a denial of coevalness, resistance to colonial-
ity denies the linearity of colonial time. Methodologically, then, I will suggest
the following:

• The people, nation, community that are being approached by those who
are not of them, outsiders to the communities, who want to learn them
for the sake of coalition or who want to study them in an academic vein,
need to be understood historically, not in the linear progressive under-
standing of the history of Western modernity, but with an understanding
of Indigenous conceptions of time, including the sense of time arising
from the history of encounter and of resistance to dehumanization.43 It
is the Indigenous peoples’ own understanding of time, such as the bal-
ancing of opposites for example, pachakuti and pachayachachic—the
unnameable opposites—in the Andean case that the historization needs
to consider. The time of the outsider invades colonially.
• In this history people come to be at the colonial difference and the colo-
nial wound, which are terrifying positionalities from which coloniality
is vivid and is resisted non-dichotomously.44 Dichotomous and categori-
cal thinking are central to Western modernity and are absent in all the
Indigenous understandings of reality with which I have become familiar.
 María Lugones 15

I know the Andean and Mesoamerican cases the best. For Andean peo-
ples the mountain and the valley are opposites, but like night and day,
man and woman, they are not dichotomous opposites. None of these are
bounded categories; indeed, they do not make sense except as intercon-
nected, inseparable, fluid.
• Colonized peoples face colonial domination as fully constituted peoples
who make life in their habitats rather than work for others for profit or
surplus value. As people who hold particular understandings of knowl-
edge, values, and relations in the extensive world that includes all there
is and, in particular, in relations to understandings of self, relations to
the spirit world, relations to other people in the communities, nations,
tribes, groups, communities that they call their own, they do not separate
the human and the non-human, or the human from nature, that Modern/
colonial invention. Everything is interconnected, including the almas,
souls, everything in the cosmos. There are no transcendent, noncon-
nected beings.
• Whether they are the same or different, the sameness is not reciprocal.
Sameness is weighed in terms of abstract measurement of land, labor,
production. It is clear that it is neither a reciprocal difference nor those
non-hegemonic differences that Lorde celebrates when she thinks of dif-
ferences as “a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity
can spark like a dialectic.” Differences enable different women to inter-
dependence that “allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order
to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active
being.”45 A shift to a creative sense of being.
• Attention needs to be paid to the concepts behind any assertion of
gender. Western/colonial understanding of concepts construes them as
a universal. The concept can be applied differently by different people
but it is the same concept, even by those who acknowledge different
gender arrangements, for example what Rita Segato calls “a low inten-
sity patriarchy” and “high intensity patriarchy” or what Julieta Paredes
calls “patriarchal entronques.”46 Thus, my critique of the use of gender
as it is used in the study of colonized peoples is that it is a concept to be
understood and used by experts from the outside. As a “meta” concep-
tual category it is not used as if it needs to be clear and useful to those
studied. Paradoxically, the category does not apply to the colonized
because they are not human, or they are human anew, in a double denial
since the colonial relation is not undone but repeated. Indeed, this exclu-
sion as well as the lack of its use by the colonized themselves does not
invalidate its use by experts in the experts’ own judgment. Why not? It is
their life, their communities, their realities being organized against their
possibilities. This indifference regarding the usefulness of the category
16 Chapter 1

to the subjects under study demonstrates that the exclusion is method-

ologically colonial in its imposition.47
• A presentist interpretation of a people without a historico-cultural
understanding is one that lacks a history of colonial domination and of
resistance to colonial domination. Neither transculturation as a creation
or oppression are unveiled by a presentist interpretation. The claim that
“history does not matter” supports and denies the “all people are the
same as human.” Thus, presentism and universalism go well together.
• Gender has been understood as the socializing of the sexual difference
in terms of power.48 I think that the sexual difference implies relational
individualism among separate people, even when we are thinking of
more than two genders. The colonized have kept a sense of self strug-
gling against dehumanization, against assimilation, keeping resistant
senses of self, transculturated, recovered, or new. In particular, they
have struggled to keep a communal sense of self. Whether they have
become gendered is a question to investigate, not to assume.49 That is a
legal, political, economic, social question that goes to the structure of the
society and the grounding of that structure. Whether it is the community
or the nation-state that is the point of reference is a central question
for the investigation. It is also a question that needs to take carefully
and seriously the meanings from below, of individuals and groups who
resist dehumanization and assimilation. Of course, if the group of people
have been thoroughly colonized and have completely lost their world of
meaning, they will be attached to the colonial world of meaning, but that
is a part of the investigation. The social scientist is placing or replacing
the relations among the people directly to the colonial structure, bypass-
ing their own sense of themselves which in the organizing relations may
be in cosmological terms.

I suggest this methodology or these first steps toward a decolonial method-

ology as necessary for those of us committed to decolonial coalition among
colonized peoples. The fact that European colonizers reduced people to ani-
mality and thus distinguished between the human and the nonhuman does
not mean that Indigenous people anywhere in Abya Yala made this human/
nonhuman distinction themselves. Gender is tied to the distinction, so for
peoples who do not make that distinction, gender cannot be part of their rela-
tional organization. So, in understanding their socio-political-economic orga-
nization, it is important to understand whether reproduction of Indigenous
peoples was given a specific conceptual understanding that does or does not
incorporate the distinction between the human and the nonhuman and thus the
distinction between human and non-human reproduction.
 María Lugones 17

“Do not forget sociogeny,” Fanon would tell us as he asks for an alternative
understanding of the human.50 How the people under study or with whom one
seeks coalition understand themselves as people, as the people they are indi-
vidually and collectively, is the beginning of a search as to whether the effects
of colonization produced an unescapable split between being human—and
thus like the colonizer—or non-human—and thus colonized. Looking to
Fanon’s work points us to a sociogenical understanding of people in their his-
tory. For the colonized and the enslaved, the split makes attempting to live a
human life in the colonial matrix of power impossible. For the colonized and
the enslaved to live a human life requires a new understanding of the human
and a new understanding of relation; but that is an understanding outside the
colonial matrix. Assimilation, loss of value and accepting the imposition of
colonial values produced and produces an impasse, a crossroads, a giving up,
and so requires a new understanding of “human” and “humans in relation.”
We must move away from gender as a reduction through the governmen-
tal apparatuses that inscribe it everywhere in the social and reduce men and
women to an understanding of relations tied to the development of capitalism
in global modernity. As I am understanding the concept of gender, there is no
escaping the tie between the Western modern/colonial capitalist conception of
humanity and the concept of gender. The split between white human (man of
reason, woman as reproducer of humans and moral educator) and non-human
(animal, nonwhite) is not an escapable split without a different understanding
of the human than the modern colonial capitalist one.51 For example, warmi,
an Aymara word that is usually translated as mujer (woman) is decidedly not
“woman.” The meaning of warmi is tied to the cosmology and to the organi-
zation of the ayllu, the Aymara and Quechua community, which is itself orga-
nized in cosmological terms. “Woman” is constituted differently. It is tied to
modern Western law, the Western production of knowledge, the nation-state,
individualist morality, capitalist economy, all in modern Western terms, thus
it is tied to state and colonial power. The nature of the modern concept of
law and the modern/colonial capitalist understanding of law is not a question
that arises in Indigenous communities in Abya Yala, since the institution of
the law and its nature is not part of societies for which ritual knowledge and
cosmology are central to the organization of the social. The nation-state is a
problematic introduction for Indigenous and Afro-diasporic people seeking a
new possibility for themselves not allowed by the human/non-human split.
If we think of transculturated Indigenous ways of living, the question is
whether our interpretation of the organization of relations reproduces colo-
nial relations where the relation is to the nation-state, global capital, and the
enduring conceptual framework of modernity. Is the Foucaultian understand-
ing of power that Foucault sees in the people of modern nations also held in
Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities with a history of colonization
18 Chapter 1

who may have transculturated?52 In this investigation one wants to know

whether and how people want to recover the ways of relation that have
been destroyed and replaced with colonial ones. For example, how do we
understand Indigenous people who are members of communities with a his-
tory of colonization who relate to national governments “representing” their
communities and who make pacts with the government? Do they include or
exclude women? Is the inclusion one that is poorly understood as exclusion?
Are the women included in a manner that does not count as representation in
the liberal sense? Is the exclusion transculturated? Does the exclusion change
women’s standing, rendering women secondary in decision-making?
Gloria Wekker interprets the meaning of “woman” among the Surinamese
creole as very different from any colonial understanding.53 Jean Casimir
thinks of what Wekker is describing as a creation that also obtains in Haiti
where those who were captured, sold into slavery and treated as animals
created an arrangement of the social that, in Haiti, is what constitutes the
Haitian people as a sovereign people. According to Casimir, this is a creation
done by women.54 In Wekker, women are central in the organization of the
social world in which they live. Their principal ritual and social relations are
to other women with whom they do the matti work.55 Women are central in
the creolization of Surinam and Haiti according to both Wekker and Casimir.
Among the Aymara, chacha and warmi are opposites but they cannot be
hierarchal opposites, one inferior to the other, because there could not be any
searching for balance between pachakuti and pachayachachic between them
as there is between all opposites in the order of the cosmos. Unless attention
is paid to the changes in the understanding, grounding, and practices of sexu-
ality in particular Indigenous societies and the deep changes constituted by
coloniality regarding the body, the sensual, and the sexual such as changes
in meaning and the demonization of non-heterosexual practices, including
ritual practices, the reductive centering of the reproductive organs in the ani-
mal body will not be seen and the heterosexual matrix will be presupposed.
For example, Sylvia Marcos finds in many Mesoamerican understandings
of opposition the idea that day and night mutate, they touch each other
every day, and the sexual in us does the same.56 In her work on religiosity in
Mesoamerica, she has found an understanding of sexuality as fluid and mutat-
ing, not fixed but in “homeorrheic equilibrium.”57 The same can be said about
hot and cold, night and day, and other extremes in oppositional fluid change.
As part of the creolization in the Caribbean context, the understanding of
what it is to be a sexual person became important in the creation of spirituali-
ties such as Voudun, Santería, and candomblé, new creations in colonial Abya
Yala, where sexualities are also mutating and cosmologically grounded.
 María Lugones 19

CONCLUSION

To end, the question is whether gender is a meaningful concept—understood,

as I have shown, as a system of control and classification that splits up people
hierarchically in fundamental ways—without the Western legal structures,
the non-seminal economic system, the system of production and legitimation
of knowledge, and the moral order; without the modern/colonial Western
understanding of humanity that gives “human” meaning; without the Western
system of thought and cosmology that give meaning to gender; without tran-
scendent understandings of religion that make people into either fallen flesh
or self-determining beings—both Western understandings. It is almost obvi-
ous that approaching the people whose lives one seeks to devote one’s atten-
tion to and looking for their place and who they are in it, whether as someone
to enter into coalition with or someone to be studied without generalization
as a member of an Indigenous or Afro society, searching only for gendered
forms of sexual difference will not do.
Yet, this colonial attitude persists and the Indigenous person and African
descended person have been and continue to be reduced to animality. Suppose
that with our investigation of any animal we begin there with sexual differ-
ence, recognizing the organs of reproduction and categorizing them as male
and female, leaving those considered abnormal by the scientist aside, and
examine their behavior: The male takes care of the eggs till the babies are
independent and can be on their own. The female kills the male after impreg-
nation. Both get the meat out of the nuts by throwing them on the road and
waiting for cars to run over them, both communicate by turning their lights
on. The female carries the baby close to her chest, the male sleeps all day.
The female kills prey for the pack, the drones build fantastic nests with saliva
and sawdust and so on. If “male” is the biological classification and taking
care of the eggs is what they do, what are they socially? In assigning gender
to them, one puts the reproductive traits together with tasks done by the one,
with this or that trait, and one still could not assign gender because there is
no clarity about the organization of the social, the economy, and the order of
relations. Clearly doing this would not make the animals whose behaviors
I described above “men” or “women,” nor would it make them in the same
situation as the inhabitants of Abya Yala or those who were from other con-
tinents who were dehumanized, bestialized by the modern/colonial capitalist
gender system.
This dehumanization and bestialization occurred precisely because these
people were not understood by the colonizers and enslavers as social agents,
and thus their sexual difference not socializable. Thus, one does not find gen-
der; animals do not have gender. But, I think, neither do those who ground
20 Chapter 1

the order of their world in cosmological terms. But not for the same reasons,
that should be clear. If one recognizes the denial of humanity to Africans and
Indigenous peoples in Abya Yala by the modern/colonial capitalist system,
a denial that also excluded them from participating in the colonizing civil
society, and centrally, if one recognizes that these denials meant a further
denial that they, in their own communities, have structured civil societies—
structures with a human grounding, where human is understood in modern/
colonial terms—then one can recognize that they cannot have gender. Further,
their lack of humanity consistently indicates that they cannot be said to have
membership in the structures or institutions of colonizing civil society that
order their world and thus give their gender a modern/colonial meaning in the
very conceptual constitution of those structures and institutions.
The contradictions that I see as I see the coloniality keep me from forget-
ting that gender is irrevocably white, European, and modern and that the
modern/colonial capitalist gender system necessarily denies gender to the
colonized and enslaved. Rather, they are not human, non-human, not fully
human. It is interesting and important that in their understanding of their
own racial superiority, Anglo-, European-, white women struggle both to
keep and to change gender. Their struggle for change does not address the
inhumane and inhuman positions, tasks, and conceptions of the racist white
imagination nor the social, political, and economic structure of racial states
but rather their attempts continue to universalize the category “woman” as
if the colonized and enslaved females of the planet were included among
the human. While the concept of gender is deeply embedded in the structure
of Western nation-states, societies, and economies, it is absent in the rac-
ist, colonial imagination and conception of the non-white, non-human. To
approach Indigenous and Afro societies under the colonial nation-state as if
they had gender is to deny them twice as I have argued. Why does anyone
want to insist on finding gender among all the peoples of our planet? What
is good about the concept that we would want to keep it at the center of our
“liberation”?

NOTES

1. This text was previously published in Critical Philosophy of Race 8, no. 1–2
(2020) and it has been minimally amended for this publication. The published article
has a bibliography and no endnotes, while the version published here has endnotes
with bibliographic information along with comments or observations by Yuderkys
Espinosa-Miñoso and Nelson Maldonado-Torres—identified as editors or Eds. Most
of the comments and observations address the similarities and differences between the
chapter published here and another version of it that María Lugones was preparing for
 María Lugones 21

publication in this volume before she passed away. The previously published version
of this chapter reprinted here, as well as the version that Lugones was preparing for
publication in this volume, start with an initial heading with the word “Introduction,”
which has been removed from this version to follow the formatting guidelines for
this anthology. The initial paragraphs in this introduction are quite different in the
two versions of the article. The unpublished version had a slightly different title too,
“On the Universality of Gender in Colonial Methodology.” The unpublished ver-
sion starts with a line that reads: “In this chapter I am beginning a conversation with
feminist theorists and social scientists to think about gender, the concept, together.”
Lugones argues that “gender is the arrangement of social relations determining who
is a man and who is a woman in the West among bourgeois men and women” and
that the socialization of this sexual difference is deeply embedded in the “social/
political/economic structures in formation” in the modern world. She recognizes that
this is part of what she refers to as the Modern Colonial Capitalist Gender System,
but she is emphatic that she wishes “to argue for something more radical.” This more
radical argument has to do with the recognition of the colonial difference between
the presumably socializable subjects of western modernity, and the presumably
non-socializable, and therefore not completely human, groups that were perceived as
permanent colonial subjects or as slaves. Lugones’s conclusion is that “In any of these
degrees of non-humanity, the colonized and the enslaved were not agents in these
social, political, and economic structures. As not human they were not gendered.”
The point is that “Gender, then, is quite particular, modern, colonial, capitalist but it
has operated as universal in the conquering, colonial ventures, colonizing the relation
among peoples.” Lugones adds that “The direction of this chapter is to see the coloni-
ality of power in terms of dehumanization and to see the assimilation of the colonized
organization of human relations to modern gender: the dichotomous, hierarchical,
heterosexual modern organization of human relations, the female as subordinate, sex
as dimorphic, normal sexuality as heterosexual. I aim to theorize the relation between
the user of the concept and the one being referred to as situated in particular geog-
raphies, times, and worlds of meaning, a relation of power through this piece. I will
attempt to offer a decolonial methodology to both study colonized people who live
the colonial difference, but also to engage in decolonial coalition.” In comparison
with the chapter that is published here, the unpublished version starts with a more
extensive critique of the claim that “gender is everywhere,” but the published article
comes back to this theme in the final two paragraphs of the chapter.—Eds.
2. Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom:
Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument,” The New
Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 266, 301, 304.
3. María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System,”
Hypatia 22, no. 1 (2007); María Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypa-
tia 25, no. 4 (2010); María Lugones, “Methodological Notes Towards a Decolonial
Feminism,” in Decolonizing Epistemologies: Latina/o Theology and Philosophy,
eds. Ada María Isasi-Díaz and Eduardo Mendieta (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2011); María Lugones, “A Decolonial Revisiting of Gender” (unpublished
manuscript).
22 Chapter 1

4. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

(Boston: Beacon Press, 2014), 94.
5. For consistency, we added an initial capital letter to the word “Indigenous” in
most instances.—Eds.
6. Jean Casimir, Haití de mis amores (Isla Negra, Chile: Ambos Editores, 2012),
32. We added a colon in this sentence.—Eds.
7. Ibid., 56. We deleted the ellipsis at the end of the quote to follow the formatting
guidelines in this volume.—Eds.
8. Ibid., 45.
9. Ibid., 48.
10. José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1971); Sylvia Marcos, Taken from the Lips: Gender and
Eros in Mesoamerican Religions (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial
Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed. (New York/London: Routledge,
2008); Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1995).
11. María Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing Coalition Against Mul-
tiple Oppressions (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003). We added this biblio-
graphic information here.—Eds.
12. Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar, “Challenging Imperial Feminism,” Femi-
nist Review no. 17 (1984).
13. The original publication offered “tractor and color” as translations for “cuadro
and perro.” We have changed it to “frame and color” here.—Eds.
14. Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social,” Journal of
World Systems Research 6, no. 2 (2000); Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder,
eurocentrismo y América Latina,” in La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y
ciencias sociales (Buenos Aires: CLACSO-UNESCO, 2000); Aníbal Quijano, “Colo-
nialidad del poder, globalización y democracia,” Revista de Ciencias Sociales de la
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León 4, no. 7–8 (2002).
15. Marcos, Taken from the Lips.
16. Elizabeth Spelman, Inessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist
Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988).
17. Wynter, “Unsettling”; Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An
Introduction (New York: Random House, 1978).
18. Quijano, “Clasificación Social”; Quijano, “Eurocentrismo y América Latina,”
Quijano, “Globalización y democracia.”
19. Lugones, “Heterosexualism”; Lugones, “Decolonial Feminism”; Lugones,
“Methodological Notes”; Lugones, “A Decolonial Revisiting of Gender.”
20. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Èmile (CreateSpace Independent Publisher Platform,
2017).
21. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianapolis: Hackett Classics, 1994)
22. Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar
Book,” Diacritics 17, no. 2 (1987).
23. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York: Penguin Classics, 1994).
 María Lugones 23

24. Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics,

and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014);
Lugones, Pilgrimages.
25. Foucault, “History of Sexuality.”
26. Lugones, Pilgrimages.
27. Pratt, Imperial Eyes.
28. Michael Horswell, Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in the
Andean Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 6.
29. Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint; Pratt, Imperial Eyes.
30. Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?,” Women’s Convention, Akron, Ohio.
31. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York:
Grove Press, 2005). The editors added “the” before “modern/colonial matrix of
power” in this sentence.—Eds.
32. Ibid.
33. Oyèrónkě Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of
Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pres, 1997).
34. Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004).
35. Quijano, “Clasificación Social”; Quijano, “Eurocentrismo y América Latina,”
Quijano, “Globalización y democracia.”
36. Rodolfo Kusch, Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2010)
37. Ibid., 135. The editors added a colon after “Kusch explains.”—Eds.
38. The editors deleted a comma before “informs.”—Eds.
39. Ibid., 141.
40. Ibid., 126. The editors deleted ellipses at the end of the quoted text for consis-
tency in the anthology.—Eds.
41. Ibid., 140.
42. The editors added first names for Mignolo, Quijano, and Maldonado Torres
here. They also added a hyphen in Maldonado-Torres’s last name. Eds.
43. The editors added “be” after “need to” in this sentence.—Eds.
44. Walter Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern
Knowledges, and Border Thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
45. Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,”
in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984), 111 (italics
in original).
46. Rita Segato, Género y colonialidad en ocho ensayos (Buenos Aires: Prome-
teo, 2015); Julieta Paredes, Hilando fino desde el feminismo comunitario (La Paz,
Bolivia: El Rebozo, Zapateándole, Lente Flotante en Cortito que’s p’a largo y Alifen
AC, 2010).
47. Lila Abu-Luhgod, Writing Women’s Worlds (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993); Oyěwùmí, Invention of Women.
48. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1999).
49. The editors added a comma after “investigate.”—Eds.
24 Chapter 1

50. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York:
Grove Press, 2008). This reference has been added by the editors. Fanon introduces
the concept of sociogeny in the “Introduction.” “Do not forget sociogeny” is not a
literal citation, but meant to refer to Fanon’s call to consider sociogeny in the exami-
nation of blackness, antiblackness, racism, and alienation.—Eds.
51. Fanon, Wretched; Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature
in the World of Modern Science (New York: Routledge, 1998).
52. The unpublished version that Lugones was preparing for this volume reads: “Is
Foucault’s understanding of power that is at work in the notion of the people of mod-
ern nations, also one that applies to Afrodescendents and Indigenous people”?—Eds.
53. Gloria Wekker, The Politics of Passion: Women’s Sexual Culture in the
Afro-Surinamese Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).
54. Casimir, personal correspondence with author.
55. The editors added italics to “matti work,” as it appears in the unpublished
version.—Eds.
56. Marcos, Taken from the Lips.
57. Ibid., 13.
 Chapter 2

Toward a Genealogy of Experience

Critiquing the Coloniality of Feminist
Reason from Latin America

‌‌ uderkys Espinosa-Miñoso
Y
Translation by Carlos Ulises Decena and Geo Maher

This text aims to answer a key question proposed by the genealogical method
and which, applied to feminism, can be translated as the following: How have
we become the feminists we are? What are the conditions of possibility which
have allowed feminism to believe what it believes, to say what it says, to do
what it does even in a space geopolitically conditioned by its “Third Word”
status, of a region marked by a colonial wound?
Starting from these questions opens up space to reconstruct some clues for
thinking feminism in Latin America and its history of dependency. And here,
we refer not to Latin American feminism, but to feminism in Latin America,
since there is but one feminist reason with universalist pretensions which
local feminism has tenaciously embraced. If it seems nobody is apparently
surprised at hearing that feminism is a response to modernity, we will need to
ask why we have been willing to follow it in those regions of the world where
modernity cannot but reveal itself for what it is: racist, Eurocentric, capitalist,
imperialist, colonial.
Maybe women as well as those subject to discrimination for their gender
or sexual identities have succumbed to the idea, foundational to feminist
theorization and thought, that the past has always been worse for us. Maybe
feminism might say that our struggle cannot be but modern, cannot but pro-
claim modernity as the historical temporality that allows us to pursue our
freedom. This argument would reveal (or does in fact reveal) without a doubt
how the interests of feminism differ from those of antiracist, anticolonial,
25
26 Chapter 2

and decolonial struggles in the region. It exposes the hidden plot of feminist
struggles and their commitment to coloniality.
In this essay, I advance a methodological proposal for a genealogy of
experience to approach and develop a critique of what I call at the outset
the coloniality of feminist reason. Latin America, from where I develop this
project and from where I write, provides simply the case study from which I
approach the question and seek to demonstrate my claims.

THE PROJECT OF A CRITIQUE OF MODERN,

EUROCENTRIC FEMINIST REASON

This project starts from a question about Latin American feminism: How do
we document struggles over its meaning and the construction of hegemonies
and counterhegemonies stemming from those struggles? In what way do we
contribute towards the construction of a countermemory that will allow us to
reveal the power games and hierarchical relations that obscure and collabo-
rate with the local production of subalternity within the “Global South,” the
internal fracture of the “colonial subject”? If Mohanty has warned us about
the discursive colonialism of feminisms from the Global North, subaltern
activism has shown us the internal colonialism, mechanisms of control, and
tactics for the production and preservation of the power of a minority within
feminism in Latin America.1 The colonial wound bleeds more in some of us
than in others. Hegemonic feminisms of the Global North have needed the
complicity of the hegemonic feminisms of the Global South to give continu-
ity to the history of colonization and dependency. This is why an analysis of
feminisms of the South and their dependent relationship to those of the North
requires a complex engagement that allows us to dismantle the myth of the
supposed internal unity of the collective subject “women,” and thus allows
us to observe a field of live contestations of meanings in post-independence
Latin America. These disputes are resolved through the imposition of sym-
bolic and material violence on those whose bodies are marked by processes
of racialization and continued exploitation—what I have called la otra de la
otra, or: the other of the other (woman).2
It is from this location that an awareness emerges of the need to take up
a critical genealogy of the present when it comes to the feminist politics
and thought in Latin America, to show what is twice hidden by colonial
and postcolonial plots, to reveal the coloniality of feminist reason. This is a
project that seeks to denounce and thereby contribute to dismantling femi-
nism’s commitment to the presuppositions of modernity and its contribution
to modernity’s expansion. Our task, in other words, is the decolonization
of feminism.
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 27

To this end, I develop a methodological proposal that leans, on the one

hand, on the genealogical method articulated by an important tradition within
modern philosophy itself. If the genealogical method has been useful for
anti-Enlightenment proposals within Western modernity, can it be useful
to the project of demonstrating feminism’s committments to Eurocentric
modern ontologies even in regions like Latin America? What implications
would this have in terms of radical antiracist and decolonial critique? Setting
out from the critical frameworks developed by Black, Indigenous, and other
people of color, and anti and decolonial theories in Latin America, this project
is linked to a perspective that contests Western modernity as the maximum
expression of human evolution, unveiling what it has been in reality: an impe-
rialist, racist project of domination and death.
On the other hand, I embrace developments within feminist, Black femi-
nist, and feminist of color epistemology in the proposal for situated knowl-
edges grounded in experience. For this purpose, I focus on revisions of what
has been called standpoint theory, which seeks to overcome the pretensions
of scientific knowledge to “speak from nowhere,”3 and I review the critiques
formulated by Joan Scott of the uses of experience as basis for our explana-
tions so as to avoid falling into the same errors she documents.4

ON THE GENEALOGICAL METHOD

AND THE IDEA OF THE ARCHIVE

Traditionally, Latin American philosophy has approached the historiography

of the region’s thought through the History of Ideas, convened by several of
the best known Latin American philosophers—Cerutti, Alberdi, Zea, Rodó,
Bello.5 Following this legacy, the feminist philosopher Francesca Gargallo
has embraced the construction of a history of Latin American feminist ideas
in her project Latin American Feminist Ideas.6 Even though I have been
motivated to continue that task for a while, as my engagement deepened and
my questions about the trajectories of (what I then called) Latin American
feminism, I began to find clear differences between what these authors were
doing within philosophy and, in particular, what Francesca Gargallo was
engaged in from the perspective of Latin American feminist philosophy.
It was not long before I fortunately found myself reading the philosopher
Santiago Castro-Gómez and his Critique of Latin American Reason, during
the course of my engagement with thinkers committed to the decolonial turn.7
And it was there that I found clues to what I wanted to do and what I was
in fact already doing without meaning to. In Castro-Gómez’s text, he recalls
the proposal made by another great Colombian philosopher, Roberto Salazar
Ramos, a member of the “Bogotá Group,” who encouraged the development
28 Chapter 2

of an archeology of what is “Latin American,” seeking to discover the mecha-

nisms through which a series of discourses have been constructed that have
granted Latin America a specificity and exteriority vis-a-vis modern, Western
reason. As Castro-Gómez himself explains, what interests him is to “critically
examine that family of discourses that made possible the creation of an entity
called ‘Latin America,’ endowed of an ethos and of a cultural identity that
supposedly distinguish it from modern, European rationality.”8 The question
that would definitively guide his work was no longer about what character-
izes a predetermined Latin American identity, but instead what makes it pos-
sible—its conditions of possibility. How has Latin American identity been
produced as a way of being and of thinking and what has philosophy had
to do with that project? To answer this question, Castro-Gómez proposes to
observe the production of philosophical thought in Latin America not to con-
struct a “history of ideas” as proposed by Latin Americanist philosophy, but
instead to develop a “localized genealogy of the practices” that would help to
critically reveal how philosophy in Latin America has contributed to produc-
ing the idea of “Latin Americanness.”9
For Castro-Gómez, the genealogical task is inevitably linked to the task not
so much of finding what unifies us, but instead of showing the antagonisms,
the dilemmas, the power games, “the ruptures, the empty spaces, the fissures,
and the lines of flight . . .”10 In his rigorous study of Michel Foucault’s work,
Castro-Gómez observes how the genealogical task can be useful for scrutiniz-
ing our present to determine the historical contingencies and the power strate-
gies that have made it possible. In this way, the Colombian philosopher shows
us a genealogy in the modality that Foucault takes up from the Niezschean
model, as a critical ontology of the present. He finds and helps us discover
Foucault’s genealogy as an effective method that allows for a new

way of philosophically approaching the problem of modernity, where before

uncovering the “truth” of its inherent promises (liberty, equality, fraternity),
what is being sought are the technologies of domination that contributed to its
construction, as well as the diverse forms in which that truth constitutes our
contemporary subjectivity.11

In this way, the author seeks to demonstrate the usefulness of the genea-
logical method for unveiling coloniality in Latin America. His rigorous study
allows us to see, based on the concrete experience of Colombia, how the ide-
als of progress and modernization sustained by white-Mestizo elites in Latin
American countries have been built on Enlightenment ontological founda-
tions.12 In this way, Castro-Gómez takes up the Foucaultian wager insofar as
it helps us “draw up a cartography of the forces that constitute us in what we
are” and thereby unveils coloniality.13
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 29

Since the genealogical method interrogates present facts in order to iden-

tify the interests and historical and cultural conditioning that have determined
those facts, and the will to power that has produced them, it can be effective
in producing critical thought that is prepared to unveil the political economy
of truth that legitimizes the web of meanings and practices of the present.
This is why it becomes necessary to interrogate practices and their effective-
ness: what do we really do when we speak or act? To turn the question about
identity into a question about what we do, to the practices to make us what
we are. The investigation of practices leads us to wonder what counts as a
practice, how does it work, what are the rules that make it work. To do gene-
alogy allows us to distance ourselves from the present to see the conditions
of possibility that constitute us, to see these a priori and problematize and
denaturalize them. To trace the history of practices in order to denaturalize
them, to observe how, when, and why they have emerged.14
Inspired by these ideas and by the questions posed by the genealogical
method, I came to formulate the questions necessary for observing and ana-
lyzing feminism in Latin America correctly: How have we come to be the
feminists—“advanced” women at the “cutting edge of our time”—that we
claim to be? What is it that we do, as feminists in Latin America, when we
call a march for “the right to abortion,” when we shout “mi cuerpo es mío”
(my body is mine) or “libertad en la calle y en la plaza” (freedom at home and
in the plaza), when we pressure institutions and the state to approve a law for
“gender equity,” when we open spaces at the university and we ask women
to enter it en masse, when we establish a gender and sexuality studies pro-
gram, when we talk about reproductive rights, when we give speeches at the
United Nations, when we formulate and develop projects for “poor women,”
or when we develop campaigns against street harrassment? What is it that we
feminists do when we say what we say and do what we do? What is it that we
feminists in Latin America do when we do and when we speak?
And it was at this point that I began to formulate the existence of a univer-
sal and Eurocentric “feminist reason.” Because when I looked back from the
vantage point of these questions, what I was able to document is that there is
no history of the specificity of our feminism. Instead, there is a history of the
will to not distinguish ourselves, to not set ourselves apart from the theories,
the wagers, and the mottos of the feminism produced in the Global North.
There is an effort to adjust to theories produced in the USA and Europe, in
a way to allow into those theories women from the most dissimilar contexts,
those cross-cut by coloniality.
Attempting to explain the feminist present in Latin America—its dilem-
mas, contradictions, disputes, central issues, political strategies, discourses,
and practices—allowed me to notice something like a shared feminist rea-
son, a series of principles on the basis of which feminists have all settled
30 Chapter 2

irrespective of times and from the most diverse contemporary locations, in

the United States, Europe and Latin America, Asia, or Africa. A series of prin-
ciples that contribute to the production of one narrative: we the women, we as
the ones who have always been dominated. And its flipside: we the empow-
ered, we women who are owners of our destiny and who become somebody
thanks to feminism (and, therefore, thanks to modernity).
I have thus taken up the task of reviewing the dilemmas and the limits
of the theoretical-political practices produced, sustained, and nurtured by
feminism and contemporary sociosexual movements viewed from the par-
ticularities of the Latin American context and its history of coloniality. My
genealogical project seeks to interrogate the discourses to which we have
adhered regarding sexuality, gender, the sex-gendered subject, and the ways
in which we have applied those discourses to think “Latin Americanness” as a
globalized space seeking integration into the (truly) human. What I propose is
a critical exercise that will allow us to become aware of how we have become
the feminists and/or the “free, transgressive, and advanced” sexed-gendered
subject that we claim to be. The goal is to reveal the “political economy of
truth” evident in the political and discursive practices around gender and
sexuality (patriarchy and heterosexual regime) to which we have contributed
insofar as we have subscribed to a blind faith and contributed to feminist
postulates cast as universal.15 I am interested in pausing to reflect on those
postulates in order to denounce mechanisms of regulation, hierarchization,
and the legitimation of some forms of understanding over others.
To be able to stage this critique of the present of our feminism, it is also
necessary to appeal to archeology; to play the role of the archivist and car-
tographer “of our memory, revealing old testimonies as symptoms of the
present”; to construct an “audio-visual archive” and slog through the wid-
est variety of available documents, together with “muted practices, sideway
behaviors, heterogenous discourses,” and to be willing to “excavate and
plumb the depths, to bring to light what is hidden.”16 In sum, as Foucault him-
self points out, the objective it to bring together a series of rules that operate
for a group of people during a specific period so as to be able to determine
(1) “the limits and forms of the sayable”: what can or cannot be said; (2) “the
limits and forms of conservation”: which discourses are counted and seen as
an important part of memory and which pass “without any trace”; (3) “the
limits and forms of memory it appears in different discursive formations.
Which utterances does everyone recognize as valid, or debatable, or defi-
nitely invalid?”; (4) “the limits and forms of reactivation”: which discourses
“are attempts made to reconstitute?”; (5) “The limits and forms of appropria-
tion. What individuals, what groups or classes have access to a particular kind
of discourse?”17
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 31

If it is true that genealogy must record the singularity of events outside of

any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places,
in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience,
instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the
gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they
engaged in different roles.18
Then I had already been preparing for this task, in fact I had already been
carrying out this task for a while. I began without knowing a long time ago
when for some reason I started to construct, obsessively and fastidiously, an
archive of the practices and the discursive practices of lived and experienced
feminism. Motivated by this archivist obsession, I started writing a long time
ago, and the practice of writing helped to record in my memory and in col-
lective memory every moment of lived feminist politics, first locally, and, to
the degree that I became part of a more international movement, regionally
as well. It was an exercise that was shared by several of those who have
walked with me. I put together a digital and physical archive where I saved
original texts published here and there in virtual spaces, blogs, pamphlets,
and non-specialized journals alongside photographs and images of our activi-
ties and half-finished drafts that were never published. But there is something
else that escapes the physical archive: the systematic exercise of consciously
holding in memory the recollection of affects, images, feelings, but also of
words said and not said, analyses shared in workshops for political reflection
or afternoons of (re)encounters with friends and heated discussions with my
antagonists of then and of now.
I have appealed to all of this in my interrogation of the experience of femi-
nist practice. I have resorted to the idea of experience and of active witnessing
for the construction of my archive. As an activist earnestly engaged in the
work and in debates about feminism in Latin America, I have asked myself if
it was possible to appeal to my own historical memory, to my almost 30-year
trajectory and participant observation in crucial moments of the medium-term
history of regional feminism. I constructed my archive with notes from
meetings I attended, activities I helped organize, discussions in which I par-
ticipated, reflections that emerged from these and that have accumulated in
essays, notes, published articles, and unpublished manuscripts. With the one
thousand and one stories that I keep in my memory and the ones in which I
have played the role of participant witness or not, but which I have learned
about through different accounts by those who were there. There is also the
corporeal and visual memory that accompanies the speeches, the sensations
of joy, of pain, of victory or defeat, of expectation, incredulity or certainty.
In sum, I have challenged myself to construct and propose the possibility of
creating a genealogy of the experience of feminism in Latin America, to use
my own experience as a substantial and fundamental document in my archive
32 Chapter 2

and to appeal for corroboration to other sources: to articles, essays, video

and audio recordings, photographs produced by other activists and think-
ers who have also been part of this trajectory and who have moved through
feminism in Latin America during the period I have lived and that I now try
to document.
To establish a foundation for this methodological choice, I have decided to
review all of the critiques of the scientific method’s pretention of objectivity
whether produced within feminism or outside of it. And I want to take stock
of the way standpoint theory can help me discover arguments to validate my
use of experience as an archive from which I can carry out this critical geneal-
ogy of the feminist present and demonstrate its coloniality.

USING EXPERIENCE TO CONSTRUCT THE

ARCHIVE OF A GENEALOGY OF FEMINIST
REASON IN LATIN AMERICA

As we know, feminist epistemology in its totality and specifically within the

tradition produced by Black and women of color feminisms, in their critique
of the scientific method, have proposed and thematized the “experience” of
women and of Black women and women of color as legitimate grounds for
the production of knowledge.19
Concretely, it has been the so-called “standpoint” perspective—developed
by white feminist epistemology and taken up by Black women and women
of color feminists—which has been focused on developing a critique of the
methods for knowledge production in modern science and has proposed in its
place the use of experience as an effective mechanism for the construction
of knowledge. While white feminists have focused on androcentrism and
the pretension of objectivity in the scientific method, Black and women of
color feminists have developed a trenchant critique of the universality of the
category “women” in classical feminist theory, pointing out that what counts
as feminist theory is only one “standpoint” produced by white women with
access to university training thanks to their class and race privileges.20 Some
Black feminists have proposed their own theorization as a standpoint of its
own based on the experience of Black women.21 Something similar would
happen in the past two decades in Latin America, when the reappearance of a
strong continental anticolonial and decolonial movement called into question
the history and knowledge produced by the social sciences in the hands of
white-Mestizo intellectuals. Thus the production of a voice and interpreta-
tion of their own became one of the key tasks for these movements and for
decolonial feminism.22
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 33

Black and women of color feminist critiques, and more recently deco-
lonial feminism, ended up performing the same critique within feminism
that feminist epistemology had made toward Western scientific knowledge
production: that they conceal beneath objectivity and universality what is
in reality a partial perspective since it emerges from a particular historical
experience and concrete interests.23 What is clear is that standpoint theory did
not in itself guarantee overcoming the obstacles posed by either the universal-
ist essentialism of the category “women,” or the racism, Eurocentrism, and
coloniality of the most influential feminist theories. As Harding points out,
recalling the critiques of thinkers such as Haraway, “standpoint epistemology,
like other kinds of socialist feminist theory is guilty of this theoretical and
political error.”24
Despite these shortcomings, the contributions of standpoint epistemology
to the construction of a method of analysis grounded in experience as source
for knowledge are undeniable. First proposed by Nancy Hartsock and Dorothy
Smith, standpoint epistemology first argued that the point of view of women
offers far broader explanations to the social life as a totality than those that
men tend to be able to provide, given the greater visibility that women enjoy
thanks to the activities assigned to them within the sexual division of labor.25
While the male gaze cannot observe or take into account a large part of social
activities, since these are seen as tasks of a “natural” order—the reproduction
of life and care—women, who are responsible for these activities, can see
them, and from this perspective can also see those (“abstract”) tasks carried
out by men and which enjoy social value. This is what Harding calls “bifur-
cated consciousness” and which feminist researchers concretize through their
research and analysis.26 In this way, feminist standpoint theorists suggest that
more adequate research can be carried out when investigators ask themselves
about the world and activities of women, since this provides a bottom-up
view of the social that is more encompassing, complete, and less distorted.
In that way, if the social order is a power matrix where race, class, and
gender are superimposed and codetermine one another, a feminist standpoint
approach to research would render more visible how that matrix operates
by taking as point of departure the experience of those at the lowest rung of
privilege hierarchies. In this way “what is a disadvantage in terms of their
oppression can become an advantage in terms of science.”27
This idea is reminiscent of and seems to me to be related to Du Bois’ idea
of “double consciousness”: the privileged perspective on the world that the
racialized subject enjoys insofar as they cohabitate the subaltern world, sub-
jected to oppression, while also entering as subaltern into the world of the
dominant classes, the white world. This way of inhabiting the world produces
the possibility of a doubled perspective, an alternative gaze (second-sight)
which allows them to become conscious of their subaltern position.28
34 Chapter 2

It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always

looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by
the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels
his two-ness—and American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unrec-
onciled strivings.29
If Du Bois laments the presence of that double, bifurcated consciousness,
which leads to us “losing focus,” from the vantage point of standpoint theory
this is not merely an obstacle but also the condition of possibility for a fuller
and more heterogeneous view of the world.30 It is from this double conscious-
ness that a more radical critique committed to social transformation can
emerge, insofar as this perspective reveals what is hidden by power games
and, in the case of countries in the Global South, internal colonialism as well.
As we now know: explaining the world and events purely from the vantage
point of those who occupy a privileged location gives us a partial and dis-
torted understanding of the world that can be sorted out through the doubled
gaze and experience of those who occupy a subaltern position.
One might arrive at the logical conclusion that the subaltern gaze is dou-
bled, contradictory, conflicted, paradoxical, impure . . . and that precisely as
a result, it offers a greater source of knowledge. But I wonder then why it is
that the gaze produced by white and white-Mestizo feminism has always been
incomplete, shedding light only on one aspect of how oppression operates.
This incomplete gaze not only prevents us from accounting for the opressions
of disadvantaged subjects, but also prevents us from seeing the complexity
of the matrix of oppression in its totality, or the intrinsic relations between
projects of domination.
I would therefore like to introduce a small but major distortion into the
feminist standpoint. If Mohanty celebrates the epistemic privilege that
emerges from the experience of women in the Global South insofar as they
find themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy of privilege, and if we accept
the critiques of Black women and women of color feminisms that at the base
of the pyramid of power we find the racialized woman, then the subject of
this privileged standpoint is not just any woman but the subaltern woman­­––in
Latin America, the Indigenous and Afro-descendant woman, the peasant, the
poor and landless.
And so the perspective that I want to produce based on my own experience
of moving through feminism in Latin America is the point of view produced
by being/inhabiting a body subjected to impoverishment, dispossession, and
the systematic negation of her capacity to produce knowledge, critique, and
a project for the future. It is from the experience of coming from a dehuman-
ized people, of a people subjected to servitude and the negation of themselves
from which I will attempt to answer some of the questions that I pose to
Latin American feminism. The idea of a genealogy of experience starts from
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 35

recognizing the locus of enunciation from where one writes. The question of
how we have come to be the feminists we are and what it is that feminists in
Latin America do when they do what they do will be answered from the per-
spective of the subject produced between worlds: the woman on whose body
the poor, Black barrio will always be present as a birthmark; the woman who
saw the world of rich white people on television, at the movies, in the face
of the boss, in the group of upper-class, white-mestiza girls who made fun
of her at school; the woman who, when she accesses a university education
and feminism—spaces of racial and class privilege—ended up understanding
that peculiar sensation of “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of
others.”31
But to avoid confusion, the one who practices genealogy with the archive
of her own experience will need to avoid the mistake of using it as foundation
or as proof, as the foundation for her explanation. Heeding Scott’s warnings
about the bad uses of the archive of experience means understanding that it
has to become that which must be explained: how have we become the femi-
nists we are, the advanced women we claim to be?32 That is the question that
I ask of the experience of feminism. But there is also a hidden and personal
question: how did I learn to read myself fundamentally as a woman who is
part of a global community of women? How did I come to construct a history
of myself from the vantage point of that category so foundational to femi-
nism? Why could I not for so long explain all of the rest of my experience
which feminism could not account for? In the case of the genealogy of femi-
nism in Latin America and the ways it (re)produces a Eurocentric Reason,
appealing to the experience of three decades of activism allows me to ques-
tion it, interrogate it, critique it. How is the difference established between the
“advanced feminist subject” and the subject rendered illegible as if trapped by
ignorance and lack of consciousness about her own oppression? What are the
truths that we have accepted and which define our practices? How do these
operate? How and in what ways does feminism constitute subjects that see
and act upon the world in a given way?

HOW AND FROM WHAT PERSPECTIVE I ARGUE

THAT THERE EXISTS A WESTERN FEMINIST REASON
AND THAT IT IS COMMITTED TO COLONIALITY

The fundamental ideas that I want to affirm and propose as conclusions to

my inquiries and simultaneously as hypotheses to be confirmed or disproven
in the future debate are, (1) that there exists a universal feminist reason, and
(2) that this reason has been characterized by its commitment to modernity
and, therefore, to the hidden face of coloniality and the racism that defines it.
36 Chapter 2

By the coloniality of feminist reason I understand a series of practices,

including discursive practices—in the Foucaultian sense—that have been
agreed upon and developed by feminists of any tendency, and through which
they have contributed to the production of a universal subject “woman/
women.” This is a series of discourses that—despite debates and the accep-
tance or not of internal differences within this subject—sustains certain
basic agreements about this subject within the social, alongside a series of
prescriptions about which practices will lead to its emancipation. Feminist
theorizing has produced and deployed a representation and image of “the
woman”—beyond any difference, spatial or temporal—as always in a state
of subjection, with less power and in a hierarchical relationship to “man”
(also viewed as universal). Taking sexuality as given and contributing in
paradigmatic fashion to the production of a technology of “gender” without
questioning the ontological basis of either, feminists have given continuity to
the modern myth and its Eurocentric reason.
Here, it is important to explain the concept of “reason” and how I am con-
ceptualizing it. By reason, I allude to four fundamental issues that have been
substantive pillars for philosophy and modernity and therefore, for colonial-
ity as well:
One: On one hand, the pretension that one arrives at true knowledge of the
world through trustworthy explanations that lead one out of a state of appren-
ticeship. True “reason” in this sense––mature reason––is inevitably linked to
the advent of the Enlightenment. This “perspective imagined modernity and
rationality as exclusively European products and experiences,” as Quijano
reminds us.33
To make use of reason in this sense means that “man” is capable, for the
first time, of producing his own understanding of the world “without the guid-
ance of another.” Thus, for Kant,

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity

is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another.
This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but
lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The
motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your
own understanding!34

If, for Kant, enlightenment is a time of arrival at maturity, this “maturity”

refers to the fact that “man” stands against the authority of tradition, institut-
ing in its place a regime that subjects all belief to the “court of reason” to
be judged according to universal principles, principles that—through study
and the command of nature—lead to inevitable progress and an escape from
ignorance.35
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 37

While feminist theory and research have been constructed in opposition

to a positivist Cartesian method that presents itself as neutral, uncontami-
nated, and capable of discovering the true laws governing the natural and
social order, the fact is that in order to gain a space within the production of
a truth about “women,” gender, and sexuality, feminism has needed to resort
to certain forms of knowledge validation, accepting and being a part of the
knowledge/power mechanism through which the border between legitimate
and illegitimate knowledges is established.
Aside from that, the fact is that feminism and feminists have positioned
themselves as possessing a series of truths that challenge common knowledge
about social reality and about the subject “woman,” a subject that these truths
have helped to define and on the basis of which they offer a diagnosis of the
world. Feminists are convinced that, as bearers of this truth about “women,”
they more than anyone else are able to establish a liberatory program that will
allow women to escape their state of historical subjection. With this certainty,
feminists have developed a global agenda for women’s liberation and equality
that they preach and impose by various means on the rest of the world, and
particularly on women from those countries they consider less developed.
This is what has been denounced by Third World women as a “savior com-
plex” that is nothing less than imperialist.
Two: When I refer to reason I also use it in the sense that Hegel does
in his Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism when he speaks of
the “mythology of reason” as what Castro-Gómez describes as “an organic
system of beliefs firmly grounded in the ethos of the community, able to
bind individuals together and give meaning to collective action.”36 Once we
embraced the need to undo the organic communal bond that gave meaning
to early communities, seen by modernity as the source of backwardness, we
feminists called for the construction of new communities of women liberated
from the burden of tradition. We feminists thus invented the “community of
women” in order to give meaning to a struggle and a common life.
Three: I am also thinking about it as rationalization in the Weberian sense,
i.e., and to put it in Castro-Gomez’s words: “the methodic organization of life
and the subjection of human conduct to a specific set of rules with the goal of
obtaining some expected results.37 In this sense, we feminists—the feminists
that we claim to be—prescribe a series of practices within the communities
that we develop, and we are a series of practices governed by a series of pre-
scriptions about what “the liberated woman”—the subject of liberated gender
and sexuality—would look like. Feminist ideas and truths do more than
simply create an idea of the world and produce subjects. Just like any other
discourse, feminism contains implicit prescriptions about what it means to be
a woman today, or rather a woman in search of self-determination.
38 Chapter 2

Four: Finally, when I speak of feminist Reason, I allude in reality to a

form of critique. Feminist Reason responds to the arrogant and imperialist
gesture of modern reason as that which proclaims itself to be the only true
existing reason, its highest stage of evolutionary development, that which
in other words develops within its own historical time and within a specific
space: Europe. Authors like Dussel and Quijano have denounced this opera-
tion, arguing that what the West has named reason is in reality an effect of
Eurocentrism, a program that seeks to annul and refuses to recognize any
other forms of thought as valid forms of knowledge and reasoning.38
If Dussel sees modernity as a phenomenon that is possible for all cultures
and all historical epochs, it is thanks to the colonial enterprise that Europe
managed to impose itself on all other conquered peoples and civilizations,
thereby defining itself “as the new and at the same time, most advanced [part]
of the species.”39 According to this myth, humanity evolves along a unilinear
and unidirectional path from a state of nature to a state of maximal cultural
development, whose culmination is European or Western civilization. The
idea of race is the cornerstone upholding the entire scaffolding that frames
Europe as superior and as an example to follow.
So the success of Western Europe in imposing itself as the center of the
modern world consisted in simultaneously developing Eurocentrism as a
shared feature of the colonial and imperialist enterprises in conjunction
with the development of race as a form of global classification (coloniality),
which allowed Europeans to develop “a new temporal perspective of history
and relocated the colonized population, along with their respective histories
and cultures, in the past of a historical trajectory whose culmination was
Europe.”40
In this same sense, Mario Blaser proposes that we consider modernity “the
state of being that obtains from the enactment of a modern myth composed of
three basic threads: the great divide between nature and culture (or society),
the colonial difference between moderns and nonmoderns, and unidirectional
linear temporality that flows from past to future.”41 There are many examples
of how feminist reason adheres to these precepts in its interpretation of the
world. Demonstrating that feminist reason is a form of modern, Eurocentric
reason would mean focusing our attention on how these elements are repro-
duced in our theoretical-discursive practices, in our political practices, and in
our projects for the future.
I should say that when I speak of feminist reason as a form of modern,
Eurocentric reason, I accept the revisions carried out by some authors in the
direction discussed here. Feminism as a global project that universalizes an
interpretation of society and the condition of women—and also of women as
a universal subject—is clearly committed to coloniality and modernity. The
neoliberal period that began in the late 1980s, and which I should say marked
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 39

my own incursion into Latin American feminism and therefore provides the
basis for my own critical genealogy of feminism in Latin America, has been
fundamental for the full expansion of these ideas and ideals of feminism(s).
Research currently underway will account for this.

NOTES

1. Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial

Discourses,” boundary 2 12, no. 3 (1984); Chandra Mohanty, “‘Under Western
Eyes’ Revisited: Feminist Solidarity through Anticapitalist Struggle,” Signs 28, no.
2 (2003).
2. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, “Etnocentrismo y colonialidad en los feminismos
latinoamericanos: Complicidades y consolidación de las hegemonías feministas en el
espacio transnacional,” Revista Venezolana de Estudios de la Mujer 14, no. 33 (2010).
3. Sandra Harding, “A Socially Relevant Philosophy of Science? Resources from
Standpoint Theory’s Controversiality,” Hypatia 19, no. 1 (2004).
4. Joan Wallach Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4
(1991).
5. Santiago Castro-Gómez, Crítica de la razón latinoamericana, 2nd ed. (Bogotá:
Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2011): 245–47.
6. Francesca Gargallo, Ideas feministas latinoamericanas (México, DF: Universi-
dad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, 2004).
7. Castro-Gómez, Crítica.
8. Ibid., 12.
9. Ibid., 245–47.
10. Ibid., 117.
11. Santiago Castro-Gómez, “La filosofía latinoamericana como ontología crítica
del presente. Temas y motivos para una ‘Crítica de la razón latinoamericana,’” accessed
April 22, 2014, https:​//​www​.insumisos​.com​/lecturasinsumisas​/LA​%20FILOSOFIA​
%20LATINOAMERICANA​%20COMO​%20ONTOLOGiA​%20CRiTICA​%20DEL​
%20PRES​.pdf.
12. Santiago Castro-Gómez, La hybris del punto cero ciencia, raza e ilustración en
la Nueva Granada (1750–1816) (Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana,
2005); Santiago Castro-Gómez, Tejidos oníricos: movilidad, capitalismo y biopolítica
en Bogotá (1910–1930) (Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2009).
13. Castro-Gómez, Crítica, 256.
14. Revista La Cicuta, “Lanzamiento La Cicuta Revista: Santiago Castro-Gómez -
‘Michel Foucault: El oficio del genealogista,” YouTube, published October 4, 2013,
https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=033YTK​-t0zo.
15. Castro-Gómez, Crítica, 12.
16. Luis Gonçalvez, “La metodología genealógica y arqueológica de Michel Fou-
cault en la investigación en psicología social,” 1–2, accesssed April 22, 2019. http:​//​
40 Chapter 2

www​.fadu​.edu​.uy​/estetica​-diseno​-ii​/files​/2015​/06​/transitos​-de​-una​-psicologia​-social​
-genealogi​%CC​%81a​-y​-arqueologi​%CC​%81a​.pdf.
17. Michel Foucault, “Politics and the Study of Discourse,” in The Foucault Effect:
Studies in Governmentality, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 59–60 (emphasis in original).
18. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, ed.
Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 76.
19. Dorothy E. Smith, “Women’s Standpoint: Embodied Knowledge versus Ruling
Relations,” in Gender Inequality: Feminist Theory and Politics, ed. Judith Lorber
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Sandra Harding, “Is There a Feminist
Method?,” in Feminism and Methodology, ed. Sandra Harding (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987); Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the
Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,” in Discovering Reality:
Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology and Philosophy
of Science, eds. Sandra Harding and Merrill Hintikka (Dordrecht: Reider Publishers,
1983); Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and
the Politics of Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990).
20. bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” in Feminist Theory from
Margin to Centre (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
21. Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
22. Sueli Carneiro, “Ennegrecer al Feminismo,” presented at the seminar La situ-
ación de la Mujer negra en América Latina, desde una perspectiva de genero, São
Paulo, Brazil, 2001; Breny Mendoza, “La epistemología del sur, la colonialidad del
género y el feminismo latinoamericano,” in Aproximaciones críticas a las prácticas
teórico-políticas del feminismo latinoamericano, ed. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso
(Buenos Aires: En la Frontera, 2010); Aura Cumes, “Multiculturalismo, género y
feminismos: Mujeres diversas, luchas complejas,” in Participación y políticas de
mujeres indígenas en América Latina, ed. Andrea Pequeño (Quito: FLACSO Ecua-
dor/ Ministerio de Cultura, 2009); Zulma Palermo, “Conocimiento ‘otro’ y cono-
cimiento del otro en américa latina,” Estudios, no. 21 (Fall 2009).
23. Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, “Una crítica descolonial a la epistemología femi-
nista crítica,” Revista El Cotidiano 29, no. 184 (March-April 2014).
24. Sandra Harding, “Feminism, Science, and the Anti-Enlightenment Critiques,” in
Women, Knowledge, and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, ed. Ann Garry
and Marilyn Pearsall (New York/London: Routledge, 1996), 299–300.
25. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint”; Dorothy Smith, “Women’s perspective
as a radical critique of sociology,” Sociological Inquiry 44, no. 1 (1974); Dorothy
Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Sociology for Women (Boston: North-
eastern University Press, 1987).
26. Harding, “Feminism, Science,” 313.
27. Ibid., 314 (emphasis in original).
28. W.E.B Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Penguin, 1989), 2–3.
29. Ibid.
 Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso 41

30. Doris Sommer, “A Vindication of Double Consciousness,” in A Companion

to Postcolonial Studies, ed. Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray (Malden: Blackwell,
2000), 165.
31. Du Bois, Souls.
32. Scott, “Evidence.”
33. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,”
Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 542.
34. Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?,’” in
Kant: Political Writings, ed. Hans Siegbert Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, [1784] 1991), 54 (emphasis in original).
35. Castro-Gómez, Hybris, 22.
36. Castro-Gómez, Crítica, 132.
37. Ibid., 53.
38. Enrique Dussel, “Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism,” Nepantla: Views from
South 1, no. 3 (2000); Quijano, “Coloniality.”
39. Quijano, “Coloniality,” 542.
40. Ibid., 541.
41. Mario Blaser, Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2010), 4.
 Chapter 3

‌‌‌ onstructing Feminist

C
Methodologies from the
Perspective of Decolonial
Feminism

‌‌Ochy Curiel
Translation by María Elizabeth Rodríguez

The decolonial approach, in its several expressions, has offered critical ways
to understand the historical and political specificity of our societies from
non-dominant paradigms.1 These ways of understanding show the relation-
ship between Western modernity, colonialism, and capitalism, thus putting
into question the narratives that are present in official historiographies and
showing how social hierarchies have been formed.
More specifically, decolonial feminism, by reclaiming a substantial part
of the propositions of both the decolonial option and of critical feminisms,
offers a new analytical perspective to understand in a more complex way the
relationships derived from race, sex, sexuality, class and geopolitics in an
overlapping form. These proposals made mainly by Indigenous feminists and
feminists of Indigenous origins, Black feminists, working class feminists, and
lesbian feminists, among others, have questioned the ways in which hege-
monic, white, white-Mestizo and class-privileged feminism has understood
the subordination of women by having done so from their own situational
experiences, which reproduce racism, classism, and heterosexism in their
theories and political practices.
These critical feminisms have turned feminist theories and practices
upside down. However, there is yet more excavating to do in relation to
political practices, methodologies, and pedagogies, with the intention that the

43
44 Chapter 3

decolonial approach is not limited to epistemological analysis. In this article,

I intend to further advance this aspect and for this I propose, first of all, to
clarify and problematize what I understand as postcolonial and as decolonial
feminism, since there are confusions and various interpretations with regard
to them. Secondly, I will characterize decolonial feminism, its main sources
and proposals; and thirdly, I will address some issues that I believe are central
to problematize feminist methodology(ies) and propose what I consider to be
central aspects of the construction of decolonial feminist methodologies. I
will now proceed to develop every aspect I propose.

IN REGARD TO POSTCOLONIALISM

In the social sciences as well as from the perspective of activism, it is

often assumed that the epistemological and political perspectives of what is
called “postcolonial feminism” are the same as in “decolonial feminism.”
Nevertheless, there are important differences that need to be clarified.
We could say that many societies have at some point been colonized­­––i.e.,
they have experienced the colonial event. Even countries that are now impe-
rial centers, such as the United States, have been colonized at some point.
However, not all societies have been colonized in the same manner; therefore,
they are not postcolonial in the same way. The type of colonization that the
United States experienced is not the same as the type that India experienced,
and both of these differ from the type that most of the Latin American and
Caribbean countries experienced.
Postcolonialism, in its historical meaning, begins in 1947, with the inde-
pendence of India from the British Empire and with the end of World War
II. Postcolonialism is also linked with the emancipatory processes in Asia
and Africa, with the emergence of “Third World” nationalisms, and with the
massive exodus of immigrants to industrialized countries. The term has had
ambiguous inscription in the areas of influence defined by the Cold War.
The postcolonial, as a category, concept, and perspective––that is to say in
its epistemological meaning––arises from the “postcolonial theories” during
the 1980s in England and the United States. The Palestinian scholar Edward
Said’s book, Orientalism, in some way provides the parameters of these
theories and makes a link between the European humanities and imperialism
through the construction of the East (the Orient) as an Other in relation to
which the West (the Occident) is constituted.2 Subsequently, other academics
stand out, particularly Indian scholars such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Homi K. Bhabha, Ranajit Guha, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, among oth-
ers. The concept of the postcolonial has wide-ranging positionalities, histori-
cal uses, and even several theoretical and political ambiguities.
 Ochy Curiel 45

Ella Shohat, an Iraqi of Jewish descent, has pointed out some of these
theoretical and political ambiguities. She asserts that many formulations of
the postcolonial do not make clear whether this periodization is epistemologi-
cal or historical, also adding that they have universalizing and depoliticizing
pretensions, dissolving the politics of resistance. Due to its multiple inter-
pretations, Shohat proposes that the “post” in postcolonial should not refer
to what comes after, or what has overcome colonialism; rather, it would be
more precise to refer to a theory which goes beyond, or “post,” the fixed and
stable binary relationships of First world/Third World, colonized/colonizer,
center/periphery.3
Anne McClintock, from Zimbabwe, also criticizes the concept of the
postcolonial for its linearity, as if colonialism and its effects have ended.4
Arif Dirlik, from Turkey, on the other hand, points to the postcolonial as a
poststructuralist and postfoundational discourse whose specific linguistic and
cultural trends are used, particularly by displaced Third World intellectuals
seated in prestigious universities in the United States and Britain, as if these
terms were universally consistent. For Dirlik, the notion of identity that
is assumed from these positions is discursive and non-structural. In other
words, it is a culturalism that downplays how capitalism structures the mod-
ern world.5
For the Puerto Rican Ramón Grosfoguel what is understood as postcolonial
studies has a theoretical and political problem, namely that it understands
colonialism as an eighteenth and nineteenth century “event,” from the per-
spective of the British colonization of India and the British and French colo-
nization of the Middle East.6 For Grosfoguel, as for other Latin-American
decolonial thinkers, the colonial experience begins in 1492, that is to say,
300 years earlier. In this view, 1492 is a fundamental starting point, since it
is from this point that the modernity/coloniality relation that constructs the
epistemic and political superiority of the West over the rest of the world is
concretized. According to the author, postcolonial studies conceals this phe-
nomenon. However, I will return to this point later on.
Although the Afro-Jamaican Stuart Hall agrees with some of Shohat’s,
McClintock’s, and Dirlik’s critiques, he also emphasizes how the concept of
the postcolonial can help to describe or characterize the changes in global
relations that take place as part of the (necessarily unequal) transition from
the epoch of the empires to the moment of post-independence or post-
colonization.7 The concept also helps to identify the new relationships and
arrangements of power that are arising in the new context. For Hall, the post-
colonial is a process whereby all the worlds that were marked by colonialism
disengage from the entire colonial syndrome. In this sense, postcolonialism
is not only about describing “this” society instead of “that one,” or describ-
ing “then” versus “now,” but about re-interpreting colonization as part of a
46 Chapter 3

transnational and transcultural global process, an interpretation which pro-

duces a decentered, diasporic, or global rewriting of the great imperial narra-
tives, which were previously centered on the nation.8 I adopt Hall’s proposal
of “disengagement” since, although it refers to the postcolonial, this approach
serves to construct proposals around decolonial methodologies, a matter that
I will develop further below.
There are very few works that establish clear differences between what is
understood by postcolonial feminism and decolonial feminism. Nevertheless,
I will risk proposing that postcolonial feminism offers a narrative from the
position of “Third World” women that challenges the hegemonic, generally
white, and Western feminism. This narrative introduces the importance of
considering race, class, and geopolitics to the understanding of geopolitical
relations.
The contributions of postcolonial feminisms include the analysis of dis-
cursive colonization proposed by Chandra Mohanty and the idea of epistemic
violence proposed by Gayatri Spivak, both of Indian origin.9 The central argu-
ment of these two concepts refers to the critique of knowledge production by
intellectuals who are generally white and from the North over women from
the Third World. These women are assumed to lack agency and are seen only
as victims, which creates a relationship of knowledge-power from positions
of privilege of sex, race, sexuality, and geopolitics.
Although the contexts in which these authors have applied these concepts
have been different from Latin America and the Caribbean, they apply per-
fectly to our context. Theories, categories, and concepts are transported, with-
out contextualization from Europe and North America to our region in order
to analyze the realities of many women, who then become objects of study
of many feminists who have institutional and academic privileges, as well as
privileged race, class, and sexuality positions.
Most postcolonial feminists, both in this region and beyond, are embedded
in academic spaces, which, while they are spaces of political discourses, are
minimally involved with social movements. This limits the ways in which
knowledge is decolonized, because (a) it does not facilitate a recognition of
categories, concepts, and epistemes that arise from the political practices that
many women with underprivileged race, class, sexuality, and geopolitical
positions produce in their communities and collectives, and, above all (b) it
does not facilitate anchoring these analyses to the material realities and the
concrete struggles that are being carried out in different places. Like the post-
colonial project, which has been interrogated as a whole, very often postcolo-
nial feminist analysis remains within a poststructuralist linguistic turn, which,
although it opens doors for “other” interpretations, does not stop reproducing
the discursive coloniality of knowledge.
 Ochy Curiel 47

CONCERNING DECOLONIAL FEMINISM

I assume, as do many others, that the struggles of Indigenous and Black

peoples against colonialism in Abya Yala generated processes of decoloni-
zation, which included the emergence of important epistemologies whose
further study is very much needed. Therefore, decolonizing practices precede
everything that has been conceptualized as decolonial. This is a starting point
for decolonial feminism.
What is called decolonial feminism, a concept proposed by Argentinian
feminist María Lugones, has two important sources.10 One source is the set
of feminist criticisms made by Black feminists, women of color, Chicanas,
working class women, the Latin American feminist autonomy movement,
Indigenous feminists, and French materialist feminism against hegemonic
feminism in its universalization of the concept of “woman,” and, therefore,
its racist, classist, and heterocentric bias.11 Another source is the proposals
for what is called decolonial theory or the decolonial project that different
Latin American and Caribbean thinkers have developed. I will discuss these
two points further, and I will start with the latter because it offers me a more
general framework of analysis and gives me the possibility to include some of
the criticisms that decolonial feminists have made of some of the decolonial
Latin American and Caribbean thinkers.
The decolonial project, or, as it is also called, the modernity/colonial-
ity group or network, arises from a group of Latin American, Caribbean,
and Latinx intellectuals and activists, located primarily in U.S. universities
including the State University of New York (SUNY) and Duke University,
as well as in Latin American universities, specifically in the doctorate
program in Cultural Studies at the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar in
Quito (Ecuador), the Master’s program in Cultural Studies of the Javeriana
University in Bogota (Colombia), the Master’s program in Research
on Contemporary Social Problems of the IESCO (also in Bogota), the
seminar-workshop “Factory of Ideas” in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), and
the Central University of Venezuela, among others. Some of its members
are involved with the Indigenous movement in Bolivia and Ecuador and
the Colombian Afro-descendent movement, while others organize activities
within the framework of the World Social Forum. This group is an expression
of contemporary critical theory closely related to the traditions of the social
sciences and humanities of Latin America and the Caribbean.12
There are several important issues that decolonial feminism incorporates
from the decolonial project. First is the concept of decoloniality. This con-
cept can be explained departing from the idea that the end of colonialism as
a geopolitical and geo-historical constitution of European Western modernity
48 Chapter 3

did not lead to a significant transformation of the international division of

labor between centers and peripheries, as well as between the ethnic-racial
hierarchy of peoples and the formation of nation-states in the periphery. On
the contrary, what has happened is a transition from modern colonialism to
global colonialism.
The decolonial implies a new understanding of global and local relation-
ships. This understanding requires us to see Western Eurocentric modernity,
world capitalism, and colonialism as an inseparable trilogy, as Enrique Dussel
has proposed.13 The Americas are a product of modernity in the construction
of the world system. In order to establish itself as the center of the world,
Europe created the Americas to serve as its periphery since 1492, when capi-
talism became a global phenomenon through colonialism.14
From that Eurocentric perspective, Western modernity is assumed as eman-
cipation, as utopia, as the myth that defined the dominance of Europeans over
others who they considered barbarians, who they categorized as immature,
whom they had to help develop—even if it had to be done through war
and violence––and these others were ultimately seen as guilty of their own
victimization.15 In this way, this relationship between modernity and colo-
nialism/global capitalism creates a global pattern of power that the Peruvian
Aníbal Quijano defines as the coloniality of power, another important concept
that decolonial feminism adopts.16
The coloniality of power has encompassed social relations of exploitation/
domination/conflict around the dispute for the control and dominance of labor
and its products, nature and its resources for production; sex and its products,
the reproduction of the species; subjectivity and its products, both material
and intersubjective, including knowledge and authority along with its instru-
ments of coercion. For Quijano, this global pattern was sustained around the
idea of race, which imposed a racial/ethnic classification: Indians, Blacks,
olives, yellows, whites, Mestizos; and a geocultural classification: America,
Africa, East Asia, Middle East, West Asia or Europe.
Although Lugones welcomes Quijano’s proposal on coloniality, she
points out that race is not the sole determinant for the configuration of the
coloniality of power. For Lugones, along with race, there is gender and thus
heterosexualism.17 Lugones also argues that Quijano assumes a notion of
hyper-biological sex. She analyzes how the gender he refers to has to do with
a type of human relationship reserved for the European white male who pos-
sesses rights, and for his female companion, who serves for the purpose of
their reproduction as species.18 For this decolonial feminist, the type of differ-
entiation that applies to the colonized and enslaved peoples is sexual dimor-
phism, male and female, which for Lugones accounts for an encompassing
reproductive capacity and animal sexuality. In this logic, enslaved females
were not women. In other words, Lugones argues that gender is a modern and
 Ochy Curiel 49

colonial category. This is linked to the notion of humanity that was imposed
by Western modernity, a notion that begins by questioning if Indigenous and
Black people were human.
The colonized females and males were neither women or men, nor were they
considered human. On this aspect, the Puerto Rican Nelson Maldonado-Torres
develops the concept of the coloniality of being, another important concept
that decolonial feminism embraces, and defines it as the denial of human-
ity to certain peoples (especially Indigenous and Afro-descendants peoples)
who have been considered as an obstacle for Christianization, and then for
modernization.19 This negation of being (Dasein) has been the justification
for enslaving them, taking away their lands, waging war on them, or simply
murdering them. They are, as Frantz Fanon would say, “the wretched (dam-
nés) of the Earth.”20
Western Eurocentric Modernity also generated the coloniality of knowl-
edge, another important concept that decolonial feminism adopts, which is
a type of techno-scientific, epistemological rationality that is assumed as the
acceptable model for knowledge production.21 This knowledge, from this
point of view, must be neutral, objective, universal, and positivist. As the
Colombian Santiago Castro-Gómez points out, this colonial knowledge aims
to be at a point zero of observation, capable of translating and document-
ing with fidelity the characteristics of an exotic nature and culture. It is an
imaginary that pretends to emerge from a neutral platform, a single point
from where you can see the social world that cannot be observed from any
other point, just as the gods would.22 From there, a great universal narrative
is generated in which Europe and the United States are, simultaneously, the
geographical center and the culmination of a temporal movement for knowl-
edge, where the knowledge of subaltern populations is undervalued, ignored,
excluded, silenced, and made invisible. The subalternity here is “the other”
insofar as this other is not man, heterosexual, father, Catholic, educated,
with racial and class privileges. Now, there are also many women with these
privileges, and so it is clear that “otherness” must be studied, investigated,
exoticized, exploited, developed, and mediated.
The coloniality of power, of being, and of knowledge, therefore, is the
dark side of modernity, of that Western modernity from which feminism also
arises as an emancipatory proposal that is supposedly for “all” women. These
interpretations have been key to decolonial feminism. Yet another source has
been the ideas and forms of thinking that have emerged from collective politi-
cal practices, of which many of us have been part. These practices have to do
with critical and counterhegemonic feminisms.
The Afro-Dominican, lesbian, feminist, autonomous, and decolonial
thinker and activist Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, has started to systematize
what we in Latin America and the Caribbean call decolonial feminism.23
50 Chapter 3

For Espinosa-Miñoso, decolonial feminism “is a movement in full growth

and maturation that is proclaimed to be revisionist of the theoretical and the
political proposal of feminism given what it considers its western, white, and
bourgeois bias.”24 Espinosa-Miñoso posits that decolonial feminism aims to
revise and problematize fundamental bases of feminism and to broaden key
concepts and theories of what is known as the decolonial theory proposed
by many of the aforementioned Latin American thinkers. Espinosa-Miñoso
identifies US Black women and women of color feminisms and their pro-
posal to consider the imbrication of the oppression of race, class and sex as
important sources. Also relevant are the contributions by Afro-Latinx and
Afro-Caribbean women, who make visible the relationship between racism
and sexism in contexts that are dominated by the ideology of mestizaje. As
Espinosa-Miñoso makes clear, their work also denounces the invisibility of
feminist and Black movements in the region.
Espinosa-Miñoso further clarifies that decolonial feminism includes a con-
sideration of key issues in postcolonial feminism, such as epistemic violence
and strategic essentialism, and she regards central ideas in the current of Latin
American autonomous feminism as important. Latin American autonomous
feminism started in the 1990s with the denunciation of the developmental-
ist policies implemented by Northern countries in “Third World” countries,
which included the institutionalization of social movements, including
feminism.25 Espinosa-Miñoso also points out that some decolonial feminists
incorporate proposals submitted by French materialist feminism with its early
questioning of the idea of nature, its understanding of the categories of men
and women as types of sex, and the analysis of heterosexuality as a political
regime. The poststructural feminist challenge of the essentialism of identities
in political action is also a point of reference for some decolonial feminists.
On the basis of these contributions, key feminist categories have been
problematized because they take for granted and reproduce the universaliza-
tion of the subordination of women. They do so by only considering gender
(from a binary and heterocentric perspective) in their analysis, and by relying
on generalizations that have involved concepts and categories such as patri-
archy, women, and sexual division of labor, that do not consider experiences
of women affected by racism, classism, heterosexuality, and geopolitics.
Therefore, the modern/colonial gender system has affected interpretations,
theorizations, research, methodologies, and many political practices, by
reproducing racism and colonization.26
Next, I will focus on some important issues raised by feminists who call
ourselves decolonial, whose work includes contributions to and problema-
tizations of what is called “the” feminist methodology. These explorations
are necessary to understand the complexity of social relations, in addition
to creating other categories, concepts, and theorizations, thus achieving an
 Ochy Curiel 51

epistemological and political disengagement in the ways in which we produce

knowledge.

A FEMINIST METHODOLOGY? THE POINT

OF VIEW AND INTERSECTIONALITY

Many feminists like myself have recognized the contributions of Sandra

Harding to thinking about an epistemology and a feminist methodology
that should question the masculine logic of science. Harding’s work has
also offered important insights about the value of reflexivity and its role in
avoiding the “objectivist” position, which aims to hide the cultural beliefs
and practices of the researcher. Also important has been Harding’s call for
making explicit the gender, race, class, and cultural traits of the researcher
and to consider this effort as part of the researcher’s positionality.27 However,
Harding ultimately reproduces the universalization of gender, as well as its
binary oppositions, therefore making her proposal quite essentialist: it sug-
gests that the feminist methodology is a perspective that is grounded on wom-
en’s experiences as opposed to the experiences of men. This dualist point of
view assumes that “women” and “men” are all equal, decontextualized, and
universal. Although Harding proposes that we consider the race, gender, and
class of the researcher, her proposal is limited to understanding the feminist
methodology only on the basis of gender.
Donna Haraway, known for her contributions around reflexivity and
positionality, has also invited us to historicize those who do research.28
That is to say, she has called to demonstrate a place of enunciation that
definitely affects the interpretations of the research that is carried out. This is
important––it is even an essential ethical starting point—but reflexivity from
a decolonial point of view is not only about self-definition in the produc-
tion of knowledge; it is also about assuming a position in the production of
knowledge that should consider geopolitics, race, class, sexuality, and social
capital, among other positionalities. This other, decolonial, view of reflexivity
includes key questions such as: what is knowledge for? How do we produce
knowledge(s)? Who produces knowledge and in accordance with which
political project(s)? Within which institutional and political frameworks do
we produce knowledge?
The African-American scholar Patricia Hill Collins has expanded on the
question of positionality on the basis of the reconstruction of Black feminist
thought.29 For Collins, this viewpoint has two components:
52 Chapter 3

1. Political-economic experiences, which provide a set of different

experiences, a different perspective on the material reality that
African-American women live.
2. A Black feminist consciousness about material reality. This means
understanding how consciousness is created from the experience of a
reality that is best interpreted by African American women.

For Collins, both the experience and the awareness of that experience by
African American women are traversed by how they face, problematize,
and act upon what Collins calls the matrix of domination.30 These activities
presuppose an understanding of how racism, heterosexuality, colonialism and
classism interact. The matrix of domination is composed of four characteris-
tics: structural elements, such as laws and institutional policies; disciplinary
aspects, which refer to bureaucratic hierarchies and surveillance techniques;
and hegemonic elements or ideas and ideologies, which include interpersonal
aspects and quotidian discriminatory practices.
Collins’s analysis invites us to consider two ideas:

1. If the Black feminist consciousness arises from experience, and if

Afro-feminist women—and not only feminists of African descent, since
this could also be extended to other subalternized subjects—are the ones
who, from their realities, can interpret these experiences better, it is
because lived experience is a source of knowledge, and therefore these
women themselves should be the ones investigating it.
2. If the interpretation of that reality implies understanding how the
matrix of oppression acts upon their own lives, characterized by how
they are affected by oppressive forces such as racism, heterosexuality,
colonialism and classism, with its structural expressions, ideologies and
interpersonal aspects, then all this is not about analytical categories,
but about lived realities that need a deep understanding of how they
occurred.31 Therefore, it is not a question of describing that they are
Black, that they are poor and that they are women; it is about under-
standing why they are racialized, impoverished, and sexualized. This is
what interests us as decolonial feminists because it allows us to show
that these conditions have been produced by coloniality.

I am not suggesting that only those who have suffered the oppressions have
the capacity to understand and investigate the realities that affect others, but
I posit that there is an epistemic privilege that is important to consider in the
production of knowledge, and that means that the subaltern goes from being
object to being subject of knowledge production.32
 Ochy Curiel 53

To consider Collins’s matrix of domination, or as Maria Lugones would put

it, the mutual constitution of the oppressions, is different from assuming the
intersectional as a perspective, a concept proposed by Kimberlé Crenshaw.33
That intersectionality is the most successful concept to understand oppres-
sions in feminist research and in feminist proposals is not coincidental, for in
the end it is a liberal and modern proposal, even though it has been proposed
by an African-American female scholar.
Intersectionality refers to an acknowledgement of the differences between
intersected categories, in which race and gender, for example, are presented
as axes of subordination that at some point have been separated, with some
level of autonomy, and that are then intersected. The metaphor of the cross-
roads that the author uses is an indicator of the political and theoretical
problem contained in this proposal. Intersectionality asks very little about the
production of these differences contained in the experiences of many women,
mostly racialized and impoverished ones. Therefore, it tends to incline toward
a liberal multiculturalism that pretends to recognize differences, including
them in a model of diversity, without questioning the reasons for the need of
such inclusion. In other words, intersectionality is defined from the modern
Eurocentric Western paradigm. In contrast, a decolonial feminist position
implies understanding that race and gender as well as class, heterosexuality,
and related categories have been constitutive of the modern colonial epis-
teme. These are not simple axes of differences, but differentiations produced
by the overlapping oppressions produced by the modern colonial system.
Based on all of the above, a feminist decolonial methodology should ask
itself several questions: What is the significance in the points of view of
feminist research? How much do we impose gender on investigative and
epistemological processes when we study racialized, primarily Black and
Indigenous, women? How much do we reproduce the coloniality of power, of
knowledge, and of being when race, class, and sexuality become only analyti-
cal or descriptive categories that do not allow us to establish a relationship
between these realities and a modern/colonial capitalist world order?

THE SUBJECT-OBJECT RELATION

Another issue that I want to highlight here is the subject-object relationship.

In feminist methodologies, who are the subjects and who are the objects
of our research? One of the characteristics of the coloniality of knowl-
edge, as we pointed out, is to assume that those who have been defined as
others­­––who represent the colonial difference––are generally the objects of
research: women, Black, impoverished, poor, Indigenous, migrants from
the Third World, as if critical feminist research is done only from assuming
54 Chapter 3

them as raw material. Generally, the place of privilege of those who build
knowledge on these “others” seems unquestionable. What does it mean for
white feminists of the Global North to study women of the Global South,
or for academic feminists of the South to study the “other” local women of
their own countries? Under what kinds of relationships are these investigative
exercises done?
Research is an important task that should be done by social scientists and
activists. What typically happens, however, is that those who have privileges
of race, class, sexuality and geopolitical location engage in discursive colo-
nization and epistemic violence.34 They do this through interpretations of the
social and cultural practices of the groups who are assumed as “others.” This
activity continues a path that tends to limit academic credentials to those
in hegemonic positions who continue to study those who are considered
“different.”

THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL DISENGAGEMENT

Recalling Stuart Hall’s conception of disengagement, the decolonial approach

proposes a delinking from the coloniality of power, of knowledge, and of
being, which justify the rhetoric of modernity, of progress, and of democratic
“imperial” administration.35 This delinking/disengagement implies several
inquiries in relation to the knowledges that are produced, how they are pro-
duced, and for what they are produced.

The Recognition and Legitimation of

Subalternized “Other” Knowledges
This aspect starts from the recognition of the points of view that are pro-
duced from the lived experiences that contribute to proposing other, more
fair and humane worlds, outside the liberal/colonial matrix. “Other” knowl-
edges cannot simply be used to assuage epistemological guilt, nor is the task
just to cite Black, Indigenous, or impoverished feminists to give an aura of
criticality to research, knowledges, and thoughts in construction.36 It is about
identifying concepts, categories, and theories that arise from subaltern experi-
ences, which are generally produced collectively and have the possibility of
generalizing without universalizing. It is about explaining different realities
with the goal of breaking the conceptualization of these knowledges as local,
individual, and impossible to communicate.
This assumes what Zulma Palermo has defined as a liberating ethic with
its own genealogy. This ethic requires us to place ourselves outside the cat-
egories that have been created and imposed by Western epistemology, and to
 Ochy Curiel 55

break with the epistemic colonial difference between the cognizant subject
and the subjects to be known. This epistemic colonial difference has imposed
the exclusion and invisibility of the knowledges of subaltern subjects.37
An example of disengagement from a particular point of view is found in
what the Bolivian of Aymara origin Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has proposed as
the ch’ixi, which refers to another notion of mestizaje that does not have to
do with politics of whitening or hierarchical structuring, which was the case
with the formation of the national states in Latin America and the Caribbean,
where institutional and structural racism has been established.38 In the Aymara
language, ch’ixi means a juxtaposed fabric, something that is and is not at the
same time, a heterogeneous grey, a mixture, contrary to each other and at
the same time complementary. According to Rivera Cusicanqui, this notion
characterizes a large part of our peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Guatemalan Maya Kaqchikel Aura Cumes has proposed retaking the
category of winaq, which appears in the Popol Wuj and that questions the
notion of modern gender, to explain the ways in which, before colonization,
the Mayas were called “people” without gender attribution.39 Gladys Tzul
Tzul, also Guatemalan Maya Kaqchikel, proposes the tension transformation/
conservation to understand the policy of Indigenous women in Guatemala,
who, while struggling to ensure the conservation of communal land to avoid
expropriation by the state, allow access to use these lands. Tzul analyzes how
women who participate in communal activities, principally in relation to the
defense of land, employ a series of strategies that prevent the total control of
capital, which seeks to dismember the land. Women participate in production
through the collective decision-making for the regulation and administration
of common use, particularly with respect to the control of land and reproduc-
tive work. They engage in strategies that allow for disengagement from the
control of the state and the logics of capital.40
Another effort of epistemological disengagement, regardless of our agree-
ment or disagreement with the content, is what communal feminists have
called “patriarchal entronques” [“entronques de patriarcado”].41 They use
the concept to explain the existence of patriarchy among various Indigenous
peoples before colonization, and how this patriarchy was modified in con-
junction with the new forms of modern patriarchies.42
The epistemological disengagement implies doing what I have called
anthropology of domination, which implies unveiling the forms, ways,
strategies, and speeches that define certain social groups as “others,” emerg-
ing from places of power and domination.43 To participate in and create
anthropology of domination means doing ethnography of the North and of
the North that exists within the South. It also involves doing ethnographies
of the academic practices, methodologies, and pedagogies that contain the
idea of development and a transnational solidarity based on privilege, which
56 Chapter 3

entails making an ethnography of the logics of international cooperation,

of the social intervention, of our own places of knowledge production, of
the theories that we use and legitimize, and of the purposes for which these
theories are made. In other words, the anthropology of domination requires
an ethnography of subjects and social practices from the positions and places
of production of privileges.
All these are efforts of epistemological disengagement made from the
political practices of activists and thinkers with particular points of view–
–such as Indigenous or of Indigenous origin and people of African descent in
Abya Yala––that propose new, non-Western categories or re-elaborate from
Western categories new non-hegemonic concepts that open possibilities for
“other” interpretations.
This disengagement also assumes “other” pedagogical processes (“pro-
cesos pedagógicos ‘otros’”). For Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, Diana Gomez,
Karina Ochoa and María Lugones, this activity involves a “relationship
between doing and thinking as well as the reverse: thinking from doing. In
this way, an experience of knowledge while doing is generated, of producing
knowledge that links theory and praxis.”44 The authors propose co-research
and theorizing by organic intellectuals in communities and organizations,
and by activists committed in processes that involve struggle, resistance, and
action, all from their own communitarian processes.45

To Problematize the Conditions of Knowledge(s) Production

Finally, I think that it is important to contest the conditions of knowledge(s)
production which imply what Rivera Cusicanqui calls the economy of knowl-
edge that questions the geopolitics of knowledge.46 This is important to keep
in mind because even in many decolonial and anti-colonial proposals there
is a recolonization of the imaginaries and of the minds of intellectuals. With
this proposal, the author points to the need to abandon the spheres of super-
structures and the material mechanisms that operate behind anti-colonial
discourse, such as high salaries, luxuries, privileges, and publishing opportu-
nities, to actually make a decolonization in the very practice.
But a feminist decolonial proposal is not limited to analyzing that economy
of knowledge; rather, it seeks to do research and to make methodological and
pedagogical proposals from collective processes and from organizations and
communities to strengthen their own analytical frameworks that lead to better
ways to search for social transformation.
 Ochy Curiel 57

NOTES

1. This text was presented to a large extent in the “Conference on Feminist

Research Methodology and its Application in the Field of Human Rights, Vio-
lence, and Peace,” which took place on June 19 and 20, 2014, in the city of San
Sebastián-Donostia, Basque Country. It has been amended in some of its parts for
this publication for the purpose of continuing to problematize what I understand by
decolonial methodologies.
2. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
3. Ella Shohat, “Notes on the ‘Post-colonial,’” Social Text, no. 31/32 (1992).
4. Anne McClintock, “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term Post-colonialism,”
Social Text, no. 31/32 (1992); Stuart Hall, “When was ‘The Post-colonial’? Thinking
at the Limit,” in The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons, eds.
Ian Chambers and Lidia Curti (New York/London: Routledge 1995).
5. Arif Dirlik, Postmodernity’s Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project (Lan-
ham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); Sandro Mezzadra and Federico Rahola, “The
Postcolonial Condition: A Few Notes on the Quality of Historical Time in the Global
Present,” Postcolonial Text 2, no. 1 (2006), http:​//​postcolonial​.org​/index​.php​/pct​/
article​/view​/393​/819.
6. Avila Pacheco and Wilson L. Peña Meléndez, Ramón Grosfoguel. La descoloni-
zación de la economía política (Bogotá: Universidad Libre, 2010).
7. Hall, “When was ‘The Post-colonial’?”
8. Ibid.
9. Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial
Discourses,” boundary 2 12, no. 3 (1984); Gayatri Spivak, “Can the Subaltern
Speak?,” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Law-
rence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988).
10. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” World & Knowledges Otherwise
2, no. 2 (Spring 2008). https:​//​globalstudies​.trinity​.duke​.edu​/sites​/globalstudies​.trinity​
.duke​.edu​/files​/file​-attachments​/v2d2​_Lugones​.pdf.
11. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, “Feminismos descoloniales de Abya Yala,”
in Le Dictionnaire universel des Créatrices. A paraître à l’automne (Paris: Des
Femmes-Antoinette Fouque Publishing, 2013), https:​//​www​.dictionnaire​-creatrices​
.com​/fiche​-feminisme​-decolonial​-abya​-yala​?q​=yuderkys.
12. Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel, “Giro decolonial, teoría crítica
pensamiento heterárquico,” in El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad
epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, eds. Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón
Grosfoguel (Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre, 2007).
13. Enrique Dussel, “Beyond Eurocentrism: The World-System and the Limits of
Modernity,” in The Cultures of Globalization, eds. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyo-
shi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
14. Ibid.
15. Enrique Dussel, “Europe, Modernity, Eurocentrism,” Nepantla: Views from
South 1, no. 3 (2000).
58 Chapter 3

16. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America.”

Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000).
17. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender.”
18. Ibid.
19. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the
Development of a Concept,” Cultural Studies 21 no. 2–3 (2007).
20. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York:
Grove Press, 2004).
21. Edgardo Lander, “Ciencias sociales: saberes coloniales y eurocéntricos,” in La
colonialidad del saber. Eurocentrismo y Ciencias Sociales. Perspectivas latinoameri-
canas, ed. Edgardo Lander (Buenos Aires/Caracas: CLACSO/UNESCO, 2000).
22. Santiago Castro-Gómez, “Decolonizar la universidad: la hybris del punto cero
y el diálogo de saberes,” in El giro decolonial. Reflexiones para una diversidad
epistémica más allá del capitalismo global, eds. Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón
Grosfoguel (Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre, 2007).
23. For a discussion of Autonomous Feminism and how it relates to Decolonial
Feminism see Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Diana Gómez Correal, and Karina Ochoa
Muñoz, “Introducción,” in Tejiendo de otro modo: Feminismo, epistemología y
apuestas decoloniales en Abya Yala, eds. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Diana Gómez
Correal, and Karina Ochoa Muñoz (Colombia: Editorial Universidad del Cauca,
2014).—Trans.
24. Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, “De por qué es necesario un feminismo descolo-
nial: diferenciación, dominación co-constitutiva de la modernidad occidental y el fin
de la política de identidad,” Solar 12, no.1 (2016): 150.
25. Ibid., 151.
26. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender.”
27. Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women’s
Lives (New York: Cornell University Press, 1991).
28. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
(New York/London: Routledge, 1991).
29. Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and
the Politics of Empowerment (New York/London: Routledge, 1990).
30. Ibid., 18.
31. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender.”
32. Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
33. For more on intersectionality, see Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the
Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doc-
trine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” in Feminist Legal Theory: Founda-
tions, ed. D. Kelley Weisberg (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). See also
Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender,” 12.
34. Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes”; Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
35. Hall, “When was ‘The Post-colonial’?”
36. Thanks to Rafael Vizcaíno for assistance with the translation of a part of this
sentence. –Trans.
 Ochy Curiel 59

37. Zulma Palermo, “La opción decolonial,” CECIES: Pensamiento Latinoameri-

cano y Alternativo, accessed October 3, 2013, http:​//​www​.cecies​.org​/articulo​.asp​?id​
=227.
38. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa. Una reflexión sobre prácticas y
discursos descoloniales (Buenos Aires: Tinta y Limón/Retazos, 2010).
39. Aura Cumes, “Cosmovisión maya y patriarcado: una aproximación en clave
crítica,” paper presented at the Centro Interdiciplinario de Estudios de Género de la
Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile, 2014.
40. Gladys Tzul Tzul, Sistemas de gobierno comunal indígena. Mujeres y tramas
de parentesco en Chuimeq´ena´ (Guatemala: SOCEE/Maya´Wuj Editorial, 2016).
41. We are using the term for “entronques de patriarcado” that appears in María
Lugones, “Gender and Universality in Colonial Methodology,” Critical Philosophy
of Race, 8, nos. 1–2 (2020).—Eds.
42. Julieta Paredes, Una sociedad en estado y con estado despatriarcalizador (La
Paz, Bolivia: Ministerio de Justicia, 2008).
43. Ochy Curiel, La nación heterosexual. Análisis del discurso jurídico y el régi-
men heterosexual desde la antropología de la dominación (Bogotá: Brecha Lésbica
and en la frontera, 2013), 28.
44. Yuderkys Espinosa, Diana Gómez, Karina Ochoa, and María Lugones, “Reflex-
iones pedagógicas en torno al feminismo descolonial. Una conversa en cuatro voces,”
in Pedagogías decoloniales. Prácticas insurgentes de resistir, (re)vivir y (re)vivir, ed.
Catherine Walsh (Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala, 2013), 409.
45. Ibid., 411.
46. Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa.
 PART II

Democracy, Citizenship, and

Public Policies: A Decolonial
Feminist Critique

61
 Chapter 4

The Question of the

Coloniality of Democracy

‌‌ reny Mendoza
B
Translation by Rafael Vizcaíno

“Thus, in the beginning, all the World was America.”

John Locke

This essay is part of a larger project that seeks to argue that Western democ-
racy is an artifice and a device of colonial-imperial power that the West estab-
lished starting with the conquest of America in 1492. From this perspective,
the kind of democracy that today we understand as Western is not primordi-
ally understood as a benign and emancipatory form of government that cre-
ates equality and justice between peoples, irrespective of their sex, race, class,
caste, or religion. On the contrary, it is understood as a form of domination
that was constituted historically through the usurpation of territories and the
rights of the peoples of the world, colonial wars, and the violent destruction of
other forms of government and social organization that were sometimes more
egalitarian. Furthermore, it creates extremely oppressive and exploitative
social, political, and economic forms that are still held to today through vio-
lence and the same excessive power that the West managed to obtain from its
colonial expansion beginning in 1492. Western democracy, to which so many
oppressed peoples of the non-West still aspire today, originates from nothing
less than the historical facts of their defeat and colonization by Europe and its
successors. That is, the idea of Western democracy is born of the colonial fact
itself. Recognizing the colonial and imperial origins of Western democracy is
increasingly urgent. This is not only because the West redoubles its efforts to

63
64 Chapter 4

completely deprive the non-West of its resources and tries to impose its model
of democracy on the world through political violence and war––as evidenced
in the war against terrorism in the Middle East or in the fabrication of violent
coups d’état in Honduras, Venezuela, Ukraine, etc.––but also because many
oppressed peoples of the world continue to bet on a democratic model which,
in its essence, depends on their exclusion, elimination, and oppression.
It is no coincidence that the model of democracy that the West chose as
its historical referent was the democratic state of ancient Athens, which was
a slave state where slaves and women were excluded from citizens’ rights
granted to free men. The non-democratic character of the Athenian state,
however, has been systematically sidelined by Eurocentric historians who
have erected ancient Greece as the pillar of Western civilization and democ-
racy. But in these historical narratives not only are the non-democratic foun-
dations of Athenian democracy hidden; so, too, are the material conditions
that actually allowed for the construction of Western democracy.
To demonstrate the roots of democracy as a project of domination that
emerged from European colonial expansion into the so-called New World,
one should begin by demythologizing the genealogies of the West as well as
its political theories. The myths of the origins of the West as a “civilization”
that develops autonomously from the rest of the world’s civilizations must
also be questioned.1 These genealogies of autonomy that refer to Greece,
Rome, Christianity, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, from which the
modern ideas of political democracy, the industrial revolution, and capital-
ism emerge––and which culminate in the U.S. American model of democ-
racy with its seductive ideas of the right to life, freedom, and the pursuit of
happiness––must be reinterpreted as spells that erase not only the origins of
democracy in the conquest of America, but also the extreme violence with
which it is born and maintained. In turn, it is necessary to reveal how systems
of power based on gender and racial discrimination and created in the process
of conquest and colonization are central to the ascent of the West and the
constitution of democracy as a system of domination.

THE RISE OF THE WEST

Within the Anglophone political sciences, historians such as John M. Hobson

have contributed significantly to the destabilization of Eurocentric histori-
ography by recuperating the importance of China, the Middle East, India,
Japan, and North Africa in the development and rise of the West. Hobson
criticizes what he calls the logic of immanence of traditional historical nar-
ratives, which argues that Europe triumphs over the world because it pos-
sesses innate qualities and virtues that make it superior to all other cultures
 Breny Mendoza 65

and civilizations in the world. The traditional Eurocentric vision that Hobson
criticizes imagines Europe as blessed by unique virtues that make it more
rational, laboring, productive, selfless, frugal, liberal and democratic, honest,
paternal and mature, advanced, witty, dynamic, independent, and progressive.
The “East,” in turn, is conceived in feminine terms as its opposite: irrational
and arbitrary, lazy, unproductive, indulgent, exotic and seductive, promiscu-
ous, despotic, corrupt, infantile, immature, retrograde, unoriginal, passive,
and immutable.2 Drawing on vast empirical evidence, Hobson tries to dem-
onstrate not only how this Eurocentric imaginary rests on false premises,
but also how the West could never have triumphed without what he calls the
“resource portfolios” (Eastern ideas, technologies, and institutions) that the
East provided and which the West borrowed, assimilated, and then denied and
passed off as its own.3
Hobson undertakes a formidable historical rehabilitation of Asia, the
Middle East, North Africa, and, in particular, China, recognizing its advanced
economic, political, and social systems, its high technological development,
and its world hegemony from the year 500 to the 1840s, when China finally
succumbed to Western power. Europe appears in this historical perspective
as one of the most backward, patriarchal, and obscurantist regions of the
so-called Old World, which only managed to move forward because of the
advances of the East. The East, and especially China, is established as a
region that managed its own development, that established itself as a world
economic power for more than a thousand years, and that made possible the
rise of Europe. It seems, however, that Western scholars on both the left and
the right erase this appropriation of and dependence on Eastern breakthroughs
for European development. In its place, they construct a triumphalist teleol-
ogy that ascribes to Europe a retroactive superiority that begins in ancient
Greece, persists until today, and has no end.
Hobson does not entirely deny the active role that Europeans had in their
own development. What Hobson considers crucial here is an imperial identity
based on the supposed superiority of Christianity over Islam, which the West
started to develop early on toward the end of the first millennium and which
led first to the crusades and then to the wrongly-called “voyages of discov-
ery,” when Europeans managed to reach the shores of Abya Yala, aided by
the technological advances of the East. Christendom, which had been defined
against and imposed on Islam and Judaism (and even the European peasantry
and women during the witch-hunts), was then established as a model of
domination in the so-called conquest of America. The supposed superiority of
Christianity served as justification for subjecting Indigenous peoples, African
slaves, and later the rest of the non-Western world, as well as for defining
these peoples as either barbarians, savages, subhumans, or nonhumans. From
Hobson’s Anglo-centric view, European imperial identity was consolidated
66 Chapter 4

only recently in the nineteenth century, when the idea of ​​race gained more
prominence and when the belief in the West’s moral necessity to carry out
civilizing missions around the world through, if necessary, violence became
more forcefully rooted in the European mentality.4
It is important to note that while Hobson rescues the East from the dump
of history, Abya Yala continues to be omitted in this review of Western his-
tory. Abya Yala is recognized as the place where Europeans extracted large
quantities of gold and silver by exploiting Indigenous labor and African
slaves. But Hobson only makes a brief mention of the conquest’s contribution
to Europe’s economic development; its inclusion in the story is completely
marginal and isolated from the process of appropriating/assimilating/usurping
the East’s “resource portfolios” he describes.
The East, and China in particular, remains central to the “triumph of the
West” as well as the British Empire, which managed to replace China in
world domination by 1840. In this way, Abya Yala is out of history, catego-
rized as the only region of the world––both Old and New—that preserves a
status of timeless backwardness, defined by its isolation from the rest of the
world, contributing only raw materials and free labor to the triumph of the
West. Since it is the British to whom the defeat of China is attributed, the
Spanish Empire and the Portuguese colonizers are, of course, erased from
this historical revision. There is nothing in this history that sheds light on the
importance of the usurpation of the Abya Yala peoples’ vast territories, their
genocide, the appropriation of their knowledges, technologies, and forms of
social and political organization, or their economic development, which the
Iberians found or introduced to Abya Yala, for the rise of the West. There is
not a word about how social relations and new forms of labor and colonial
institutions such as the encomienda, the mita, slavery, and repartimiento
contributed to the development of capitalism–– a system which is to give the
West a comparative advantage over the rest of the world. In short, there is
nothing that establishes the conquest of America as an important factor con-
tributing to the defeat of China, the rise of the West, the consolidation of capi-
talism, the creation of the modern state, or the Western democratic system.5
It is the modernity/coloniality group that adjudicates to Abya Yala and the
Spanish and Portuguese conquest a preponderant place in the history of the
rise of the West. Authors such as Enrique Dussel, Aníbal Quijano, Walter
Mignolo, and Ramón Grosfoguel have demonstrated in several of their writ-
ings and lectures how colonialism constitutes the darker side of Western
democratic capitalist modernity or the modern/colonial system. They make
us see how the processes that led to the original accumulation of capital,
the generalization of free wage labor among Westerners, and the ideas of
emancipation and liberal democracy were only made possible in the West by
the colonial conditions that Europeans imposed on Abya Yala and eventually
 Breny Mendoza 67

the rest of the world. Quijano’s concept of the coloniality of power speaks
to a global pattern of power based on an idea of ​​race that was established
in 1492 and persists to this day.6 These decolonial authors from Abya Yala
agree with Hobson that Europe developed an imperial identity that will come
to define not only its mentality, or what Dussel calls the ego conquiro, but
also the construction of Eurocentric knowledge through the epistemicide of
non-Western knowledges (the coloniality of knowledge) and an epistemic
apartheid.7 Furthermore, they also grant Abya Yala a much more important
role in the historical developments of capitalism, modern nation-states, and
democracy. More importantly, what interests us here is the way in which
the imperial attitude, what Maldonado-Torres describes as the mentality that
emerges from the ego conquiro, established a genocidal reason in what will
be defined as Western civilization, to which I will turn now.8

THE CONCEPT OF CIVILIZATION AND THE

QUESTION OF THE COLONIALITY OF GENDER

Studies on the concept of civilization have resurfaced as the language of civi-

lization and barbarism has once again become central to Western imperial dis-
course, especially in its new crusade against Islam since 9/11. But here again
we find that studies of civilization rarely include Abya Yala. In general, they
begin with prehistory—Mesopotamia and Egypt—and then quickly focus on
what is considered central to Western civilization: Greece and Rome. They
discuss the Athenian State, Sparta, Roman society, then the Middle Ages, the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and European and U.S. history of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries.9 One of the most important articles recently
published on this subject is “Civilization” by David Cannadine. In this work,
Cannadine tells us a story in which the concept of civilization entered the
European vocabulary in 1775, once it was admitted to the British Ash’s
Dictionary.10 The concept of civilization is binary, as all concepts of Western
political philosophy are. More specifically, it was built in relation and in
opposition to barbarism. The concept of barbarism, which is said to be older,
originates with the Greeks who denominated “barbarians” those foreigners
who did not speak Greek and who did not enjoy the political rights of the
Athenians, as the Romans would also do to the peoples who did not conform
to Roman society or speak Latin.11 Barbarians were always foreigners consid-
ered to be political and cultural enemies and naturally inferior to their oppo-
sites, the civilized. Civilization, Cannadine tells us, was defined as the highest
stage to which a society could aspire and often referred to forms of collective
identity and political, social, and cultural achievements located in the West.
Tracing the classical canons of studies of civilization, Cannadine describes
68 Chapter 4

an interesting trajectory of the concept of civilization along which we can

observe Europeans—only the English, French, Italian, and Germans—not
only appropriate the status of civilized in contradistinction to the well-known
figures—the European Christians in front of the infidels, the pagans, the
Muslims, the Jews, the Chinese, the Slavs, the Turks, the Africans, the Abya
Yala Indians, etc.—but also dispute among themselves the status of civiliza-
tion. In this debate, the fall of the Roman Empire was central because it was
supposed that the immeasurable superiority of Rome declined as a result of
the invasions of Germanic hordes considered barbaric. And yet, as though a
sort of hoax or semantic trick, not a moment later in this nineteenth century
debate, the barbaric became the positive element: the Germanic wild hordes
breathed new life into the decaying empire of Rome.12 The barbaric became
positively understood as the very element that gives new energy to decaying
empires, which the Germans would then use to justify their genocidal poli-
cies and to differentiate themselves from the English, French, and Italians,
with whom they identified Latin decadence and the idea of ​​civilization. The
Spaniards and Portuguese were not even mentioned, but, as we well know,
these peoples were branded as barbarians nearer to the Muslim world than
to Europe. Later, during the two World Wars, the Germans were once again
labeled the barbarian villains and enemies of Western civilization, which the
English, French, and US Americans now had to save. Interestingly enough,
is that, at this historical moment, the concept of civilization did not apply to
peoples outside of Europe, but rather referenced an internal dispute between
the English, French, Italians, and Germans. Later, the concept underwent new
changes, which enabled civilization to be comprehended in a plural sense.13
Western civilization suddenly appeared as a civilization among others, where
each civilization was essentially understood in terms of its swing from emer-
gence to inevitable fall, as almost always developing autonomously, and as
entering into contact with other civilizations only at the time of its decadence.
In this conception, attention is paid to the role that “creative minorities” or
elites had in preventing the fall of a civilization. The elites who failed to pre-
vent a fall are charged with the destruction of civilization while those elites
who avoided a fall are characterized as having known how to infuse new
life back into their civilization, especially through spirituality, religion, high
political values, and war. In this manner, the U.S. appears as that which pre-
vented, by virtue of its supposed democratic, liberal, and progressive values,
the fall of Western civilization.
Samuel Huntington, however, in The Clash of Civilizations and the
Remaking of World Order, alerts us to the dangers that Western civilization
is constantly running up against: the hostility and rise of the Muslim world,
the Chinese, and others including Latin America, which Huntington does not
know whether to locate within or outside the West—but, in any case, does not
 Breny Mendoza 69

pay any more attention to it.14 What is interesting in Cannadine’s historical

account of the concepts of civilization and barbarism is how he manages to
give us a history of these concepts without making any mention of the colo-
nial and imperialist history of the West. As did Hobson previously, Cannadine
focuses exclusively on the West’s relations with the East, obfuscating the
conquest of America while also using a narrow concept of the West that only
includes five countries: England, France, Italy, Germany, and the United
States. Despite these oversights, it is clear that the Eurocentric standard of
civilization stands as that feature which defined the Western world and distin-
guished it from the non-Western world. This reinforced a hierarchical vision
of the world derivative of a series of characteristics that put the West on top
and, as Huntington points out, are unequivocally linked to Western qualities
like individualism, Christian religion, separation of temporal and spiritual
authorities, the rule of law, and the values ​​and practices of democracy and
social pluralism.
Feminist studies of Western civilization, while questioning authors like
Hobson, Cannadine, and Huntington’s absolute silence on the question of
gender, nonetheless focus on the relation of the West to the East. Here, their
greatest contribution has been revealing how, in the debates on civilization,
representations of women’s status and gender were crucial to differentiating
the West from Islam.15 These feminist works often argue that gender and
sexuality, not the question of democracy, were the defining features of the
conflict between the West and Islam. It is from this perspective that some
Western feminists begin to worry about Islam’s possible influence on Western
women. Adopting a clearly imperial attitude, these Western feminists assume
that female empowerment is unquestionably derivative of Western values and
traditions.16 There are some authors, however, who recognize the diversity of
opinions on the issue of women’s rights that exists within the Islamic world,
attributing the inequity that occurs between genders to the possession of oil,
not Islam, without mentioning, however, the colonial history in the region.
Other feminist authors question the glorification of the West by call-
ing attention to the high status of women in ancient Egypt and the Roman
Empire, the exclusion of women in Athenian democracy, and the way in
which the status of Western women deteriorated in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries.17 However, their narratives follow the same pattern charac-
teristic of those studies of civilization written by Western male theorists. All
of them continue to define the West by the same geographical limits and the
same historical chronology. As Ann Towns points out, Western feminists have
neither broken with the Eurocentric vision of civilization
​​ nor integrated the
role of colonialism into their histories of Western civilization, even though
some theorists have recognized that Enlightenment ideas of civilization used
the status of women as a measure of the development of a society.18 There are
70 Chapter 4

those who question the portrayal of savage women as extremely oppressed

and that of Western women as freer, feminine, and companions to civilized
European man. They point at the same time to the contradictory character
of representations of Western women’s femininity, which was also always
described negatively as a manifestation of inertia, weakness, and emotionality
and used to denigrate societies considered savage and inferior.19 According
to these feminist theorists, Enlightenment defenders further contradicted
themselves in other writings where they described the supposed savages
as possessing masculine attributes such as aggressiveness, physical force,
and courage, which contrast with their picture of civilized men as peace-
ful, dialogical, genteel, sociable, refined, and of good customs.20 The few
feminist studies that analyze the intersection of gender and race mention
how some Enlightenment defenders feminized the native peoples of North
America because they did not find in these societies clear norms of mascu-
linity and femininity that hierarchically separated men and women. These
peoples were considered effeminate and their conquest proof of their lack of
virility. Moreover, in a contradictory and arbitrary way, African slaves were
described as belonging to a lewd, overly sexual, aggressive, and muscular
race. Finally, it is worth mentioning that nineteenth-century Western anthro-
pologists destabilized these racist and sexist discourses by claiming that the
supposedly savage societies were matrilineal and that these women enjoyed a
higher status than Western civilized women did, especially after the Industrial
Revolution.21 In spite of these important contributions by feminist scholars
of civilization and some anthropologists, none of these works discredit the
Western canon that self-adjudicates the status of civilization nor incorporates
the conquest of America in its account. It is Maria Lugones, an Argentine
decolonial feminist, who introduces elements to the analysis of the idea of
civilization that not only center the conquest of America, but also complicate
our understanding of gender and its relation to ideas of barbarism, savagery,
and bestiality.22
Lugones turns to Quijano’s concept of the coloniality of power and Nelson
Maldonado-Torres’ concept of the coloniality of being to reinterpret the stan-
dard of civilization that Westerners use to differentiate the gender status of
Western women and men as well as that of women and men from the colony.23
For this, it is important to note that the conquest of America is the moment
at which, for the first time in the history of humanity, a zone of non-being, as
Frantz Fanon calls it, was formed to establish not only hierarchies between
barbarian or savage and civilized peoples, but also that particular place where
the line separating those considered human from those considered non-human
is drawn.24 Combining elements from intersectional and decolonial analysis,
Lugones establishes how the idea of race that originates in the conquest of
America and carries in its lexicon a division between the human and the
 Breny Mendoza 71

non-human determines not only who enjoys the status of the human, but also
who can represent the standard of civilization and the status of gender.25
In this sense, when, during the conquest of America, the question “Do the
Indians have souls?” was posed for the first time, not only was their human-
ity put into question, but also, for the first time in history, conquered peoples
were bestialized.26 Based on these premises and Abya Yala’s colonial experi-
ence, as recounted in Lugones’ work, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. The women and men of the colony were not understood as human
beings, but as beasts of burden that could be forced to work to death;
genocide could be committed against them with impunity. Here, there
is neither the feminization nor masculinization of the peoples of Abya
Yala, but simply their bestialization.
2. As racialized and bestialized beings, the women and men of the colony
did not belong to the world of the social. Their bodies could not carry
the sign of gender because they only manifested the biological sex of
females or males, belonging to the animal kingdom. Therefore, they
could not symbolically represent figures of women or men whose mem-
bership in human society could be presupposed. It follows from here
also that those who were outside the social world were also those who
were outside the political world.
3. In the colonial process, European men appropriated the status of the
human and civilization. They conferred on European women a condi-
tioned human status or, rather, a subhuman status. Closer to the animal
world than to the social and cultural world, Western women were
thought to deviate from the human ideal represented by European man.
But as biological reproducers of the white race and the Western civiliza-
tion that would emerge from the debris of Abya Yala, European women
were allowed to bear the mark of the human, the social, and gender in
a manner consistent with their subordination to European men. Gender
and race constituted them as “natural” complements to European man;
they were subordinate to him, without political and labor rights, but
crucial to the reproduction of the new social world born out of the first
genocide in history.
4. Finally, given that it was the European who defined who is human
and only the human is eligible for racial, social, and political status as
well as civilization, it was the standard of civilization that ultimately
afforded the embodied mark of gender. The gender mark on bodies
became the hallmark of civilization that only Westerners could carry
and thereby distinguished them from the world of beasts. This is what
María Lugones calls the coloniality of gender.27
72 Chapter 4

THE COLONIALITY OF WESTERN POLITICAL THEORY

The coloniality of gender allows us to historicize and conceive of gender as

a criterion of civilization in relation to the processes of racialization and bes-
tialization that proceeded from the conquest of our lands in 1492. Although
it does not refer directly to the political forms that emerged from it, the colo-
niality of gender enables us to see its effects on the configuration of citizen-
ship, modern states, and Western democracy. That is why we now turn our
attention to Western political theories to gradually establish the intersection
of civilization, bestiality, gender, and democracy. Here, Hobson also provides
us with some necessary tools for glimpsing the way in which the political sci-
ences have been imbued with the concept of civilization.28
In his book The Eurocentric Conceptions of World Politics, Hobson
describes how the discipline of International Relations has been plagued,
since its Anglo-centric beginnings in 1760, by Eurocentric and racist concep-
tions that attribute to the West not only an exclusive status of self-generated
civilization, but also a racial, cultural, and social superiority that gives it the
absolute right to intervene militarily, impose its political institutions and way
of life, and even exterminate non-Western societies that refuse to accept their
supposed destiny.29 Despite the numerous variations of Eurocentrism and
racism that, according to Hobson, have been created throughout history, both
ideologies have consistently permeated right as well as left political thinking
and adapted to the different conjunctures of world politics. Right and left
political theories differ only in the degree to which they accept imperialist
intervention, paternalism, or the intensity of racism; all, however, whether
directly or subliminally, grant the West the exclusive status of civilization.
All, regardless of their political color, share what he calls the Eurocentric Big
Bang theory, which attributes to the West not only autogenetic superiority and
civility, but also what is for some essential and for others pitiful: the moral
obligation to civilize barbarians and savages and the resolute conviction that
barbarian and savage peoples are obliged to succumb to the Western civili-
zational missions.
Depending on the intensity of their racism, political theorists prioritize civ-
ilizing missions differently. For example, some grant non-Westerners some
capacity to adapt to Western rationality and civility and so presume civilizing
missions to be benign in their effects on Westerners. But those who perceive
non-Westerners anxiously and as a threat to the West invoke their direct or
indirect extermination. Here, the civilizing mission bespeaks racial apartheid
because non-white contact is thought to contaminate the Western world like a
virus. For some, this can even mean rejecting the colonial and imperial wars
out of fear that the best elements of the white race will perish in them, just as
 Breny Mendoza 73

they supposedly did in the case of the mestizaje or the occupation of land in
tropical climates. However, for other political theorists, the civilizing mission
must become lethal since the threat of barbarian contamination is perceived
as too dangerous. In this case, the total extermination of non-Western peoples
is invoked.
The non-Western danger is perceived according to the degree to which dif-
ferent non-Western peoples are treated as protagonists and are recognized as
possessing redeeming qualities. The West is portrayed as reserving for itself
the ideal role of the protagonist, which is meant to guarantee its establishment
of civilization and to license its civilizing mission. The East, by contrast,
understood here as primarily Asia (although Russia is included), is imagined
as a second-rate protagonist; sometimes, though, this protagonist is portrayed
as aggressive and predatory, as in the case of China and the Middle East.
Africans and Abya Yala peoples, it must be said (because they are barely
mentioned), are given no redemptive qualities, presumably because they are
too far from the human world and therefore do not have a historical role.
Eurocentrism and racism also infuse political theory’s most central catego-
ries such as sovereignty, anarchy, and democracy. Hobson calls into question
three of the principles governing political theory in particular, within the
discipline of International Relations: (1) sovereignty is strictly exclusive to
the State qua State; (2) all states are sovereign and rational; and (3) all states
are politically and culturally self-determined and enjoy legal equality, that is,
coexist in existential equality in an anarchic world (where there is no impe-
rialism). It is obvious that, in a world governed by the coloniality of power,
these theoretical premises not only are false, but also are themselves respon-
sible for exerting the coloniality of power. As I point out in another place, the
Treaty of Westphalia signed in 1648 in Germany did not primarily seek to
create sovereign nation-states in European territories, as is commonly under-
stood; rather it more so sought to establish an agreement between European
colonial powers that would ensure mutual respect during the territorial occu-
pation of the colonies.30 That is, the concept of sovereignty, and the European
nation-state itself, arose from the usurpation and colonial occupation of
non-Western peoples’ lands. The blueprint for this concept of sovereignty, as
we shall see later, was first realized during the occupation of the Abya Yala
peoples’ territories. It would then be extended to the rest of the non-Western
world, preventing the Indigenous nations of North America from being rec-
ognized, on their own lands or by the international community, as sovereign,
and allowing for the perpetual usurpation and dispossession of Indigenous
territories in the colonies.31 From this perspective, notions of sovereignty and
indigeneity appear as oxymoronic.
74 Chapter 4

Hobson agrees. The standard of Western civilization dictates that the civi-
lized world cannot recognize the sovereignty of barbarian and savage peo-
ples. According to Hobson, from 1760 onward, Western political theories did
not view sovereignty as an attribute of all states and so thought that civilized
nation-states should be treated differently than the so-called non-civilized
nation-states.32 It is interesting how Western political theorists made distinc-
tions between peoples they considered barbarians, savages, and nonhumans;
they present us with a stratified concept of sovereignty. The West reserved for
itself a hyper-sovereignty that gave it extraordinary powers to intervene in not
only non-Western nation-states, but also those territories claimed by the West,
but occupied by Indigenous peoples. However, the West gave barbarian states
such as China, India, Japan, and Russia a limited or calibrated sovereignty
based on this uneven, racial, and hierarchical concept of civilization. Within
this logic, the Abya Yala peoples of the whole continent, and, we can assume,
the Mestizo-Creole nation-states and Africa too, did not enjoy any degree
of sovereignty because they were not even ascribed the status of barbarians.
The West could therefore wage war against them, intervene militarily, and
interfere in their internal affairs whenever necessary. In this system of strati-
fied sovereignty, any attempt to recognize cultural pluralism or the cultural
self-determination of barbarian, savage or non-human peoples will always be
viewed as an affront to Western civilization that gives rise to the problems
of the world. The West has the moral obligation to contain barbarism and
savagery in order to save the civilized world.
Hobson’s work is very useful not only for understanding the history of
the West as a political invention, but also for seeing how Western political
thought is deeply Eurocentric, racist and imperialist. However, as mentioned
earlier, his work does not pay due attention to the conquest of America, and
his chronology of colonialism starts with the British Empire. His interlocu-
tors remain the Anglo-Saxon world and the subjects of the British Empire,
that is, postcolonial theorists and critics of Orientalism who come from Asia
and the Middle East. This leaves a very large theoretical and historical void
in his conversation. However, within the Anglo-Saxon academy, there are
Native American theorists who analyze the implications of Western political
theory alongside the history of colonialism. Unlike Hobson, they theorize
from the colonial fact that is the conquest of America; and yet, in turn, they
also only focus on the founding of the settler-colonial states of the U.S. and
Canada. That is, Abya Yala is equally outside the parameters of these theo-
ries. However, some of the elements of these theories remedy some of the
problems of Hobson’s work and are very helpful for understanding our own
reality. Especially their critique of Western thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, Kant, and of Rawls’ social contract theory, but also their critique
of anti-racist thinkers who were trained in the social contract tradition, like
 Breny Mendoza 75

the Jamaican Charles Mills, provide us with important elements with which
to build our own political theories.

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT’S CRITICAL THEORY

Indigenous studies authors like Robert Nichols reveal the hidden ways in
which the theorization of the social contract has been, since its origins,
founded on the usurpation of Indigenous territories and the extermination of
Indigenous peoples.33 Likewise, these authors show how political concepts
such as sovereignty, private property, law, and rights are born of the colonial
fact. As Nichols shows us, during colonial expansion, the concept of political
sovereignty, for example, was closely linked to the need to claim individual
ownership of Indigenous peoples’ communal lands. Historically, it was in the
colony where notions of natural law and communal property were distorted
and denied for the first time to argue that property can never be communally
owned, that it can only be individually owned and the result of a social
contract between sovereign (read: civilized) individuals. This clearly facili-
tated the distribution of Indigenous lands among colonizers. Social contract
theorists during this period followed the denial of communal land ownership
with a new “productivity clause” that justified the occupation and annexation
of Indigenous lands; these lands, they said, were occupied by unproductive
people who did not practice agriculture and therefore could not enjoy any
rights over their land. To rationalize this clause, these theorists not only con-
structed a link between the notion of productivity and the right to individual
property, but denied the agricultural development that Indigenous peoples
had achieved, defining them as nomadic peoples that depended exclusively
on hunting and harvesting roots and fruits.
Under this new colonial property regime, Indigenous peoples were forced
to cede their lands to the civilized because their lands were neither cultivated
nor cultivable, given the technological means at their disposal. Indigenous
peoples’ supposed primitive and savage state, more beastly than human,
caused them to automatically lose their rights to their lands. In losing com-
munal property rights over their lands, Indigenous peoples also lost their
rights to form or even participate in a political society and to exercise politi-
cal sovereignty over their territories. In fact, they could not even collaborate
with the settler-colonial state that imposed itself on their territories. Worse
still, as communal property did not grant and the productivity clause essen-
tially denied Indigenous peoples rights to their lands, it is concluded that
they never had sovereign rights over them; thus, usurpation of Indigenous
lands does not constitute an illegal act or crime. That is, Indigenous peoples
could not have rights to protect or the sovereignty to claim lands over which
76 Chapter 4

they, presumably, never presided in the first place. This is where the idea of
America as terra nullius comes from.
In this sense, the idea of America as terra nullius constitutes an imaginary,
but founding element in the modern theory of social contract, which was writ-
ten by authors like Hobbes and Locke precisely at the historical moment of
England’s colonial expansion into America. This timing reveals the colonial
and expansionist nature of the social contract itself and of the nation-states
that emanated from it. First, the social contract spun the fiction that the lands
usurped by the colonizers never had legitimate owners. Then this fiction
became reality: colonizers dispossessed the Indigenous of their lands, carried
out genocide, disabled their autonomy, political sovereignty, and even status
as constituting a human society, and implanted a settler-colonial state based
on a logic that justified their physical and cultural elimination.34 In this sense,
social contract theory, which presumes a pre-political state of nature where
anarchy reigns to be resolved through individual agreements that then form
a political collective, instead of being a fiction or, as some argue, a heuristic
metaphor with which to understand the origin of the modern state, is based
on the real fact that is the conquest of America. Insisting then that the state
of nature is but a theoretical metaphor not only conceals its foundational role
in the conquest of America; it also sustains the colonial state or the colonial
contract or settler contract that comes out of it. As Nichols reminds us, Locke
himself, in describing the state of nature that preceded the formation of the
State, claimed, “in the beginning, all the World was America.”35
Feminist political philosophers like Carol Pateman in her famous work
The Sexual Contract published in 1988 had already drawn attention to the
patriarchal and fraternal character of the social contract and how it depended
on the exclusion of women.36 However, in her collaborative work with the
political philosopher Charles Mills she reflected on how the racial discrimi-
nation against enslaved Africans also had to do with the sexual contract’s
conception, and even acknowledged that the usurpation of Indigenous lands
and extermination of Indigenous peoples were foundational to the social
contract. As we will see shortly, Pateman’s collaboration with Mills opened
a new chapter in the debates about the social contract that reveals a series of
fissures between different colonized peoples based on their gender and race.37
Charles Mills introduces the dimension of race and white supremacy in
his critique of social contract theory. He defines racism and white supremacy
as a political system, a formal and informal power structure that determines
socio-economic privileges and norms, which dictate a differentiated distri-
bution of wealth, opportunities, obligations, benefits, and rights. Mills, like
Quijano, thinks that the idea of race began 500 years ago with the conquest
of America and that it perseveres as a world political system to this day by
way of what he will call the racial contract. But unlike Quijano (and, for that
 Breny Mendoza 77

matter, Nichols), Mills does not focus on the colonial fact. On the contrary,
his analysis focuses on what he calls the epistemology of ignorance or white
ignorance that is subsumed and made integral to social contract theory and,
according to Mills, ultimately prevents white people from understanding the
social contract’s racist foundation. The problem is therefore epistemological
and based on the cognitive inability of whites to understand the world they
have created. From this perspective, it was not so much the colonizers’ ter-
ritorial occupation of Indigenous lands but the manner in which racial dis-
crimination based on skin color excluded non-whites from the social contract
between white men, and how invisible and unexplained racism remained
within the theorization itself. The problem then for Mills lies not only in the
racist agreements between whites, but also in social contract theory’s internal
argumentation, which itself rests on racist premises, and the way in which
these premises become invisible to social contract theorists. For this reason,
despite the racist premises of the social contract between white men, Mills
still finds redemptive qualities in the concept of the social contract because
he believes that it is there where the collective and political identity necessary
to construct non-racist justice and peace can be erected. According to Mills,
the only thing left to do is to bridge the gap between the ideal of the social
contract and the reality of the racial contract by reforming the social contract
in a manner that, this time, recognizes the humanity of racialized beings. That
is, the racial contract can be rescued by universalizing the idea of the human
such that it includes those excluded from the social contract between whites.
In other words, all that is needed to rescue the contract’s political goodness
is to de-racialize it. This position distances him from Pateman and Nichols
who do not recognize any redeeming quality, nor any decolonial or feminist
utility for the social contract. Nichols, who speaks of a colonial, rather than a
racial contract, calls attention to the way in which the new social contract of
Mills—now reformed—ends up supporting and even strengthening the colo-
nial contract that is based on territorial occupation and a logic of Indigenous
peoples’ physical and cultural elimination or extermination. Once situated
within the colonial fact and not just alongside its racist internal argumentative
structuring, the social contract appears as a structure of domination that not
only arose from the usurpation of Indigenous lands and the gradual disap-
pearance of Indigenous peoples, but would be utterly impossible without the
occupation and elimination of the Indigenous. Nichols presents us with sev-
eral examples from the histories of Canada and the United States that illus-
trate how policies concerned with the inclusion or integration of Indigenous
peoples into white political society amount to the usurpation, occupation, and
elimination of the Indigenous by the colonial state. What is for Mills favor-
able—inclusion in the social contract for non-whites—represents, for natives,
78 Chapter 4

political suicide and extermination. Mills’ proposal is therefore actually hege-

monic and conservative.
I want to conclude with a very brief discussion of the book Decolonizing
Democracy written by feminist theorist Christine Keating in which she ana-
lyzes what she calls the postcolonial contract that emerged in India during
the process of independence from England.38 In this study, Keating presents a
variation of the colonial (settler), racial, and sexual contracts; unlike Nichols’
colonial contract and Mills’ racial contract that require categorical dehuman-
ization and the exclusion of the colonized, the contract Keating analyzes
seemingly harmonizes the interests of both the colonizers and colonized, at
least during certain historical colonial conjunctures. Keating describes for
us moments during the colonization of India in which the British tried to
legitimize their dominion by appealing to a racial and cultural kinship with
the Hindus. The British who promoted this colonial policy sought alliances
with the local Bengali elites to build fraternal bonds that were based on a
fictitious line of descent that the British allegedly shared with higher castes
of Hindus.39 According to this legend, Hindus, an Aryan race like Europeans,
were once defeated by barbarian Muslim hordes and now had, if they were
to submit to British colonial rule, the opportunity to resurge. Keating shows
us how these alliances were woven through a sexual subcontract that under-
mined Hindu women’s property and inheritance rights and gave Hindu men
rights to control women and family property that did not previously exist.
She speaks in this context of a social contract that emphasized the fraternity
between or connivance of colonizing and colonized men, or what she calls
domination by compensation. That is, Hindu males yielded political powers
in public in exchange for greater individual rights over the property of women
and the family. However, this fraternal contract eventually succumbed to
the paternal social contract proposed by other sectors of the British colonial
administration. Keating attributes the emergence of the paternal contract
not only to a rejection of this fraternal harmonization of Hindu and British
interests, but also to its distortion. For British colonizers who held this view,
Hindus did not have redeeming qualities enough to participate in a fraternal
social contract. Rather, they affirmed that Hindu women should be rescued
from the barbarity of Hindu patriarchal institutions and customs that were
oppressing them.40 Ultimately, according to this line of argumentation,
Hindus did not have the capacity for self-government and had to be subjected
to colonial rule to prosper. The resultant social contract thus required the sub-
ordination of Hindu men to the paternal domination of the British and used
the liberation of Hindu women as pretext. Here, the social contract based on
the dominion of the father (the British colonizer) persevered over the fraternal
contract. Keating observes how both of these colonial contracts were, in the
process of independence, preserved for the postcolonial state, which would
 Breny Mendoza 79

emerge after independence. In the postcolonial historical context, then, there

was a paradox: Hindu women were granted political rights at the same time
as their individual and property rights were limited. Within these relatively
benign colonial contracts, as compared with the colonial contract that Nichols
describes and Keating overlooks, Keating, like Mills, finds remedies for the
social contract. In this case, the existing gap between the ideal of the social
contract and its material reality can be overcome by reaching different agree-
ments on non-domination at the interpersonal, local, and state levels. That is,
for Keating it is possible in India to break with domination by compensation
and to create a social contract that refounds society as that which is, this time,
free of power relations that are based on hierarchies of caste, gender, race,
and religion.
As we see, Keating, like the other authors discussed here, excludes the
colonial experience of Latin America or Abya Yala. In this sense, the latent
Anglo-centric bias has the function of reifying the colonial difference char-
acteristic of the world of the colony established by Europeans in 1492. It is
also possible to find subtext concerning the Black Legend in these historical
narratives, as Iberian empires are placed outside the history of modernity and
capitalism. Hence, it should come as no surprise that, with the exception of
Native North American theorists, both Mills and Keating still find room for
reform in the social contract. The myth of the Anglo origin of democracy
operates even in those theoretical discourses that claim to question it. It must
be clear, however, that the conquest of America, the usurpation of territories,
and the physical and cultural elimination of Indigenous peoples constitute
the precondition for the social contracts between Western men and even
those that emerge in India centuries later. A reformulation of the colonial and
racial contracts under the former conditions is more difficult to imagine than
such a reformulation within a context where there is recognition, however
conditioned or partial, of the humanity of the colonized, as appears to have
been in the case in India. However, we find some of the elements of domina-
tion by compensation that Keating analyzes in our own colonial experience.
Julieta Paredes, Lorena Cabnal, Rita Segato, and I have spoken in our writ-
ings of something similar in the Spanish colony. Perhaps Paredes’s phrase of
“patriarchal entronques” is the most eloquent we have to describe the silent
pacts between the colonizers and the colonized in our territories.41 But the
figure of mestizaje that is born only out of the conquest of America and not
other colonial experiences also introduces new elements that mystify the con-
glomerate of power relations that arises within colonial societies. However,
it is important to recognize that the Creole-mestizo nation-states also act as
settler-colonial states insofar as they operate by way of a logic of elimination
and are hyper-patriarchal. In this sense, perhaps instead of a refoundation of
the State through constitutional reforms, what we most need is a refoundation
80 Chapter 4

of society. Any state that, at the level of civil society, is based on colonial, rac-
ist, and hyper-patriarchal social pacts is incompatible with notions of justice,
equality, and democracy. To the extent that the new constitutions of countries
like Ecuador and Bolivia often serve to strengthen mestizo-Creole patriarchal
power or generate new fraternal alliances between Indigenous and mestizo-
Creole men, this incompatibility should become clearer. In any case, we must
not forget that the possibility of refounding our societies in a world where we
do not enjoy sovereignty or juridical equality in the international community
is limited. In a world that is literally being devoured by the genocidal logic of
Western civilization, our salvation depends entirely on a monumental, world-
scale political cataclysm.

NOTES

1. John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2004).
2. Ibid., 7.
3. Ibid., 2.
4. John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 25.
5. Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New
York: Vintage Books, 2011).
6. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” in Globalization and
the Decolonial Option, ed. Walter D. Mignolo and Arturo Escobar (New York/Lon-
don: Routledge, 2010), 25.
7. Enrique Dussel, “Europe, Modernity, and Eurocentrism,” Nepantla Views from
South 1, no. 3 (2000).
8. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, 2007. “On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to
the Development of a Concept,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007).
9. Ann Towns, “Civilization,” in The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory, ed.
Lisa Disch and Mary Hawkesworth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
10. David Cannadine, “Civilization,” The Yale Review 101, no. 1 (2013): 1
11. Ibid., 2.
12. Ibid., 8.
13. Ibid., 16.
14. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) quoted in Cannadine, “Civilization,” 27.
15. Towns, “Civilization.”
16. Ibid., 81.
17. Ibid., 83.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., 89.
20. Ibid.
 Breny Mendoza 81

21. Ibid., 90.

22. María Lugones, “Towards a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (Fall
2010): 744.
23. Ibid., 745.
24. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (New York:
Grove, 2008), xii.
25. María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial Modern Gender System,”
Hypatia 22, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 187.
26. Ramón Grosfoguel, “The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities,”
Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 11, no. 1 (2013): 82.
27. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” in The Palgrave Handbook
of Gender and Development, ed. Wendy Hartcourt (London: Palgrave MacMillan,
2016).
28. Hobson, Eurocentric.
29. Ibid.
30. Breny Mendoza, “La cuestión del imperio español y la Leyenda Negra,” eHu-
manista: Journal of Iberian Studies 50 (2022).
31. Robert Nichols, “Realizing the Social Contract: The Case of Colonialism and
Indigenous Peoples,” Contemporary Political Theory 4, no. 1 (2005): 4.
32. Hobson, Eurocentric.
33. Robert Nichols, “Contract and Usurpation: Enfranchisement and Racial Gover-
nance in Settler-Colonial Contexts,” in Theorizing Native Studies, ed. Audra Simpson
and Andrea Smith (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
34. Nichols, “Contract,” 102.
35. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis: Hacket, 1980), c.V,
section 49, 29, quoted in Nichols, “Contract,” 112.
36. Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press,
1988).
37. Carole Pateman and Charles Mills, Contract and Domination (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 2007).
38. Christine Keating, Decolonizing Democracy (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2011).
39. Ibid., 21.
40. Ibid., 30.
41. Julieta Paredes, Una sociedad en estado y con estado despatriarcalizador
(Bolivia, La Paz: Ministerio de Justicia, 2008).
 Chapter 5

The Limits of Civic

Political Imagination
Sexual citizenship, Coloniality,
and Antiracist Decolonial
Feminist Resistance

I‌‌ ris Hernández Morales

Translated by Shawn Gonzalez

There is a colonial division of the world into two zones: “the visible” and
“the invisible.” Within “the visible,” there is the binary of legal/illegal.
Here, access to rights makes it possible to move from “illegal” to “legal.”
This binary obscures those who do not speak in these terms, supporting the
foundations of modernity. These considerations problematize the notion of
citizenship, which, being part of a legalistic framework, reformulates the
practices of disappearance and extermination in the conquest of Abya Yala.
If citizenship, in general, has been the political objective of various social
movements, it can be inferred that the realization of this goal has extended
until today the coercive relationship between these two zones. Here, the vis-
ible is dominant to the extent that it is consistent with hegemonic mandates.
Understood in this way, the “right to have rights” mobilized by the new social
movements is a global, neocolonial strategy, because, in order to exist, “the
visible” actively produces “the invisible.” That is to say, it produces forms
that are incomprehensible for the legal/illegal binary, or rather, “extralegal.”
The project of universal liberty and equality imposed by modernity pro-
duced a dominant normativity that established the boundary between “the vis-
ible” and “the invisible.” “The visible” refers to modernity, which was forged

83
84 Chapter 5

through the intersection of Eurocentric thought, capitalism, and structural

variables of oppression—race, class, sexuality, gender—as markers of hier-
archical differences. In “the visible,” the hierarchy is represented by modern
reason, modern law and its legal/illegal binary, and the capitalist productivity
associated with white, bourgeois, heterosexual men. “The invisible” is colo-
niality, or what is rejected by modernity for being what it is. This is how “the
invisible” contains “extralegal” subjects who are not important to modernity,
because they and their knowledges are transformed into modernity’s waste.
Subjects who are not important to modernity and, therefore, are excluded
from its proposal of equality and freedom, try to overcome this tension
because, as María Lugones states, there is no oppression that exists without
some degree of resistance.1 However, when this resistance emphasizes the
access to and exercise of rights, it demonstrates a failure to question the
foundations of modernity. Everything stays in the same place, so the waste of
knowledge upon which modernity is constructed remains intact. Therefore,
making oneself part of “the visible” in order to enjoy the benefits of citizen-
ship permanently reasserts structures of domination.
This reassertion of structures of domination is linked to the supremacy that
hegemony grants to certain social demands. In order to preserve its power,
hegemony encourages dominance in alignment with its founding order: the
matrix of colonial power. In this way, I demonstrate the need to be alert to
the dominance of some social movements, given that, as bears repeating,
they sustain themselves within the aforementioned matrix. In this sense, I
am particularly interested in the oppressive practices that these movements
reproduce internally and externally and their connection to the reaffirmation
of the limits that define “the visible” and “the invisible” through the model
of citizenship they promote.
From here, I focus on the notion of citizenship in the LGBTI movement.
Since its appearance in Abya Yala toward the end of the 70s, the movement
has progressively become part of the world of “the visible.” It suffices to say
that in less than fifty years, it has achieved political demands that greatly
surpass the gains made by Indigenous communities in more than five hundred
years of struggle. In this sense, the centrality of the LGBTI struggle exists
in direct relation to the marginality of other struggles. In other words, the
centrality of the struggles of the LGBTI movement is interwoven with the
coloniality of other social movements, which demonstrates its lack of libera-
tory political imagination.
This analysis leads into the primary objective of this essay, which is to
describe how the colonial imaginary is reactivated in our times and how resis-
tance, or other struggles, work to speak in their own terms and not in those
imposed by modernity. To accomplish this objective, this text is organized in
three parts. The first centers on the way in which the notion of citizenship
 Iris Hernández Morales 85

produces coloniality, emphasizing how it maintains the “visible”/“invisible”

division, denying a common territorial space of coexistence. Here, the return
to coloniality, the construction of sites of dominance through categorical
thinking, and the production of the extralegal subject will be critical.
Secondly, I will connect the previous point to the LGBTI movement and
its notion of citizenship centered on the access to and exercise of rights. The
idea is to discuss how it has become a global, neocolonial axis of the survival
of Western racism. Finally, I will highlight the contributions of decolonial
antiracist feminism, emphasizing its efforts to create symmetrical encounters
across differences as an exercise in weakening the borders between “the
visible” and “the invisible.” Without focusing on citizenship, decolonial anti-
racist feminism has emphasized a reflection on coexistence within the great
Latin American house of differences, promoting a political imagination that
does not restrict itself to the terms imposed by modernity.
In what way is the notion of citizenship an instrument of modernity/colo-
niality? How does the LGBTI movement’s struggle for rights reactivate the
colony in our times, fundamentally affecting racialized subjects? How does
the decolonial antiracist feminist genealogy contribute to the creation of a
power that responds to neocolonialism? I attempt to respond to these ques-
tions in order to undo the colonial anchors that maintain racism in contempo-
rary societies. This does not only affect the movements in question, but every
social movement. Herein lies its importance.

THE PRODUCTION OF COLONIALITY

IN THE NOTION OF CITIZENSHIP

I approach the study of modernity/coloniality as a theoretical lineage of the

criticism of modernity that is committed to the radical transformation of
imperialist logics. This radicality connects to the exercise of thinking about
the causes of oppression, instead of its consequences, in order to keep vis-
ible alternative possibilities of transformation. From here, to expose how
the notion of citizenship produces coloniality, it is necessary to consider the
causes that created its organization and current manifestation. This is vital
and requires a return to the colonial period in Latin America, the moment in
which Abya Yala was reinvented by the colonizer.
The conquest imposed Western culture as the only legitimate axis of
civilization and progress, which required erasing the existing diversity of
Abya Yala. In this way, the establishment of a single system of meaning
and interpretation of reality became a defining vector of modernity. I focus
on modernity’s capacity to create and recreate a constricted present, deter-
mined by what it, and only it, has to offer. I emphasize this point because it
86 Chapter 5

informs the selective exercise of modernity, which cartographically divides

a single territory into that which is consistent with modernity and that which
is not, and therefore cannot be part of it. This model universalized its ideolo-
gies, suppressing the diversity of Abya Yala and preventing Abya Yala from
expressing itself in its own terms.
That which cannot be part of modernity is violently inscribed in a dark
and invisible side: coloniality. In this way, a single territory contains the
boundaries that form “the visible,” or, “modernity,” and “the invisible,” or,
“coloniality,” through the coercive relationship between them, making vis-
ible only one side of reality and covering and obscuring the other. Following
Santos’s definition of the characteristics of abyssal thinking, I argue that the
part of reality that is inscribed in “the visible” determines that the other zone
does not exist “in any relevant or comprehensible way of being.”2 That is to
say, “what is worth being lived” is an imposition of modernity. “What is not
worth being lived” encapsulates the set of experiences created by coloniality.
This production of irrelevance negates the co-presence of both zones,
which removes all possibility—following Audre Lorde—of creating com-
munity in Abya Yala’s great house of differences.3 The negation of this pos-
sibility occurs through the construction of conditions that, by universalizing
the modern experience of “what is worth being,” transform into the “should
be” of those who inhabit the zone of “the invisible.” Coloniality represents
a violent normativity that recovers and updates colonial relationships. In
other words, it activates the colonial matrix of power. In this sense, I note
that the co-constitutive modernity/coloniality relationship is the cause of the
asymmetrical organization of power in our time. From here, analyzing this
asymmetry makes it possible to intervene in its causes and not only its con-
sequences, the latter of which leaves everything in the same place, since they
do not transform the foundations that produce them.
On this point, Aníbal Quijano proposes that coloniality constitutes the
global pattern of capitalist power imposed by European rationality. This pat-
tern—which originates and globalizes through America—imposes a racial/
ethnic classification at the global level, operating in each of the dimen-
sions—material and subjective—of social existence.4 I present, therefore, the
importance of race in shaping the zones I have identified and the hierarchical
relationships between people and cultures that they imply. An exercise will
further illustrate this point, allowing me to enter into the territory of this text:
the coloniality produced by the notion of citizenship.

Imagine a citizen.

What is he or she like? What do they do?

 Iris Hernández Morales 87

…………………...

Did you think about it? Respond now about the citizen you imagined.

Was he or she a poor person? An Indigenous person? A Black person?5

In general, responses to these questions provide images that the culture

imposes as dominant. The images that emerge from the responses—in agree-
ment with Quijano—are those of white subjects. Therefore, I demonstrate
that race continues to operate as a limit between “the visible” and “the invis-
ible,” which is to say, that more than 500 years after the conquest of Abya
Yala, Western rationality continues to define the forms of learning, being,
and relating among ourselves, with other people, and other living beings.
This pattern of colonial power is globally hegemonic today.6 Therefore,
and I stress this, if the majority of people do not include images of Black,
Indigenous, and poor people, then neither does the concept of citizenship
and its rights. On the contrary, it serves the white dominance that extends far
beyond the borders of Abya Yala.
The central role of race in Quíjano’s theory indicates the influence of race
in the development of the notion of citizenship, which relates to one of the
limits in the coloniality of power: it ignores the fact that the centrality of
race naturalizes the irrelevance of other variables of oppression. Lugones
illuminates this covering-up, denouncing the coloniality that pervades gen-
der.7 Following her remarks, there are hidden processes related to the igno-
rance—produced by Eurocentric thinking—of the multiplicity of subjects,
which obscures the fact that “categories and categorical thinking are tools
of oppression.”8 Failing to consider this is “presupposing the categories of
oppression to be separable.”9
Lugones states that the erasure of diversity in Abya Yala naturalized male
control, an issue that explains Quijano’s omission of the relationship between
gender and race. This omission occurs because he could not see that women
were reinvented “according to the discriminatory codes and principles of
Western gender.”10 This takes place, without a doubt, within the formal con-
tents of citizenship because the existence of gendered pact associated with the
racialization of salaried labor “had political implications for the establishment
of citizenship and not only economic ones in the construction of classes.”11
I emphasize, then, that the matrix of colonial power supports citizenship’s
substance and that it should not be restricted to a single oppressive variable.
It is sufficient to consider that the Indigenous man was not only subalternized
for the color of his skin, but also for characteristics that made him similar to a
woman: he had no beard, he wore his hair long, and he was smaller.12
88 Chapter 5

Mendoza adds that although salaried labor was associated with capital-
ist exploitation, it establishes the foundation of a masculine citizenship that
excluded women and slaves. Therefore, she argues that without the colony,
citizenship would not exist, because Western race and gender are the basis
of capitalism, liberal democracy, and the limits that define who is or is not
important for this notion. Racial differences were produced to establish these
limits through the consolidation of a “should be” that at its peak regards
the white, male, hetero, bourgeois citizen as the comprehensible subject of
modernity. In this way, the author visualizes the intersection of the hetero-
sexual system and the modern, colonial gender system with capitalism and
liberal democracy.
What Mendoza demonstrates is significant because the social pact she
refers to prevents poor white men from falling into slavery, liberating them
from domestic work. This establishes the basis of modern citizenship: free,
with rights, and therefore legal, with time to participate in public life (which
is to say, everything that was off limits to racialized subjects and “women”).
In this way, I argue for an understanding of oppression based on the intersec-
tion of class, race, sexuality, and gender, established by the profitization that
modern categorical thinking makes of these intersections. By this, I refer to
the fact that power encourages the disaggregation of the analysis of reality,
but strategically utilizes these intersections, strengthening citizen demands
centered on one variable of oppression, but utilizing the multiplicity it detects
to its advantage. In other words, it liberates on one side and represses on the
other, leaving everything as it was before.
This dynamic is synthesized in Lugones’ search for the cause of the indif-
ference of Black men toward the violence that affects women of color. As
Mendoza describes “the subordination of gender was the price that colonized
men paid to maintain a certain level of control over their societies.”13 This
negotiation produced male collusion with violence toward women. Or, rather,
the complicity between colonizing and colonized men permitted the latter
a certain level of control at the cost of the subordination of women, which
never removed them from their place of subordination but did limit solidarity
between men and women. In this way, dominant categories arose among the
subordinated—colonized men above colonized women—which safeguarded
the white foundations of citizenship.
Therefore, citizenship protects the privilege of the political subject who
is valued by modernity. This does not refer only to the production of this
subject, but rather, and most importantly, to the operation of the logic of
citizenship. This logic consolidates an ideology of exclusive equality because
its object is the territorial division between “the visible”/ “the invisible.” The
aforementioned centrality of race is crucial in this respect because it warns
that racial equality is not neutral, because it operates only between white men
 Iris Hernández Morales 89

and racialized men. This illuminates what exists beyond affirmations like
“what is not seen, does not exist; what does not exist, does not have rights”
because what citizenship allows to be seen always benefits the dominant
order since the subjects it makes seen only exist in the zone of “the visible.”
Citizenship does not exist in the zone of “the invisible.” I explain this more
clearly below, since modernity articulates a false “invisible.”
For Santos, two pillars sustain reality.14 The pillar of regulation/ emancipa-
tion operates in the zone of “the visible”; the pillar of violence/appropriation
in “the invisible.” The point is that it is not a question of incorporating “the
invisible” in “the visible” as if it were about taking a step forward. It is a
question of understanding that “the invisible” is beyond what citizenship
makes comprehensible. Citizenship only exists as a product of the pillar
of regulation/emancipation, which in modern law expresses the limits that
define “the legal” and “the illegal.” In this way, I assume “the illegal” as a
false “invisible,” since this position obscures the radicality of the inexistence
of those who do not even exist under this form. The legal/illegal binary is the
product of regulations and emancipations that allow the second component to
move toward the first component of the binary; what does not possess a legal
or illegal form is suppressed.
“The invisible” is beyond citizenship, which is to say, it has been subju-
gated by the pillar of appropriation/violence. It is the nonexistent, what is not
officially recognized, “the extralegal.” Therefore, in modernity/the visible,
the debate is between the legal/the illegal; in coloniality, “the extralegal”
exists, which is worse than being illegal, because in lawless territory, the
strongest always prevails. This foreshadows the coloniality of the notion
of citizenship, because the legal/illegal is presented as the only intelligible
possibility, obstructing the emergence of other alternatives, distinct from
its perspectives and the ways in which they are constructed. This constrains
the political imagination of social movements because they are subjected to
the order of hegemonic power and collaborate with the imprisonment of the
extralegal subject in “the invisible” and with the terms this establishes.
I demonstrate in this way that the desire for liberation based exclusively on
the access to and exercise of citizenship is pervaded by an intense desire for
hegemonic norms. For this reason, entering “the visible” is merely symbolic,
since the movement between the illegal and the legal does not harm the pro-
duction of extralegality. On the contrary, it often exacerbates the invisibility
of those who do not comply with hegemonic norms, since these norms not
only define what is legal and illegal in “the visible,” but also possess the
capacity to transform what is illegal into legal in the invisible zone. From
here, it is important to recognize the ways in which some movements extend,
preserve, and/or return to colonial domination and its waste of knowledges.
90 Chapter 5

The recuperation of wasted knowledges is fundamental because they can

transform the organization of the colonial matrix of power. The various ele-
ments obscured by the boundary between “the visible”/“the invisible” expose,
on the one hand, the possibility of radical transformation—because if these
knowledges were incorporated into reality they would modify the terms of
conversation used up to this point. On the other hand, they demonstrate that
colonial power never ended, a point that affects every relationship we engage
in. I continue to develop this final aspect by analyzing the power exercised
by the LGBTI movement.

THE LGBTI MOVEMENT’S PRODUCTION

OF COLONIALITY

Before anything else, I emphasize that the LGBTI movement produces colo-
niality. It is not the only social movement that does this, but it is an ideal one
for understanding how its demands strengthen monocultural power. Its trans-
formative potential remains trapped in “the visible,” so its liberation remains
consistent with the pillar of regulation/emancipation and it has emphasized
demands that subscribe to the universal legalistic character of citizenship,
subordinating the forces from “the invisible” that seek to contaminate the
limits of modernity.
According to Santos, two movements have emerged since the 1970s and
1980s, originating in struggles from “the invisible” that have contaminated
“the visible.”15 He calls the first the return of the colonial and the return of
the colonizer; the second, subaltern cosmopolitanism. I will linger on the
first movement, which alludes to those who rebelled against having their life
experiences relegated to “the invisible.” Their struggles produced a radical
response from “the visible” that continued to submerge them in the extra-
legal zone, because their interventions undermined the metropolitan order.
The state discourses and practices that criminalize indigenous struggles
and that represent them as terrorism are an example of this. This response,
among others, naturalizes the fact that while the LGBTI movement constructs
rights, others are inscribed in a political void that creates states of exception.
For example, in Chile, this results in Indigenous people being imprisoned
long-term without proceedings to protect them and in evidentiary processes
that allow statements from faceless witnesses, among other things, exposing
a normativity that undermines the right to due process. That is to say: what is
illegal in “the visible” is legal in “the invisible.”
Interwoven with this, the return of the colonizer recuperates the forms of
colonial management and subordination, enabling the construction of reality
to remain at the mercy of those who hold power. Here, what Santos calls
 Iris Hernández Morales 91

societal fascism takes place, which reproduces the life experience of the
extralegal subject, allowing, it bears repeating, “the stronger party has a veto
power over the life and livelihood of the weaker party.”16 Every type of exist-
ing societal fascism constructs reality by wasting knowledges and confining
them to “the invisible” zone. For example, territorial fascism naturalizes the
fact that dominant power operates freely in geographical zones that were
generally subjected to European colonialism without considering the par-
ticipation of their inhabitants. Therefore, these two movements delineate the
coloniality of the LGBTI movement.
I maintain that the democratic recuperation(s) occurring in Abya Yala since
the 1980s operate under colonial logic. On the one hand, they open libera-
tory spaces; on the other hand, they repress anything inconsistent with social
hegemony, reigniting the paradox of modernity: liberty is founded on the
repression of those who do not fit within the universal truths of a democratic
reconstruction based on the access to and exercise of rights. In this context,
the pillar of regulation/emancipation operates, as previously stated, accord-
ing to the legal/illegal binary. The legal regulates and the illegal emancipates,
advocating for “the right to have rights” as an axis on which post-dictatorial
citizenship is established.
This review of the coloniality of citizenship allows for the critique of
certain aspects of this process. To begin, the struggles against oppression
primarily focused on liberating themselves from the yokes of dictatorship
(clearly, a necessity) but without questioning the causes that produced these
states, which, therefore, perpetuated the paradox of modernity. The recupera-
tion of democracy kept the colonial past in the same place, just as the earlier
project of democratization did not eradicate the practices of disappearance
and extermination of the Indigenous communities of Abya Yala. Although
elements existed that destabilized the “Iberian heritage” that understood the
continent as a tributary of the conquistador’s model, the truth is that categori-
cal thinking, the centralities it produces, and the failure to question capitalism
defined the political limits of the New Social Movements (NSMs).17 These
movements, attached to the legal character of the demands for rights and the
universality of these demands, demonstrate the acritical posture of the hege-
monic terms that govern the citizenship debate, which is linked to the neolib-
eral establishment and reinforces the state as the administrator of diversity,
despite its homogenizing focus.18
Although a citizenship mobilized “from below” breaks with citizenship’s
classic liberal character, it still relies on the censure of differences. This is
paradoxical because the struggles of the NSMs are based on cultural rec-
ognition. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to understand that by centering
itself on separately overcoming oppression based on gender, class, race, and
92 Chapter 5

sexuality, these movements would reinvent power, anchored in the production

of centers and peripheries. This is the result of various factors promoted by
the “new” perspectives that administer power and continue to reinforce the
boundary between “the visible” and “the invisible.”
The factors I refer to form the foundation of post-dictatorial homogeneity.
From this, I highlight two facts: the first is that the new paradigm of cultural
recognition promoted by the NSMs is superimposed on the paradigm of eco-
nomic distribution, encouraging a valorization of identity that fails to reduce
inequality and social inequity, because it improved people’s coexistence with
capitalism. That is to say, it didn’t question capitalism and, therefore, did
not correct it as a cause of asymmetries in the exercise of power. This often
occurs in the form of trying to provide for people’s basic needs without this
meaning a shift toward the equitable redistribution of resources. This is a
conducive environment for societal fascism’s processes of exclusion.
The failure to correct social inequalities promotes a state that, within a
multicultural environment, fosters “certain cultural identities and conse-
quently disadvantages others.”19 This tendency acquires a macabre character
in the hands of the post-dictatorial Latin American state and its two primary
features: participatory citizenship and the neoliberal establishment.20 For
Dagnino, this fact outlines the perverse confluence between the state, citizen
participation, and neoliberalism because it affirms that neoliberalism was
only possible with the participation of civil society, which, it is worth stating,
refers to the group of people who construct the instituting/instituted tension or
the legal/illegal binary within the regulation/emancipation paradigm, always
in accordance with the official state and with international law.
Accordingly, the notion of citizenship synthesizes this pillar’s operation
because it defines the limitations within “the visible” of the legal/illegal by
announcing this tension, since its perspectives do not question the operative
terms. In this way, citizenship status is consistent with the censure of differ-
ence, because its knowledge is colonized by the monocultural meaning of
the modern world. From here, the spaces of affirmation that the nation-state
opens for what it considers illegal is related to the subjectivity of its power.
The perverse confluence of participation and citizenship is an example of this,
because it reproduces one of the primary critiques of liberal citizenship: rights
that equalize through the status of citizenship do not modify the capitalist
foundations of modern societies.21
This reinforces the position of extralegal subjects in the space of “the
invisible,” because their life experiences will not be part of civil society’s
demands. It suffices to consider the fact that citizenship emerges under the
auspices of an idea of the subject that does not represent the Latin American
subject, nor the diverse components associated with slavery, reciprocity, and
small-scale production, nor with the notions of mestizo, Indian, or Black as a
 Iris Hernández Morales 93

colonial structural foundation. Therefore, it is no coincidence that Indigenous

struggles represent an extraordinary counter-hegemonic strategy that remains
located in the extralegal, because they represent a radical struggle against
capitalism, through systems of belief that, in connection with the land, dis-
tance themselves from the exploitative logics of this model. Utilizing their
knowledges, which are wasted by the West, could paradigmatically transform
the relationships between individuals, cultures, and nature.
This waste of knowledges is connected to the fact that the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, trans, and intersex (LGBTI) movement is, ultimately, gay. This
underrepresentation of lesbians and trans people—following a logic of the
interrelation of power—means that the demands of the former are expressed
publicly, erasing the lived experiences of the latter. It does not matter how
many lesbian or trans activists there are; the gay male subject, who holds the
majority within the LGBTI movement, takes over representation, producing
a schism within these spaces. Outside, they form organizations that fall under
new systems of under-representation, because there are more LGBTI organi-
zations than lesbian or trans ones, which keeps everything in the same place.
Therefore, equitable power relationships do not exist within LGBTI identi-
ties nor between LGBTI organizations and lesbian or trans ones, because gay
centrality co-opts all representative spaces.
This co-optation reproduces the coloniality of power because the colonial-
ity that restrictive “LGBTI diversity” imposes on lesbian and trans knowl-
edges and experiences only permits sexual diversity to speak in gay terms.
They are blind to the totalizing character of their sexuality that makes invisi-
ble not only the gender of lesbians and trans people, but also race and class. In
this way, what the gay movement does, according to Lugones, is to establish
itself through a categorical analysis that naturalizes its masculine privilege,
recuperating the masculine/feminine tension. In this way, the non-neutrality
of its sex determines—just like racial equality—that sexual equality is only
accomplished between straight men and white gay men. The story of Simón
Knkoli in South Africa demonstrates this.
Simon Knkoli denounced the limitations of the gay movement. When he
was detained in a march against apartheid, he experienced the fragmentation
of struggles due to his homosexuality. GASA, an international organization of
gays and lesbians to which he belonged, kept silent about his imprisonment,
which he understood “as a continuation of the organization’s racism and its
unwillingness to recognize that homosexual liberation was also related to
anti-apartheid struggles.”22 GASA, informed by the whiteness of gay activ-
ists, subordinated race to the struggles of homosexual liberation, illuminating
the totalizing character of their sexuality, failing to understand that racism
also affected them and thus indicating complicity with white, heterosexual,
male power.
94 Chapter 5

This incident describes the depoliticized arrangement of the LGBTI move-

ment grounded in national discourses. This arrangement strengthens a project
of citizenship that reproduces the parameters that the nation-state imposes on
their lives, turning the pluralism of its discourses into mere decoration. Gay
centrality and the development of its political agendas based on sexual equal-
ity support a dominant idea that is clarified by Eric Fassin’s thinking. Fassin
argues that sexuality defines a state’s modernity or lack thereof, an issue that
refigures Western supremacy, allowing for the survival of the hegemony that
characterizes nationalist discourses and imaginaries.23 The centrality of sexu-
ality rearticulates colonial hierarchies and order because its agenda for rights
only constructs equality between sexes and sexualities, excluding race from
this project: “Therefore, I think that where the West determines that sexism
exists, it allows for the naturalization of racism.”24 If nationalist democratic
discourses emphasize a democracy based on sexuality, it is not illogical to
think that those who join ‘the visible’ reproduce the racist colonial history of
Latin American states, given their coherence with these states.
Concretely, the limits of democracy are extended through the centrality
of the sexual rights agenda. Revising the group of juridical norms with the
intention of creating equal rights between men and women and between
heterosexuality and homosexuality demonstrates that these groups acquire
rights at the same time that the return of the colony and the colonizer becomes
consolidated, since “the new wave of antiterrorism and immigration laws
follows the regulatory logic of the appropriation/violence paradigm.”25 This
pillar allows the colonizer to divide, imposing his contractual terms despoti-
cally, militarizing territories to ensure their exploitation. This exposes the fact
that citizenship is dispensable because it obscures the operation of a societal
fascism occupied with ensuring that “the invisible” does not transgress met-
ropolitan boundaries. This cover-up contributes to the way that citizenship
and its calls for equality and liberty naturalize its relationship to capitalism
without connecting it to the violence this entails for Indigenous communities
and/or with the inhuman cases of exploitation of racialized migrants, among
other things. This again articulates the fragmentary LGBTI logic which is
evident in the central role that equal marriage occupies in its agenda of rights.
Marriage rights discourses imply an understanding of oppression based
on a single variable of oppression. Translated into Quijano’s terms, sexuality
replaces race in a framework based on a Eurocentric perspective of relation-
ships between couples. The transformation of marriage into a right exposes
the universalizing logic that characterizes this perspective. If I add to this its
relationship with capitalism, what results is the reproduction of the colonial-
ity of power. I would like to note that marriage reaffirms a social classifica-
tion based on sexuality which revives Quijano’s boundary, naturalizing the
irrelevance of other variables in the oppressive phenomenon, which vitalizes
 Iris Hernández Morales 95

the coloniality of gender, race, and class. In other words, this demand con-
ceals the foundations that support the causes of this difference, reactivating
the colony in our times.
In addition, stable, matrimonial identity strengthens a notion of social
respect based on the capacity for consumption. This respect connects love
with the economic capacity of a couple to support needs related to the state’s
economic model. That is to say, it is not that gay love only strengthens the
structure of marriage; gay love also strengthens the stability of capitalism
through apolitical behavior that places the struggles against its oppression
in favor of capital, or, from another angle, against anti-capitalist struggles.
In this way, the limit observed by Knkoli is reactivated because the LGBTI
movement exists on a racist continuum which obscures the fact that its libera-
tion is related to these other struggles. An example of this is that the legaliza-
tion of gay marriage is often followed by demands for retail stores to include
gay couples in their wedding lists, which evinces once again a trivial political
imaginary that is committed with the idealized effects of consumerism.
The demand for marriage rights produces trivialization, it needs to be
stressed, since once it is accomplished, they demand that retail stores include
them in their sales, which again exposes complicity with the idealization
of consumerism.26 In this way, the market is exposed as an axis of integra-
tion that extends the perverse confluence of participation and neoliberalism,
with the latter being a crucial component of the return to the colony and the
colonizer.
The preceding example demonstrates the importance that the family and
the couple possess for homonormative gay politics; that is, a model of homo-
sexuality that mirrors the heterosexual model. I stress that while the LGBTI
movement and even certain radical lesbian feminist groups strive to criticize
the heterosexual normativity of the nation, they ignore the fact that this
analysis of sexuality subordinates other variables of oppression, which, as I
said, collude with classism and racism. Gay marriage validates this organiza-
tion because it is reasonable to consent to it and through this ascend in the
hierarchical system of sexuality, at whose peak are white, married, hetero-
sexual couples.
Marriage is a normativized space of “dissidence” that connects with the
cartography that differentiates between wilderness and civilized space. Here,
“gay friendly” promotes the capitalism of homosexuality, which submits gay
couples’ aspirations to a socioeconomic circuit of class. This obscures the
precarity of other subjects and other affective configurations, reinforcing the
hegemony of Western thought through one variable of oppression that estab-
lishes itself as dominant. I stress: gay sexuality, being non-dominant with
respect to heterosexuality, is dominant with respect to lesbian gender, which
shows that relationships of domination/subordination are reproduced inside
96 Chapter 5

subaltern groups. The story of Knkoli, in fact, demonstrates that gay sexual-
ity is dominant and subordinates race, which exposes its commitment to the
white, heterosexual, racist imaginary as the naturalized boundary of its libera-
tion. In this way, the ideals of the nation-state are preserved, strengthening
hegemonic codes at the global level because it is undeniable that a hierarchi-
cal relationship of states exists in the transnational arena.
Jasbir K. Puar expands this last point. She coined the term “homonational-
ism” to explain the acceptance and tolerance of gay and lesbian issues after
the attack on the twin towers.27 Puar claims that Western powers have used
LGBTI rights to condemn certain Eastern cultures for “barbaric” homopho-
bic practices, while justifying Western oppression of the East. That is to say,
the violence towards “women” and homosexuals in these territories justifies
imperial neocolonialism. For example, through Pinkwashing, Israel trans-
forms its international image, uniting gay love to the war against Palestine.28
For this reason, photographs of gay soldiers have spread virally, exposing
Israel’s support of LGBTI demands, which has been applauded by this group,
despite international condemnation of the state for violating the human rights
of the Palestinian people. In this way, gay sexuality appears in an intelligible
framework that inscribes within “the invisible” those who are associated with
barbaric backwardness, reinforcing military operations whose goal is ethnic
cleansing.29 In other words, Islamic terrorism facilitates a colonial return that
revives the colonizer through a territorial fascism that bans life within the
“axis of evil.”
The LGBTI movement does not question the form of its inclusion, facilitat-
ing repressive politics in the Middle East, as well as in militarized Indigenous
territories throughout Abya Yala. Here, I again warn that the visibility acquired
has been utilized in the service of power. Its centrality is determined by its
consistency with the system of dominant beliefs that excludes “the feminine”
and racialized subjects, among others. This is the product of an understand-
ing of oppression limited by sexuality and the legalist logic of citizenship
and inextricably linked with the Eurocentric, racist, neoliberal enclaves that
make up the pillar of regulation/emancipation. Here, speech only occurs in
the terms of power, preventing the enunciation of the knowledges it wastes,
which is a focus of the decolonial, antiracist feminism I turn to now.

LINES OF FLIGHT: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE

DECOLONIAL ANTIRACIST FEMINIST GENEALOGY

Here I discuss the tension that in the 1990s divided feminism into two
branches: institutional and autonomous. The former formed part of the
perverse confluence driven by the state, which is criticized by the latter,
 Iris Hernández Morales 97

causing the latter to remain confined to the periphery. In this way, the tech-
nocratic notion of gender obscures the differences between poor, lesbian,
Indigenous, and Black women that shape the developing political repertoire
of autonomous feminists.30 Nevertheless, the coloniality of autonomy is a
practice that is reactivated within the movement which mobilized another
displacement. Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso detects an organization of power
inside the movement based on first-and second-generation voices.31 The first
defined their principles; the second had to assume the mandates of the first,
which omitted their experiences. The first generation’s power was connected
with class, whiteness, and academic rank, which contributed to a reluctance
to dialogue with the social movement.32 All of this fostered an autonomous
feminist political subject unaware of the struggles of women of African and/
or Indigenous descent.
This demonstrates a sedimentary, colonial, racist practice that universalizes
the notion of “woman.” This issue allows me to demonstrate a turning point
in the perspective that the decolonial antiracist genealogy puts at our disposal,
since it is through lived experiences––particularly of racialized women––that
the limits of the comprehensive feminist narrative of oppression can be tran-
scended. An intense debate that is still in progress has allowed decolonial
antiracist feminism to understand that the experience of modernity is much
larger than what is known and that, therefore, it is necessary to develop
responses that overcome the Western limitations that restrict the political
imagination trapped in its margins. Hence the importance of dialogue and
encounter with the social movement.
The expansion of the present that this implies has been consistently devel-
oped by voices such as Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso and Ochy Curiel, whose
work has produced a political-philosophical development that criticizes
Eurocentric epistemology, recovering a group of feminist perspectives to
analyze oppression in a broader narrative than the one enabled by gender
and sexuality. Their relational analyses challenge a view of the variables of
oppression as disconnected, and offer the possibility of approaching social
movement as problem and solution, depending on how its privileges create
disadvantageous positions within and beyond the movement.33
To synthesize: decolonial antiracist feminism creates an intersectional per-
spective on oppression and the ways in which it is produced by capitalism,
racism, liberalism, and Eurocentrism. It recognizes that social movements’
political practices have collaborated with the reproduction of modernity,
excluding subjects and knowledges. It is enough to return to the colonial-
ity that pervades feminist autonomy and the second generation’s autonomy,
which excludes lived experiences associated with race. This last consider-
ation allows for the discernment of this variable in feminist thinking, trying
to re-envision the forms of relation between people, cultures, and nature,
98 Chapter 5

which overcomes the limitations created by struggles exclusively linked with

citizenship, not only for feminist political imagination, but also for the entire
social movement.
This last point leads to the inscription of decolonial, antiracist feminism
in the second movement outlined by Santos: subaltern cosmopolitanism.34 I
assume that one of its intentions is to overcome the limits that separate “the
visible” from “the invisible,” exposing the ways in which the return of the
colony and the colonizer imposes colonial terminology. In this vein, expos-
ing what is hidden is paramount for expanding modernity’s systems of rep-
resentation and meaning. Efforts to overcome monocultural representations
are based in a constant struggle, as I understand it, to incorporate wasted
knowledges.
On this topic, I return to some previously established points. If variables
like sex/gender/sexuality have contributed to a global neocolonialism tied to
sexual rights agendas and to specific political movements, then the partici-
pation of those who are overlooked by these projects creates the possibility
of radical articulation. This articulation responds to structural violence with
terms that are unknown by “the visible” and are required to transform the
restrictive codes of modern co-presence and coexistence. This is how I define
subaltern cosmopolitanism as an effort to engage with wasted knowledges
through a critique of dominant thought that integrates the analysis of oppres-
sion in a broad system of domination that, as is revealed by examination, is
marked by the racism and classism of modern society. Decolonial, antiracist
feminism strives to configure this articulation. It does not interpret all of the
realities through a common perspective, because this reconstructs colonial
foundations. It understands that illuminating what has been silenced makes
available knowledges obscured by modernity/coloniality, and that this trans-
forms reality.
I highlight now Lugones’s decolonial feminist contributions, who out-
lines two steps that support the unmasking of coloniality: intersectionality
and fusion.35 The first is a comprehensive state, the second a state of action.
Intersectionality makes visible categories that are obscured by discourses that
select the dominant, as seen, for example, in my exercise that asks you to
imagine a citizen. In this way, it initiates a process that destabilizes the orna-
mental status of social struggles inscribed in central and, therefore, dominant,
cultural features, which are produced by the universalization of a single and
always dangerous viewpoint. Fusion positions the experiences of oppression/
resistance relationally and, therefore, forms the foundation of resistant coali-
tion. It is not theory, but a lived possibility that connects resistances, opening
up space for common concerns and the diverse forms in which they have
been addressed.
 Iris Hernández Morales 99

A graphic example illustrates the possible dangers of not applying these

two steps. In 2007, the Mapuche activist Patricia Troncoso, after a long hun-
ger strike, was on the brink of death. The nascent idea of an antiracist, lesbian
feminist support network circulated among metropolitan Chilean activist net-
works, but was rejected on the grounds that Indigenous oppression was not
their struggle and that even if they supported her, they would not get involved
with this community because of the violence that Mapuche men inflicted
on Mapuche women.36 The reference to violence towards women prevents
intersectionality, which is to say, that there was a failure to understand the
relational character of oppression, in favor of the continuity of racist state vio-
lence toward this community. In this way, the accusation of sexism colludes
with Chilean racism because its centrality subordinates racism, obscuring it.
I proceed with caution on the previous point. It is not that violence toward
women is not relevant. No. What I am trying to emphasize is that there is a
Western interpretation of violence that coincides with the agenda of sexual
rights, whose contribution to neocolonial processes has already been estab-
lished. I am not trying to propose that this is a struggle that should be aban-
doned; what I suggest is that when struggles are linked to prominent variables
of oppression, they run the risk of naturalizing and universalizing a viewpoint
that subjugates the differences of other struggles and their extension in dif-
ferent geographical locations. This—I stress—prevents the transformation
of strategies for approaching violence because it assumes knowledges that
reproduce what occurred with the Indigenous in the colony. The Indigenous
were constructed as non-human through the association of their color with
practices forbidden by Western culture. In this case, race is marked as a
bestial sign of “violence against women,” preventing the coalition between
lesbian feminism and Mapuche communities.
I do not want to be trivial; I aim to warn about complex practices that for
more than 500 years have produced the extralegality of racialized people. Not
listening to them allows social struggles to be strategically used in the service
of power as occurs with LGBTI sexuality. Therefore, I propose that it is not
sufficient to understand intersectionally: a crossing point between resistances
is necessary to promote counterhegemonic coalitions. I insist: I do not justify
violence toward women; I emphasize that resistance to it cannot inscribe
itself in perspectives that omit non-Western points of view because this lim-
its relational analyses and the radical intervention of violence. Based on this
case, the question emerges: In what way are struggles antiracist if they do
not encounter the diversity of oppressions that define racialized experience?
For me, the response is that this does not strengthen the counterhegemonic
coalition and, therefore, it is difficult to imagine changing modern hege-
mony because the understanding of oppression derives from non-relational
100 Chapter 5

imaginaries of identity that compete among themselves, generating a spiral of

relations of domination/subordination that particularly obscure race.
Lugones allows for envisioning a path of action that will not be possible
without creating the conditions for symmetrical encounters between differ-
ences. This requires overcoming the ways in which our own terms stabilize
the existence of “the invisible.” “This is an exercise in abandoning certainty,
of enunciation of the resolution of conflicts that aims to transform ourselves
through the incorporation of Other knowledges.”37 In this sense, lesbian femi-
nist encounters have put into play some of the conditions of encounter that I
connect with the contributions of Santos in this respect.
Santos describes five conditions—each connected to one another—that
contribute to the realization of the conditions of encounter to which I refer.38
The first condition transitions from cultural completeness to cultural incom-
pleteness, which understands that our knowledges require other forms of
thinking, apart from Western ones, in order to create radical transforma-
tion. If struggles do not transform reality, it is because they require distinct
knowledges in order to do so. The second condition moves from narrow
cultural accounts to broad cultural accounts, putting into play common
preoccupations and distinct ways of approaching them. The third transitions
from unilateral times to shared times. This involves eradicating the idea
that power’s time is the only correct time. “If the time to deal with a topic
belongs to dominant subjects, it is likely that their hegemonic character will
be reproduced in their demands. If it respects non-dominant desires, it sup-
ports strategies that destabilize monoculturality and, therefore, allow for
adherence to counter-hegemonic, collective proposals. . . . If time belongs to
dominant subjects—whether hegemonic (white, middle class, heterosexual,
men) or non-hegemonic (white, middle class, gays, others)—hegemony is
reproduced. It is necessary to approach topics based on the abandonment
of colonizing practices that determine the what, the how, the when, and the
why.”39 The fourth condition requires that unilaterally imposed topics and
partnerships are replaced by mutually chosen topics and partnerships. The
fifth brings us from similarity or difference to similarity and difference in
order to break down hierarchical relationships and mobilize partners in dia-
logues to have the right to be similar when difference makes them inferior and
to be different when similarity would put their identity in danger.40 This only
works when the voices rejected by modernity are heard.
Given the aforementioned, I argue that decolonial, antiracist feminism
represents an expansion of the present because it puts oppression in a broader
framework of understanding due to its permanent efforts at dialogue with the
social movement. The autonomy/institutionality tension, the fractures within
Latin American autonomous feminism, the persistent effort to create autono-
mous enunciation in lesbian feminist encounters—where second-generation
 Iris Hernández Morales 101

racialized voices, among others, are relevant—will be fundamental in inter-

weaving the analysis of reality and strengthening subaltern cosmopolitanism.
This idea assumes a concrete position in the VII Encuentro Feminista de
América Latina y el Caribe (EFLAC) in Chile, from which an explicit com-
mitment to antiracist and anticapitalist struggles emerged, an issue which, as
I already stated, has not been simple.41 In fact, the events related to Patricia
Troncoso took place that same year.
Without a doubt, this commitment complicated the interpretation of real-
ity, which in 2009—when Espinosa-Miñoso and Curiel began to dialogue
with the decolonial turn—put into circulation “Una Declaración Feminista
Autónoma. El desafío de hacer comunidad en la Casa de las Diferencias” [An
Autonomous Feminist Declaration: The Challenge of Creating Community in
the House of Differences] synthesizing the foundations of this approach. The
declaration outlines, among other things, the connection with the community,
continuous questioning of the state, and the importance of the coexistence
of counter-hegemonic differences, all of which refocus attention to the axes
of the struggle against oppression, overcoming the limits of citizenship and
classic lesbian feminist themes. An intense process of construction led to
thinking of the conditions for encounter with wasted knowledges, which was
exposed clearly in the Encuentro Lésbico Feminista de Abya Yala (ELFAY)
[Lesbian Feminist Encounter of Abya Yala – ELFAY, 2014—]. The important
influence of Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, Ochy Curiel, and Celenis Rodríguez
inflected the encounter with the Other to expose common preoccupations
that emphasized the participation of racialized lesbian feminist voices, allow-
ing for a displacement of the classic topics of white lesbian feminism that
excluded or only nominally assumed the topics proposed by lesbians of color.
This rests on the assumption of the incompleteness of the lesbian knowl-
edges that expanded cultural accounts of the themes and approaches of
oppression. This is not a simple question because it implies a displacement
that is not well received by the hegemony, which is perceived as an oppres-
sive imposition and, as such, provoked responses at ELFAY. Among these
were those of some Chilean lesbian feminists who argued that decolonial
feminism “resulted more in a proletarian and anti-racist revindication than
in a systemic and thought-out critique.” They added, “to consider Marxism
or racism as political solutions is a waste of time and energy.”42 To consider
this as a waste of time supports hegemonic time because it suppresses other
knowledges, strengthening the power that sustains extralegality. Beyond this,
I argue that constructing counter-hegemonic spaces of enunciation enables
antagonisms that try to erase the Other, above all if it is someone who mobi-
lizes displacement, making concrete the objective of citizenship: the continu-
ation of the boundaries between “the visible” and “the invisible.”43
102 Chapter 5

This raises various challenges that highlight how and around whom
common preoccupations are translated. Nevertheless, I emphasize that this
benefits the resistant coalition. In this sense, I highlight the importance of bal-
ancing the decision of which topics to approach, emphasizing the importance
that invisible voices possess for our struggles. Creating the conditions to do
this requires a process that connects with the causes that originally produced
oppression, which deepens processes of enunciation that are symmetrical
and continually more human in order to overcome the restrictions of citizen-
ship, which, without making use of these terms, only recreate the colony in
our times.

CONCLUSION

This reconsideration exposed how citizenship reinforces hegemonic power,

given its colonial baggage, and how the LGBTI movement was transformed
into its tool through the use of demands that incorporate variables of oppres-
sion in its favor. This reinforces the limits between “the visible” and “the
invisible,” aiding the return of the colony and the colonizer, which funda-
mentally affects racialized subjects. In this context, the decolonial antiracist
feminist genealogy is resistant, responding through an intersectional under-
standing that advances to fusion. Their action fosters symmetrical enuncia-
tions that destabilize the colonial matrix of power, which also operates within
oppressed groups, through the construction of conditions that incorporate
the knowledges erased by modernity. Without focusing on citizenship, they
emphasize a challenging reflection on the coexistence of differences, fos-
tering a political imagination not restricted by the limits of modernity and
its terms.

NOTES

1. María Lugones, “Radical Multiculturalism and Women of Color Feminisms.”

Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 13, no. 1 (2014).
2. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to
Ecologies of Knowledges,” Review 30.1 (2007): 45.
3. Audre Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” accessed November 19, 2020, https:​//​
makinglearning​ files​.wordpress​.com​/2014​/01​/poetry​-is​-not​-a​-luxury​-audre​-lorde​.pdf.
4. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,”
Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 545.
5. This is an exercise that I have repeated with modifications in various presenta-
tions, texts, and workshops. It can be found in texts in which I began to try to integrate
 Iris Hernández Morales 103

the oppressions. See: Iris Hernández Morales, “Arroz con leche ¿Me quiero casar?”
Revista Sociedad & Equidad, no. 3 (2012).
6. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,” 533.
7. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise
2, no. 2 (Spring 2008).
8. Lugones, “Radical Multiculturalism,” 75.
9. Ibid.
10. Breny Mendoza, “La epistemología del sur; la colonialidad del género y el
feminismo latinoamericano,” in Tejiendo de otro modo: Feminismo, epistemología y
apuestas decoloniales en Abya Yala, eds. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Diana Gómez
Correal, and Karina Ochoa (Colombia: Editorial Universidad del Cauca, 2014), 94.
11. Ibid., 96.
12. Fernando Zarco, Masculinidad y homoerotismo desde el pensamiento decolo-
nial (Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, 2009).
13. Mendoza, “La epistemología del sur,” 94.
14. Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking.”
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 59.
17. Amparo Menéndez, “El lugar de la ciudadanía en los entornos de hoy. Una
mirada desde América Latina,” Revista Ecuador Debate, no. 58 (2003).
18. The work for which I received my doctorate in Latin American Studies carried
out the first part of a revision of citizenship that was focused on a diagnosis of liberal,
communitarian, and multicultural citizenship and the development of this idea in
Abya Yala. This allowed me to develop a group of critiques centered on the responses
that each current means for liberal citizenship and the fact that they are based on a
failure to question capitalism, their universal legalist character, their established par-
ticipation in hierarchical relationships, and the homogenizing character of the state.
It is important to note that this diagnostic recuperated the debate about “the visible”
and a methodology that uses this diagnostic to propose potential solutions to the prob-
lems outlined, based on decolonial contributions and LGBTI and decolonial antiracist
lesbian feminist movements’ proximity to or distance from these proposals. See: Iris
Hernández Morales, “Aportes, problemáticas y desafíos que la noción de ciudadanía
movilizada por el Movimiento de Diversidad Sexual y sus fragmentos LTGBI y les-
bofeminista antirracista decolonial significan a la radicalización del pluralismo” (PhD
diss., Universidad de Chile, 2016).
19. Will Kymlicka, “Las políticas del Multiculturalismo,” Ciudadanía Multicul-
tural: Una teoría liberal de los derechos de las minorías (Barcelona: Paídos, 1996),
156.
20. Evelina Dagnino, “Sociedad Civil, Participación y Ciudadanía en Brasil,” pre-
sented at UNICAMP, São Paulo, Brazil, 2005.
21. T.H. Marshall is considered the father of modern, classic citizenship. He tried
to overcome social inequalities through citizen status. However, this did not question
the class differences produced by capitalism.
22. José Fernando Serrano Amaya, “La doble salida del clóset de Simon Knkoli:
heterosexismo y luchas anti-apartheid,” Ciudad Paz-Ando 7, no. 1 (2014): 97.
104 Chapter 5

23. Éric Fassin, “La democracia sexual y el choque de civilizaciones,” Mora (B.
Aires) 18, no. 1 (July 2012), accessed September 17, 2015, http:​//​www​.scielo​.org​.ar​
/scielo​.php​?script​=sci​_arttext​&pid​=S1853​-001X2012000100001​&lng​=es​&nrm​=iso.
24. Iris Hernández Morales, “Colonialidad, Diversidad Sexual y Puntos de Fuga a
la Opresión: Apuntes Generales,” Nuevas Voces Descoloniales de Abya Yala (Madrid:
Editorial Akal-GLEFAS, 2017), 12.
25. Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking,” 55–56.
26. In Chile, for example, the declaration of civil unions mobilized petitions of
large stores to include people who signed this agreement in their sales. See “Piden a
grandes tiendas que ofertas y formularios para novios incluyan al Acuerdo de Unión
Civil,” Movilh, published July 27, 2015, http:​//​www​ movilh​.cl​/piden​-a​-grandes​
-tiendas​-que​-ofertas​-para​-matrimonios​-se​-apliquen​-expresamente​-a​-convivientes​
-civiles​/.
27. Jasbir Puar, “Homonationalism As Assemblage: Viral Travels, Affective Sexu-
alities,” Jindal Global Law Review 4, no. 2 (2013): 24.
28. Israel Defense Force published a photo of two soldiers holding hands, stating:
“It’s Pride Month. Did you know that IDF treats all of its soldiers equally? Let’s see
how many times you can share this photo.” The photo went viral with the applause of
LGBTI groups. It can be seen on Israel Hayom (12/06/2012). Army shows its prides
post illustrative gay photo on Facebook. See “Foto de soldados gays israelíes causa
controversia,” BBC News https:​//​www​.bbc​.com​/mundo​/noticias​/2012​/06​/120612​
_soldados​_gay​_israel​_facebook​_jgc.
29. For an analysis of ethnic cleansing, see Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of
Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006).
30. For reasons of length, I do not differentiate between feminism, decolonial anti-
racist feminism, and decolonial antiracist lesbian feminism. I will use them without
distinction, but without omitting the issue I signal now—the lesbian intervention in
their development.
31. Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, “La política sexual radical autónoma, sus debates
internos y su crítica a la ideología de la diversidad sexual,” in Pensando los femi-
nismos en Bolivia, ed. Patricia Montes (La Paz: Conexión Fondo de Emancipación,
2012).
32. Hernández Morales, “Aportes, problemáticas y desafíos.”
33. The feminist synthesis includes diverse voices embracing “The writings of
Yan María Castro, Norma Mogrovejo, Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, Margarita Pisano,
Valeria Flores, Ochy Curiel, Toli Hernández, Marían Pessah, Chuy Tinoco, the groups
Mujeres Creando, Las unas y las Otras, among others. . . . Their analyses have con-
sidered the geopolitical specificities of the region; contributing not only to feminism
as theory and political practice, but also to sexual-political movements like the LGBT
movement.” This also recognizes all the forms of Indigenous and Afro-descendent
activism, the contributions of diverse North-centric feminist thinking, and the
legacy of autonomous feminists. This is contained in what is considered a found-
ing document of this tradition, although it was not recognized as such at that time.
See: “Encuentro Lésbico Feminista de Abya Yala,” Memoria X, published August
2016, https:​//​glefas​.org​/download​/biblioteca​/lesbianismo​-feminista​/memoria​-x​-elfay​
 Iris Hernández Morales 105

-colombia​-2014​-v​.pdf. See also: “Una Declaración Feminisa Autónoma. El Desafío

de Hacer Comunidad en la Casa de las Diferencias,” Rumbo al Encuentro Feminista
Autónomo, published May 2009, http:​//​feministasautonomasenlucha​.blogspot​.com​/.
34. See Santos, “Beyond Abyssal Thinking,” 63.
35. María Lugones, “Radical Multiculturalism.”
36. This is described by Victoria Aldunate––Chilean, antiracist, lesbian, feminist
activist––and is also noted by the author of this text. Their affirmations were shared
in the Workshops of Lesbian Feminist Intersections, facilitated by Lastres Abisales
in 2016.
37. Iris Hernández Morales, Unpublished manuscript, presented at Encuentro
Feminista Nacional de Arica, 2016.
38. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder
(Santiago de Chile: LOM Ediciones, 2013). See also Boaventura de Sousa Santos,
“Toward a Multicultural Conception of Human Rights,” in Moral Imperialism: A
Critical Anthology, ed. Berta Hernández-Truyol (New York: New York University
Press, 2002).
39. Hernández Morales, Unpublished manuscript.
40. Santos, Descolonizar el saber, 84–87.
41. For information on EFLAC (in English, Latin American and Caribbean Femi-
nist Encounters), see Encuentro Feminista de América Latina y el Caribe, Viva Histo-
ria, accessed November 21, 2020, https:​//​en​.vivahistoria​.org​/eflac.
42. Marisol Torres, “Sobre la sospecha, la crítica y la feminidad. Reflexio-
nes tras el ELFAY,” Menjunje Lesbiano, published December 2014, https:​ //​
marisoultorresjimenez​.wordpress​.com​/2014​/12​/10​/sobre​-la​-sospecha​-la​-critica​-y​-la​
-feminidad​-reflexiones​-tras​-elflay​-bogota​-2014​/.
43. Another example is found in the correspondence debate between Francesca
Gargallo y Ochy Curiel that, more than extending a bridge between common preoc-
cupations, revealed antagonisms that as such proceed to devalue a complex process
of encounters across differences and that cannot be personalized in the voices that try
to construct this enunciation. See: Francesa Gallargo, “Cartas van, cartas vienen. Para
una crítica de las exclusiones en el feminiso y los usos de la decolonialidad,”Francesca
Gargallo, published November 2014, https:​//​francescagargallo​.wordpress​.com​/2014​
/11​/06​/cartas​-van​-cartas​-vienen​-para​-una​-critica​-de​-las​-exclusiones​-en​-el​-feminismo​
-y​-los​-usos​-de​-la​-decolonialidad​/.
 Chapter 6

‌‌Public Policies on Gender Equality

Technologies of Modern
Colonial Gender

Celenis Rodríguez Moreno‌‌‌

Translation by Verónica Dávila

For the institutionalized feminism that operates inside the state in depart-
ments, offices or ministries for women’s rights, as well as for some sectors
of the feminist and women social movements, public policies on gender
equality—also known as public policies on women and gender—are the
most effective strategy for transforming the unequal gender relations between
men and women. Nevertheless, despite the apparently progressive ideal that
supports them, they end up reproducing the sex-gender order, operating as
technologies of gender.1
In order to comprehend this assertion, we must first clarify how we under-
stand these public policies on women and gender and what we mean by
technology of gender. In this chapter, I approach public policies with a cogni-
tive focus and so define them as world builders, producers of world-views.
Policies, as Pierre Muller maintains, carry a specific and distinctive idea
of a problem, of a social group’s representation, and of a “theory of social
change.”2 “Thus, public policies contribute, on the one hand, to the configura-
tion of a ‘space of meaning’ (public, of course) that provides a world-vision;
and, on the other hand, they act, ultimately, like a ‘system of beliefs’ that
guides public behavior.”3 Accordingly, any public policy on gender equality
produces a vision of what it means to be a woman, an idea of the world that is
organized around sexual differences, and a representation of a woman’s place
in that world, her interests, and desires, while also setting out the “woman
problem” for which the state will prescribe a number of measures.
107
108 Chapter 6

Moreover, Italian feminist Teresa de Lauretis’ concept of “the technology

of gender” is based on the idea that “gender ‘is the set of effects produced in
bodies, behaviors, and social relations,’ in Foucault’s words, by the deploy-
ment of ‘a complex political technology.’ But it must be said . . . that to think
of gender as the product and the process of a number of social technologies,
of techno-social or bio-medical apparati, is to have already gone beyond
Foucault.”4 To think, therefore, of a public policy on gender equality as
technology of gender is to affirm that that space of sense it would create—
its structure of signification—would gender the behaviors and the social
relations of certain bodies with vaginas. In summary, these policies would
produce women.
In order to understand how this production occurs, it is important to keep
in mind that for authors like Judith Butler, “‘sex’ is a regulatory ideal whose
materialization is compelled and this materialization takes place (or fails to
take place) through certain highly regulated practices. In other words, ‘sex’
is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a
simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory
norms materialize ‘sex’ and achieve this materialization through a forcible
reiteration of those norms.”5 In this way, the fulfillment of the sex/gender
ideal is a highly regulated process that is constantly intervened by social arti-
facts, which indicate men and women’s roles, spaces, behaviors, and ways of
relating to each other. This series of practices and issues is precisely the one
articulated by public policies on gender equality. In so doing, public policies
emit themselves as technologies of gender.
Following Pierre Muller’s idea of the structure of signification, we can
understand the ways in which public policies operate as technologies.6
According to the French political scientist, the structure of signification is
composed of values, images, algorithms, and norms. Through norms and
images, modes of existence—situations—are produced which put women
in contact with a concrete experience of the world. This experience, in turn,
contains representations charged with positive or negative meanings about
how a woman should act and how a woman should be. Finally, algorithms
provide constructed logics for interpreting those images that justify and make
desirable the adoption of certain norms (or solutions); not only are these pre-
scriptions immediate, but they also regulate the limits of a women’s embodi-
ment. The structure of signification concerning “woman” posits a problem as
well as that which would arguably be its “logical,” most desirable solution,
one which “any woman would choose” given the same circumstances. It is
that element of persuasion that proves to be key for understanding women’s
exercise of self-regulation in accordance with the proposed way of acting,
even in the absence of practices of submission. What public policy ultimately
achieves, then, is the creation of a mirage of coincidence between the very
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 109

aspirations, wishes, hopes, decisions, needs, and lifestyles of women, on the

one hand, and predetermined governmental goals, on the other, thereby mak-
ing normative conduct appear good, honorable, and above all, intentional, as
though a product of one’s own volition.7
Here, it’s necessary to keep in mind that the structure of signification cre-
ated by public policies on gender and equality corresponds to the logic of
an identity politics; because of this, it constructs a narrative of oppression
shared by members of the social collective (“women”), as well as an arche-
typal subject with specific features, characteristics, and experiences that are
closely linked to that narrative. Therefore, such policies produce particular
representations of what a woman should be and what her experiences should
be like that reinforce an organization of a social life based on sexual differ-
ence, reaffirming the existence of a society divided into men and women, a
gendered division of labor, the separation of public and private, the idea of
compulsory heterosexuality, and gender stereotypes. Thus, public policies
on gender equality, insofar as they are technologies of gender, deploy and
articulate discursive and non-discursive practices that re-inscribe gender ide-
als until they materialize.
Hence, these policies do not break gender norms; instead they reproduce
them even when they try to transgress them. In regard to this, de Lauretis
states: “Paradoxically, therefore, the construction of gender is also effected
by its deconstruction; that is to say by any discourse, feminist or otherwise,
that would discard it as ideological misrepresentation. For gender, like the
real, is not only the effect of representation but also its excess, what remains
outside discourse.”8
Thus far we have tried to establish that public policies on gender equal-
ity function as technologies of gender. But in the context of Third World
countries, and in the case of Black, Indigenous, and poor “women,” it would
be more appropriate to talk about these policies as technologies of modern
colonial gender, given that they presuppose and subject these “women” to an
idea of gender that is based on a racial order.
This affirmation is supported by two arguments. The first is the decolonial
theoretical argument, which indicates that gender is inextricable from race,
as María Lugones affirms; the socio-sexual experience that constitutes the
category “woman” has only been feasible for white women, who have his-
torically participated in the institutionalization of spaces, roles, and imaginar-
ies that are based on this rubric of sexual difference.9 This has not been the
experience of impoverished, Indigenous, Black, or impoverished Mestizas;
they have performed, since colonial times, arduous labors in the fields and
in the streets, an indicator that the female sex is not fragile, intended for a
specific role assignment, or, much less, destined for the private sphere.10
This difference in experience occurs because, since the period of colonial
110 Chapter 6

administration, non-white peoples have not been considered humans but

beasts, and in order to have a lifestyle consistent with sex/gender norms, they
would need to be considered humans. This founding difference of the colo-
nial order has persisted in those nation-states that emerged after the wars of
independence, which adopted the republican principles of equality and liberty
but did not break with the hierarchies and privileges imposed by the colonial
government.
The second argument is functional and shows how public policies were
inserted into colonial devices, to use Foucault’s language, like that of devel-
opment. The public policies on women and gender that were designed and
put into action in Colombia—including the following publications by the
Departamento Nacional de Planeación [National Department of Planning]:
from La política nacional para la mujer campesina [The National Policy
for the Countryside Woman] to the Política pública nacional de equidad de
género para las mujeres [The National Public Policy on Gender Equality for
Women], and all those in between Política integral para la mujer [Integral
Policy for Women]; Política de participación y equidad de las mujeres
[The Policy for Women’s Participation and Equality]; and the document
Avance y ajustes de la política de participación y equidad para las mujeres
[Advancement and Adjustments to the Policy for Participation and Equality
of Women]—that this paper analyzes, were first introduced to the country
as part of the apparatus of development and, more specifically, through its
policies.11 This explains why policies on gender equality adopted develop-
ment policies’ methodologies—including their set of indicators, categories
of analysis, textual and narrative structure, and methods for follow up and
evaluation—and why the policies on gender equality were designed in insti-
tutions like the National Office of Planning and with the technical support of
international cooperation agencies involved in development.12
At first glance, these public policies on women and gender were dedicated
exclusively to the task of balancing the unequal relations between men and
women. However, their connection with the development apparatus once
again suggests that their objectives were always connected with the regula-
tion of race and gender. In this sense, it is important to recall that technolo-
gies, like Foucault states, are not permanent; instead their use is provisional
and strategic, and their ends possibly multiple, but always dependent on the
device through which they are articulated.13 We can therefore deduce, using
the arguments detailed here, that public policies on gender equality are tech-
nologies of modern colonial gender, whether due to the conceptual base from
which they depart or the neocolonial devices, like that of development, which
organize life in the countries of the Global South around race and gender
hierarchies, through which these policies are produced, and toward which
these policies are geared.
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 111

Development is a knowledge/power device created in Global North coun-

tries that has, in turn, been imposed on Third World countries. Its line of
action involves, first, the application of a number of scientific instruments
in order to know and evaluate the economies, populations, territories, and
environment that make up the Global South, and second, the prescription of
formulas or recipes that, in the form of plans and policies, allow the Global
South countries to overcome their main problem: poverty.14 However, the
emergence of development as this matrix of a geopolitical regulation coin-
cided with the last wave of decolonizing processes in the African continent
during the 1950s. Because of this, authors like Arturo Escobar consider devel-
opment to be nothing more than a device for re-colonization, and for the rear-
rangement of populations and of resource centers. In this regard, he states:
“Although some of the terms of this definition might be more applicable to
the colonial context strictly speaking, the development discourse is governed
by the same principles; it has created an extremely efficient apparatus for
producing knowledge about, and the exercise of power over, the Third World.
This apparatus came into existence roughly in the period 1945 to 1955 [sic]
and has not since ceased to produce new arrangements of knowledge and
power, new practices, theories, strategies, and so on. In sum, it has success-
fully deployed a regime of government over the Third World, a space for
‘subject peoples’ that ensures certain control over it.”15
In that vein, the development device produced a specific type of knowledge
about women, the related discourse about them and their development. This
knowledge then constructed and universalized a certain Western feminist
viewpoint about women of the Third World and, along with it, the customary
institutional image of the poor woman as victim, both of which are based on
racist ideas about certain cultures and societies:

Women in development texts do not, as they claim, describe the situation of

Third World women, but rather the situation that they themselves produce. The
depiction of “Third World Women” which results is one of poor women, living
in hovels, having too many children, illiterate, and either dependent on a man
for economic survival or impoverished because they have none. The important
issue here is not whether this is a more or less accurate description of women,
but who has the power to create it and make claims that it is, if not accurate,
then the best available approximation. . . . The Women in Development discur-
sive regime is not an account of the interests, needs, concerns, dreams of poor
women, but a set of strategies for managing the problem which women repre-
sent to the functioning of development agencies in the Third World.16

Precisely, the Women in Development discourse implicitly suggests that the

“woman problem” can be managed by creating public policies on women
and gender, which, in turn, will elaborate a system of social classification
112 Chapter 6

for the development device, just as they did in Colombia. That is to say, the
discourse also produces and administers representations, roles, spaces, and
imaginaries about what it means to be a woman based on gender, race, class,
and sexual hierarchies. Besides formulating the ideal of the emancipated
woman as implicitly white and in line with Western values, this discourse
also constructs the problem of woman as the laggard, the one delayed on the
path to emancipation like someone who is attached to customs, the mother
of more than three children, illiterate, submerged in poverty, and, of course,
non-white.17
Thus, the development device and, therefore, the public policies that act
as technologies of modern colonial gender harness already existent homog-
enizing and differentiating devices, which condense the tensions within
post-independence societies governed by states that proclaim equality for all
but fail to detach themselves from colonial hierarchies.18 A number of dis-
cursive and non-discursive practices are interlinked through homogenizing
devices that subjectivize/gender Indian, Black, and Mestiza as women. This
process is then juxtaposed with the discourses and actions of racists/classist
laws, customs, and institutions that form together a differentiating device.
Public policies on women and gender then gather the tensions between these
two kinds of devices; its corpus is like a hinge at which many experiences
are homogenized under the category woman and, at the same time, differ-
ence is rewritten, new terms are created, and hierarchies of difference are
reconstructed. Public policies on women and gender take as their point of
departure and evaluation the social experience and emancipatory process of
white women. This reduces a multiplicity of experiences to the binary logic
of Woman/”woman.”

TWO “WOMEN” AND A SINGLE PUBLIC POLICY

Public policies on gender equality produce two woman subjects, which we

call Woman and “woman.” In this paper, I follow Lugones’ proposal of plac-
ing in quotes the subject considered a version or a copy.19 The former subject
is the original, the one usually named in the singular and without adjectives,
the subject that fully condenses the feminine experience; it is the one that best
embodies the “must be” of the gender norm. The latter one, which is almost
always accompanied by adjectives like poor, Black, Indigenous, or country-
side, is the former’s failed version, the unsuccessful copy. This game of dual
representation tends to go unnoticed. Although for some feminists like Elsa
Dorlin, it generates some questions: “We could ask if dominant discursive
techniques ‘would not organize,’ to certain extent their own failure. The per-
formative dimension of sexual identities, but also of social or racial identities,
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 113

would be much more effective if they did not ‘make’ or ‘fabricate’ only domi-
nant subjects. It is as if certain performances were proposed from the start as
original, authentic and real, while others paradoxical and inauthentic. Power
relations thus orchestrate the ontologization of certain performances through
a game of imitating and more or less copying the real Subject.”20
This way of constructing reality is characteristic of colonial discourse and
the modern colonial discourse on gender. Colonial discourse and its devices
not only imposed a regime of knowledge/power and economic exploitation
on colonized people; they also imposed an organizing system of social life
based on sexual dimorphism, which, in the beginning, during the colonial
government, only normalized the lives of white men and women but subse-
quently, in post-independence republics, was applied to all inhabitants of the
former colonies. Therefore, non-white bodies were gendered. Nevertheless,
since this gendering intersected with a racial hierarchy, gender norms became
more complex, corresponding, at the levels of roles, spaces, and imaginaries,
with different criteria than those contemplated for white people.21 “Within the
apparatus of colonial power, the discourses of sexuality and race relate in a
process of functional overdetermination, ‘because each effect . . . enters into
resonance or contradiction with the others and thereby calls for a readjust-
ment or a reworking of the heterogeneous elements that surface at various
points.’”22
For example, the imaginaries that were related to women’s sexual passiv-
ity or physical weakness with respect to heavy labor were incompatible with
those created for Black or Indigenous women, as they were seen as sexually
lascivious or usable as cattle.23 “They were understood as animals in the
deep sense of ‘without gender,’ sexually marked as female, but without the
characteristics of femininity. Women racialized as inferior were turned from
animals into various modified versions of ‘women’ as it fit the processes of
Eurocentered global capitalism.”24
Despite the differences, the two subjects were and sill are both called
women, because to name the experiences and affective relations of Black and
Indigenous people as the same as that of white women is part of a strategy
for normalizing difference; it is a way of imposing, controlling, and organiz-
ing processes of subjectification, social and affective relations, as well as the
distribution of labor and spaces. This way everything is contained within a
matrix coherent with the modern colonial system of gender.25
An additional aspect of the public policies on gender equality that allows
for the production of the original women subjects and its copies pertains to
their complicity with identity politics, which involves the construction of
a subject meant for vindication, a subject category (as mentioned above).
Problematically, the woman subject that emerges in public policy, like femi-
nism’s woman subject, is based solely and exclusively on white women’s
114 Chapter 6

experiences and expressions of oppression; “White feminist struggle became

one against the positions, roles, stereotypes, traits, desires imposed on white
bourgeois women’s subordination. No one else’s gender oppression was
countenanced. They understood women as inhabiting white bodies but did not
bring that racial qualification to articulation or clear awareness.”26
Following Lugones, I affirm that the categorical logic of public policies
erases the differences within the woman social group while also homogeniz-
ing experiences, with the result of hiding processes of the hierarchization
wherein the dominant woman sector is made to represent the whole group.27
If the sector giving meaning to the entire woman group is white, middle-class,
and heterosexual, then the rest­­––Indigenous, Black, poor, lesbian, or hetero-
sexual—are only eligible for a partial or incomplete representation.
This categorical logic is part of the binary operations typical of modern
colonial thinking; the subaltern is thought of as the other when compared and
measured against the parameters of the normative dominant subject which
becomes the universal referent. This other, viewed as ontologically incom-
plete, should therefore be converted, reduced to the universal subject’s terms;
“According to the modern and binary colonial pattern, any element, in order
to reach ontological fullness, fullness of being, should be equalized, that is,
made commensurable by a foundational grid of reference or universal equiva-
lent. This produces an effect: any manifestation of otherness will constitute a
problem and will only stop being one once it is sifted by the equalizing grid,
neutralizer of particularities, of idiosyncrasies.”28
In practical terms, we can observe two types of accounts in public policies:
one coded as occidental and emancipatory/feminist, and with a description
of the situation of woman, her problems, and her goals tied to the categori-
cal logic; and one narrated only in the form of a problem or exception. It is
precisely this latter type that is coupled with an explanation of difference,
in terms of culture and customs or region, which in Colombia’s case, is a
subtle way of marking racial difference. Notably, the narrative of exception
becomes the question of poverty in the public policies of women and gender
that are part of the development device. Poverty makes reference to dark
women who are limited by their oppressed cultures. As Arturo Escobar points
out with regards to Chandra Mohanty’s critique of dominant approaches to
Third World women: “Mohanty’s critique applies . . . to mainstream develop-
ment literature, in which there exists a veritable underdeveloped subjectivity
endowed with features such as powerlessness, passivity, poverty, and igno-
rance, usually dark and lacking in historical agency.”29
For example, an appeal to liberation and “advancement,” in keeping
with the style of the normative account, can be found in “The Policy on
Women’s Equality and Participation” from 1994. Note that the noun women
is not accompanied by any adjectives: “Women’s situation has improved
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 115

significantly during the last 40 years. Its contribution to national develop-

ment has been especially effective in three fields: education, demographic
transition, and the labor market.”30 However, further down in the policy is the
account of the laggard, which affixes the noun woman accompanied to the
adjective “poor”: “The decrease in fertility has not happened homogenously.
Poor women with less education continue having more children: in 1985,
when the national fertility rate was of 3.2 children per women in fertile age,
those of non-poor women was 2.0, poor women’s 3.7, and those in conditions
of misery 4.5”31
The contrast between these accounts conveys the concept of mimesis,
which, as Bhabha explains, is central to colonial discourse.32 As we can see,
public policies on women and gender construct two subjects that are posi-
tioned against each other in a confrontation of copies/versions versus origi-
nals. One subject is the original and embodies the point of reference, while
the other is but a failed subject, a lacking subject, driven to resemble the origi-
nal as much as possible, by the promise of, in this case, wellbeing, a better
quality of life, a life free from violence, emancipation, and liberty. Therefore,
these narrations perpetuate the westernization of this failed subject.

TWO WOMEN, A SINGLE TIMELINE

Interestingly, public policies on gender equality also maintain the original/

copy binary in their descriptions of a given subject’s temporal and spatial
location. In their accounts, “woman” is presented as living in a past time,
amongst archaic and traditional practices that have to be, given her perceived
motionlessness and lack of agency, transformed from the outside. By con-
trast, Woman is described as a contemporary, transformed subject who, being
completely emancipated from her oppressive past, casts herself towards the
future. In this case, the image is one of a true subject with agency and the
capacity for change. To paraphrase Fanon, these narrations aim to convert the
“woman” as the white woman’s past; the latter becomes the former’s future,
its fate.33
Let us take an illustrative example from the “Integral Policy for Women”
ratified in 1992. The paragraph reproduced below shows how certain soci-
eties––in this case, those inhabiting Colombian regions characterized by a
large Black and Indigenous presence and ways of living, in this case, those of
poorer social groups––are located arbitrarily in the past. It establishes a cor-
relation between past/discrimination/local culture necessary for validating the
tale of future/emancipation/westernization as the moral response: “In certain
strata and regions, the most rooted forms of discrimination against women
116 Chapter 6

based on past cultural patterns still linger. Nevertheless, said patterns keep
prevailing in the most impoverished sectors of our population.”34
The way in which public policies on gender equality construct a timeline
or a trajectory for the emancipatory process of women is based on the modern
idea of temporal non-simultaneity.35 This idea implies that two societies that
coexist in the same space need not coexist in the same time because their
modes of economic and cognitive production apparently differ in evolution-
ary development. As Castro-Gómez has pointed out, “Modern Europe’s mode
of production of riches (capitalism) and knowledge (new science) is viewed
as the criteria according to which it is possible to measure the temporal devel-
opment of all other societies. Knowledge should then pass ‘through various
degrees’ measured by a lineal scale––from primitive mentality to abstract
thought; the same can be said of the mode of production of riches, which
progresses from an economy of subsistence to a capitalist market economy.”36
This operation of the senses converts other worlds and societies into strong-
holds of the European past, a known and outgrown experience, negating its
present and, of course, its existence.
Developmental feminism also engages a similar exercise, as the Indian
feminist Chandra Mohanty has shown. Mohanty criticizes white Western
feminism for representing its own version of the woman subject as the norm
that Third World women should follow, and, at the same time, for present-
ing other women––Third World women––as poor, illiterate, and politically
immature; “This average third world woman leads an essentially truncated
life based on her feminine gender (read: sexually constrained) and being
‘Third World’ (read: ignorant, poor, uneducated, tradition-bound, domes-
tic, family-oriented, victimized, etc.). This, I suggest, is in contrast to the
(implicit) self-representation of Western women as educated, modern, as hav-
ing control over their own bodies and sexualities, and the freedom to make
their own decisions.”37
The situating of “woman” in the past by recurring to a stereotype based on
shortages, while white woman is cast in the present and promissory future
in matters like education, professions, sexual liberty, and decision power
in all aspects of social life, evidences a reordering of the time of colonial
discourses, since it arbitrarily locates Black and Indigenous women as well
as Mestizas in the past of the white woman, hiding coetaneous historical
processes and going over geographical spaces and cultural contexts.38 In
this historical account, white Woman is located at the finishing line and
becomes the universal referent. Placed somewhere on that line that allegedly
follows the idea of progress, non-white and poor women’s best option is to
“advance,” to follow the stages of white women’s emancipation, to become
white themselves. The denial of coevalness that undergirds developmental
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 117

feminism is the negation of the other, the subaltern, in the present time, as
only Woman can exist.

GEOGRAPHICAL METAPHORS

These public policies on gender equality not only position “woman” accord-
ing to the unique, linear history of Woman; they also engage in spatial
resettlement, an arbitrary rearrangement of frontiers that creates a stage of
meaning for the subjects it produces.39 While Woman is situated in central
urban contexts, “woman” is located in peripheral, marginal or regional fields
that evoke poverty and migration and insinuate certain racial groups and cul-
tural traditions, especially when the field refers to a region. This manner of
situating subjects reinforces hierarchies and differences, just as the apparatus
of development’s First, Second, and Third World classification or North/
South division does.
Indeed, “The development discourse inevitably contained a geopolitical
imagination that has shaped the meaning of development for more than four
decades. For some, this will to spatial power is one of the most essential
features of development. . . . It is implicit in expressions such as First and
Third World, North and South, center and periphery. The social production
of space implicit in these terms is bound with the production of differences,
subjectivities, and social orders.”40
This hierarchization also manifests itself in the organization of national
and local spaces, a phenomenon that can be explained by Pablo Gonzalez
Casanova’s concept of internal colonialism. According to González Casanova,
national elites reproduce colonial practices and structures that recreate
the same center-periphery geography of power within the interior of the
nation-state, which in turn sanction the organization, control, and exploitation
of particular territories and populations.41 It should be noted that this spatial
organization is based on racial differences. In using this spatial operation,
public policies on gender equality maintain the binary machinery of colonial
thought, since the center/periphery relation puts back at the center colonial
dichotomies: savage/civilized, white/non-white, developed/underdeveloped,
western/non-western, poverty/wealth. Thus, by extension, Woman corre-
sponds to the center, civilization, whiteness, wealth, development, and the
West, while “woman” corresponds to savagery, non-whiteness, underdevel-
opment, the non-west, the periphery, and poverty.
In the following two fragments from the “Integral Policy for Women” of
1992, we can observe the construction of said center-periphery geography of
power centers, which recreates an internal Third World: (1) “In rural areas,
17% of households are female headed, with more acute poverty problems
118 Chapter 6

than in urban areas”; (2) “Actions and resources are concentrated specifically
in the attention of poor women in rural and urban marginal areas.”42

MAKING PUBLIC POLICIES WITH STEREOTYPES

Up to this point we have seen how public policies on woman and gender
produce two women subjects, and how each one of them is located in a dif-
ferentiated dimension of time and space following either the emancipatory or
problematic/exceptional logic of its respective account. In the first account, a
type of woman subject is created. To do so, certain features that are consid-
ered essential and apparently persist across time are underscored or placed at
the forefront––“a type is any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and
widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and
change or ‘development’ is kept at a minimum.”43
The second account fixes and limits its subjects to one way of doing and
being, constructing a narration based on stereotypes; “stereotypes get hold of
the few ‘simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped, and widely recognized’
characteristics about a person, reduce everything about the person to those
traits, exaggerate and simplify them, and fix them without change or develop-
ment to eternity. This is the process we described earlier. So, the first point is
stereotyping reduces, essentializes, naturalizes and fixes ‘difference.’”44
Constructing subjects as stereotypes implies flat outlines and a stabile
description; this means that these subjects will always be described in the
same way, through a process that privileges certain hypervisible characteris-
tics and conceal others.45 Furthermore, stereotyping also controls and normal-
izes individual difference by means of racial and gender labeling; what is odd
is thus sublimated into a known category—a manageable category—in which
demeanor and attitude always have the same explanation, even if they are
contradictory: if you work a lot, you work like a Black person; if you work
too little, you are lazy like a Black person. Lastly, there is the stereotype’s
predictability: all of its possible answers and actions in particular situations
can be anticipated. In short, under the premise of a “profound knowledge”
of the other, all uncertainty is removed.46 This transforms the subject into a
being that is objectified, limited, fixed to an idea about who s/he is. Any other
circulating interpretation that makes possible other ways of seeing, listening,
and imagining the subject is collapsed into the stereotype and permanently
interrupted. As Frantz Fanon explains, “wherever he goes, a black man
remains a black man.”47
Stuart Hall indicates the principal differences between a type and a ste-
reotype: the type determines normalcy while the stereotype sets difference.
That is to say, while the type points to those who fit in, who are on the
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 119

inside, the stereotype denotes those who are excluded. Stereotypes tend to
be more defined, setting well-drawn limits and remaining stable across time:
“Stereotyping, in other words, is part of the maintenance of the social and
symbolic order. It sets up a symbolic frontier between the ‘normal’ and the
‘deviant,’ the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological,’ the ‘acceptable’ and the ‘unac-
ceptable,’ what ‘belongs’ and what does not or is ‘Other,’ between ‘insiders’
and ‘outsiders,’ Us and Them.”48 Finally, stereotyping tends to occur where
huge power inequalities exist, where one group has enough power to impose
a regime of truth, its world vision of how people and society should be, and
its values: hence their prevalence in colonial discourse.
In addition, the imposition of a stereotype on an “other” implies the nega-
tion of their humanity, insofar as their status as an agential subject with capac-
ity to reason and make decisions goes unrecognized; neither their past nor
their memory are acknowledged. This sets up, once again, colonial moder-
nity’s central dichotomy between the human and the non-human, where
humanity is a condition only had by white people and a prerequisite for being
considered men or woman.49 The persistence of discursive practices that strip
certain social groups of––like in the case of these public policies, impover-
ished, Indigenous, Afro, and Mestiza women––their humanity reaffirms the
long duration of the modern colonial discourse on gender and exposes who
the real woman subject is for the state, who it is that can embody the ideal
type Woman, and who it is that can only aspire to be the stereotype “woman.”
The reduction of one subject to a stereotype and the establishment of
another subject as a type is the discursive recourse that enables these public
policies on women and gender to present two accounts and yet maintain the
internal coherence; it is what makes their accounts impervious, eternally
parallel, and capable of representing disparate subjects despite them being
grouped under the same designation.

CONCLUSION

National public policies for women and gender that were designed and insti-
tuted during the 1990s strategically showcase discursive and non-discursive
practices that classify them as technologies of modern colonial gender. That is
to say, these practices brought gendering processes that are intertwined with
hierarchies of race, class, and sexuality, which is made evident in the way in
which these policies constructed representations of the woman subject as well
as integrated these representations into programs and projects formulated to
solve “the women problem.”
To be sure, though, in order to understand the importance of technologies
of modern colonial gender, it is fundamental to remember that the colonial
120 Chapter 6

subjectification processes are not yet finished; they continue even today
through these same public policies which constantly interpellate the subject.
After all, it is only through their repetition that the norms are materialized.
In this case, subjectivities are fractured by the “must be” of the white gender
norm and the normative limits imposed by the racial hierarchy, which are also
those of the class pyramid. Nowadays, along with school texts, the law, and
constitutions, public policies, operating as technologies of modern colonial
gender, fulfill the role that the “encomienda,” the Indian right, and urbanity
manuals once did.50 All these technologies interconnect following a compre-
hension field that organizes the homogenizing and differentiating devices,
which orders social life and state actions through the imposition of common
categories and hierarchization.
It is worth saying that the fractured subject is always desiring, trying to
embody the other subject of policy: the white/Woman, the fully realized
gender norm in which body, roles, spaces, and imaginaries all cohere. This
desire to Westernize is also “woman’s” promise of emancipation; thus it is
also constructed in the mirroring accounts that run parallel to public policy
texts and materialize through the programs and projects that are prescribed as
solutions to their problems.
Evidently, the modern colonial gender norm is dynamic and transforms
itself according to geopolitical changes in the North/South relationship; or,
one might even say, they are actualized. In this regard, technologies of mod-
ern colonial gender always undergo processes that re-code what it means to
be a “woman”; this, at times, implies the exaltation of certain roles or the
proscription of others, the revalorization of certain spaces, a change in atti-
tude before certain tasks, or the popularization of some imaginary. Lugones
already warned us that the modern colonial system produces as many ver-
sions of woman as it deems necessary to ensure the functioning of global
capitalism.51 This is possible because the tensions between gender, race, and
class that cluster under the imposition of the woman category on colonized
bodies blurs the lines of coherence that do exist in the white/women subject,
the ontologized subject. Thus, the number of ways of administering the differ-
ences that gendering and racializing processes as well as social class produce
is presented as infinite. Whether they are schizophrenic, contradictory, or
painful, the important thing is to produce the “women” that the process of
colonial capitalist exploitation needs.

NOTES

1. “Technologies of gender, therefore, would be tied to sociocultural practices,

discourses, and institutions capable of creating ‘effects of meaning’ in the production
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 121

of male subjects and female subjects. In general, gender and sexual differences would
be the result of representations and discursive practices.” See Hortensia Moreno, “La
noción de ‘tecnologías de género’ como herramienta conceptual en el estudio del
deporte,” Revista Punto Género, no. 1 (2011): 49.
2. Pierre Muller, Las políticas públicas, 2nd ed. (Bogotá: Universidad Externado
de Colombia, 2006).
3. José Francisco Puello Socarrás, “La dimensión cognitiva en las políticas públi-
cas, interpelación politológica,” Ciencia Política 3 (2007): 85.
4. Teresa de Lauretis, Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fic-
tion, 1st ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 3.
5.Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, 1st ed. (New York/London: Routledge, 1993),
1–2.
6. The structure of signification of public policies articulates four levels of percep-
tion. “Values are the most fundamental representations about what is good and what is
bad, desirable or disposable . . . ; norms define the differences between real perception
and real desire. They define principles of action more than values do . . . ; algorithms
are causal relations that express a theory of the action. They can be expressed in the
form of ‘if . . . then’ . . . ; [and] images (‘the young, dynamic, and modern farmer’ . . .
) are the implicit vectors of values, of norms, or even of algorithms. They are cogni-
tive shortcuts that make sense immediately.” See Muller, Las políticas públicas, 100
(emphasis in original).
7. Santiago Castro-Gómez, Historia de la gubernamentabilidad I: Razón de
Estado, liberalismo y Neo-liberalismo en Michel Foucault (Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre
Editores, 2010).
8. de Lauretis, Technologies, 3.
9. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” Words & Knowledges Otherwise
2, no. 2 (2008), https:​//​globalstudies​.trinity​.duke​.edu​/sites​/globalstudies​.trinity​.duke​
.edu​/files​/file​-attachments​/v2d2​_Lugones​.pdf.
10. Note that, in this chapter, references to impoverished Mestiza women and Mes-
tiza do not refer to the formation of creole Mestizo elites or to the process of whiten-
ing among the criollo population, but to the “impure mixtures,” by which I mean the
offspring of the various ethno-racial groups that were dominated by the colonizers.
11. Política nacional para la mujer campesina (CONPES 2109) (Bogotá: Depar-
tamento Nacional de Planeación, 1984); Política pública nacional de equidad de
género para las mujeres (CONPES 161) (Bogotá: Departamento Nacional de Pla-
neación, 2013); Política integral para la mujer (CONPES 2626) (Bogotá: Departa-
mento Nacional de Planeación, 1992); Política de participación y equidad para las
mujeres (CONPES 2726) (Bogotá: Departamento Nacional de Planeación, 1994);
Avance y ajustes de la política de participación y equidad para las mujeres (CONPES
2941) (Bogotá: Departamento Nacional de Planeación, 1997). Other public policies
on gender equality that have been produced in Colombia include: Política de salud
para las mujeres “Salud para las Mujeres, Mujeres para la Salud” (Resolución 1531)
(Bogotá: Ministerio de Protección Social, 1992) and Política para el desarrollo de la
mujer rural (Bogotá: Ministerio de Agricultura y Desarrollo Rural, 1994). The poli-
cies Mujeres constructoras de paz y desarrollo (Bogotá: Consejería Presidencial para
122 Chapter 6

la Equidad de la Mujer, 2003) and La política pública nacional de equidad de género

para las mujeres (CONPES 161) (Bogotá: Departamento Nacional de Planeación,
2013) appeared in the twenty-first century.
12. “The development discourse defined a perceptual field structured by grids of
observation, modes of inquiry and registration of problems, and forms of interven-
tion; in short, it brought into existence a space defined not so much by the ensemble
of objects with which it dealt but by a set of relations and a discursive practice that
systematically produced interrelated objects, concepts, theories, strategies, and the
like.” See: Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking
of the Third World, 1st ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 42. Since
the 1980s, national governments have made various attempts to fulfill the compro-
mises they signed at different summits and international forums. They include: The
Colombian Counsel for the Integration of Women into Development that was held in
1980; the National Department of Planning’s institution of a position responsible for
“the Women issue” between 1984 and 1989; and the Convention on the Elimination
of All Forms of Discrimination against Women’s Coordination and Control Commit-
tee, which was created in 1990 and included representatives from the Ministries of
Labor, Education, and Health, the DNP (National Department of Planning), the ICBF
(Colombian Family Welfare Institute), and two of the most important organizations
on women’s interests. See: Marta Cecilia Londoño López, “Políticas públicas para
las mujeres en Colombia. Interlocución movimiento social de mujeres-estado-mov-
imiento social de mujeres. El caso de Cali” (Master’s Thesis, Universidad Nacional
de Colombia Bogotá, 1999), 67. During President César Gaviria Trujillo’s administra-
tion, the Presidential Counsel for Youth, Women and Family was created. It pushed
the formulation and implementation of the Política integral para la mujer with the
technical and financial support of the IBD and Unicef. It is worth noting that this
policy was designed by known experts in the field of development: Cecilia López,
Elsy Bonilla, Gabriel Misas, Absalón Machado, and Hernán Jaramillo. Importantly,
the publication, in 1992, 1994, and 1997, of those public policies on women and
gender that constructed the predominant pathway forward for women’s emancipation
coincided with the implementation of the first development policies.
13. “Devices are capable of consolidating together a multiplicity of techniques,
abstracting them from the particular objectives they had when they were invented
and putting them to work according to completely different objectives. . . . Foucault
states that power techniques are ‘transferable’ (Übertragbar), given that their ‘use’
is not linked substantially to any objective in particular, and nor does it depend on
any institution or cultural context. That is to say, any technique can be isolated from
the objectives it had in a particular historical moment and put to function in strate-
gic fields that operate with different objectives.” See: Castro-Gómez, Historia de la
gubernamentabilidad I, 36.
14. In order to understand how poverty is constructed as a world problem, this
quote is key: “The perception of poverty on a global scale was nothing more than
the result of a comparative statistical operation, the first of which was carried out
only in 1940.” See: Wolfgang Sachs, “The Archaeology of the Development Idea,”
Interculture 23, no. 4 (1990): 9. Almost by fiat, two-thirds of the world’s peoples
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 123

were transformed into poor subjects in 1948, when the World Bank defined as poor
those countries with an annual per capita income below $100. And if the problem was
one of insufficient income, the solution was clearly economic growth. Thus, poverty
became an organizing concept and the object of a new problematization. As in the
case of any problematization, that of poverty brought into existence new discourses
and practices that shaped the reality to which they referred. See: Michel Foucault, The
History of Sexuality, vol 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vin-
tage Books, 1985). That the essential trait of the Third World was its poverty and that
the solution was economic growth and development became self-evident, necessary,
and universal truths.” See: Escobar, Encountering Development, 23–24.
15. Escobar, Encountering Development, 9.
16. Adele Mueller, “Power and Naming in the Development Institution: The ‘Dis-
covery’ of Women in Peru,” presented in the 14th Annual Third World Conference,
Chicago, 1987, 4, translated by Verónica Dávila. Cited in Spanish by the author.
17. We should bring to the discussion the following quote: “In the colonies the eco-
nomic infrastructure is also a superstructure. The cause is effect: You are rich because
you are white, you are white because you are rich.” See: Frantz Fanon, The Wretched
of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press, 2004).
18. Daniel Díaz explains how race, education, and development functioned strategi-
cally to “normalize” the population. This normalization consisted in producing bina-
ries: “To normalize life meant to binarize it (normal/abnormal), and each biopolitical
strategy had its own normalization or binarization: the racial strategy operated on the
useful/useless distinction, the educational strategy worked on the cultured/uncultured
dichotomy, and lastly, the great development strategy invented a new cursed couple:
development/underdevelopment . . . all the singularity of otherness was reduced under
a new inverted image of a despotic Self .” These strategies did not work in a separate
or orderly manner; instead they were superimposed on one another like layers, mak-
ing it very difficult to know where one starts and the other ends. See: Daniel Diaz,
“Raza, pueblo y pobres: las tres estrategias biopolíticas del siglo XX en Colombia
(1873–1962),” in Genealogías de la Colombianidad: Formaciones discursivas y las
tecnologías de gobierno en los siglos XIX y XX, eds. Santiago Castro-Gómez and
Eduardo Restrepo (Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2008), 66.
19. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender.”
20. Elsa Dorlin, Sexo, género y sexualidades, 1st ed. (Buenos Aires: Ediciones
Nueva Visión, 2009), 102.
21. “The construction of the colonial subject in discourse, and the exercise of colo-
nial power through discourse, demands an articulation of forms of difference—racial
and sexual. Such an articulation becomes crucial if it is held that the body is always
simultaneously (if conflictually) inscribed in both the economy of pleasure and desire
and the economy of discourse, domination and power.” See: Hommi Bhabha, The
Location of Culture, 1st ed. (New York/London: Routledge, 1994), 67.
22. Ibid., 74 (emphasis in original).
23. Lugones explains the fundamentals of the modern colonial system of gender:
“I understand the dichotomous hierarchy between the human and the non-human
as the central dichotomy of colonial modernity. Beginning with the colonization of
124 Chapter 6

the Americans and the Caribbean, a hierarchical, dichotomous distinction between

human and non-human was imposed on the colonized in the service of Western man.
It was accompanied by other dichotomous hierarchical distinctions, among them
that between men and women. This distinction became a mark of the human and a
mark of civilization. Only the civilized are men or women. Indigenous peoples of
the Americas and enslaved Africans were classified as not humans in species––as
animals, uncontrollably sexual and wild. The European, bourgeois, colonial, modern
man became a subject/agent, fit for rule, for public life and ruling, a being of civiliza-
tion, heterosexual, Christian, a being of mind and reason. The European, bourgeois
woman was not understood as his complement, but as someone who reproduced race
and capital through her sexual purity, passivity, and being homebound in service of
the white, European, bourgeois man.” See: María Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial
Feminism,” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2010): 743.
24. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender,” 13.
25. Regarding the effects of nomination or categorization Edward Said states:
“Something patently foreign and distant acquires, for one reason or another, a status
more rather than less familiar. One tends to stop judging things either as completely
novel or as completely well-known; a new median category emerges, a category that
allows one to see new things, things seen for the first time, as versions of a previously
known thing. In essence such a category is not so much a way of receiving new infor-
mation as it is a method of controlling what seems to be a threat to some established
view of things . . . The threat is muted, familiar values impose themselves, and in the
end the mind reduces the pressure upon it by accommodating things to itself as either
‘original’ or ‘repetitious.’” See: Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon,
1978); quoted in Bhabha, Location, 100).
26. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender,” 15.
27. In the construction of categories, the dominant sectors, in terms of social power,
are assumed to exhaust the entire category, covering intracategorical power relations.
Those subordinated sectors inside the category lack the capacity to give the category
any meaning (ibid.).
28. Rita Laura Segato, “Colonialidad y patriarcado moderno: expansión del frente
estatal, modernización y la vida de las mujeres,” in Tejiendo de otro modo: Femi-
nismo, epistemología y apuestas decoloniales en Abya Yala, eds. Yuderkys Espinosa
Miñoso, Diana Gómez, and Karina Ochoa (Colombia: Editorial Universidad del
Cauca, 2014), 82–83.
29. Escobar, Encountering Development, 8.
30. Política de participación y equidad para las mujeres.
31. Ibid.
32. As colonial mimicry seeks to transform the other to a recognizable other, it
names the other as women, male, Black, Indigenous, employing the categories that
the colonial discourse organizes. However, this other always overflows the category
imposed or fails to fulfill it. This failure, lacking, or excess is the difference that
makes the colonized subject recognizable as such, since it is always compared with
the original subject. Socially pressured to reach the full resemblance, the colonized
subject is always condemned to fail. See: Bhabha, Location.
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 125

33. “Fanon writes from that temporal caesura, the time-lag of cultural difference,
in a space between the symbolization of the social and the ‘sign’ of its representation
of subjects and agencies. Fanon destroys two time schemes in which the historicity
of the human is thought. He rejects the ‘belatedness’ of the black man because it is
only the opposite of the framing of the white man as universal, normative—the white
sky all around me: the black man refuses to occupy the past of which the white man
is the future.” Ibid., 236–37.
34. Política integral para la mujer.
35. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983). Sinclair Thomson’s affirmation
regarding the understanding of time in the work of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui is inter-
esting: “In the temporal plane, it posits the simultaneous coexistence of a multiplicity
of historical layers, ‘horizons,’ or ‘cycles.’ This offers the conceptual framework for
her work: ‘a coupling of diachronic contradictions of diverse depths that emerge on
the surface of contemporaneity, and therefore, cross through the coetaneous spheres
of the modes of production, the state policy systems, and the ideologies anchored
in cultural hegemony.’” See Sinclair Thomson, “Claroscuro andino: Nubarrones y
destellos en la obra de Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui,” in Violencias (re) encubiertas en
Bolivia (Bolivia, La Paz: La Mirada Salvaje, 2010), 11.
36. Santiago Castro-Gómez, La hybris del punto cero ciencia, raza e ilustración
en la Nueva Granada (1750–1816), 2nd ed. (Bogotá: Editorial Pontificia Universidad
Javeriana, 2010), 36.
37. Chandra Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” boundary 2 12, no 3 (1984): 337.
38. On stereotypes: For Bhabha, the stereotype is the primary point of subjectifica-
tion in the colonial discourse: it’s a fixed and detained way of representation and by
being ambivalent the actions of the colonized subject will always be reduced to the
same explanation. There is no possibility for change. See Bhabha, Location; On time:
“The modern concept of time constructed a worldwide alterity based on a temporal
scale that located populations and territories in relation to the new and the modern.
This understanding allowed for the construction of a world order through civilizatory
processes during different periods and in different ways, but always based on the
same logocentric pattern of mediation A/not A, Civilized/Barbaric, Developed/Under-
developed, White/non-White. Here is where time as world organizer gains sense, and
it is here where the illusion of a universal history based on differentiated processes
makes sense, but only according to the same evolutionary line.” See: Andrés Arévalo,
“La configuración temporal del orden mundial: una mirada moderno/colonial,” Tra-
bajos y ensayos, no. 9, (2009): 4.
39. In order to understand the social, political, and cultural production of spaces
and frontiers, Edward Said’s concept of imaginative geographies is very useful: “It
is perfectly possible to argue that some distinctive objects are made by the mind, and
that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only a fictional reality. A
group of people living in a few acres of land will set up boundaries between their land
and its immediate surroundings and the territory beyond, which they call ‘the land of
the barbarians.’ In other words, this universal practice of designating in one’s mind a
familiar space which is ‘ours’ and an unfamiliar space beyond ‘ours’ which is ‘theirs’
126 Chapter 6

is a way of making geographical distinctions that can be entirely arbitrary. I use the
word ‘arbitrary’ here because imaginative geography of the ‘our land-barbarian land’
variety does not require that the barbarians acknowledge the distinction. It is enough
for ‘us’ to set up these boundaries in our own minds; ‘they’ become ‘they’ accord-
ingly, and both their territory and their mentality are designated as different from
‘ours’ . . . The geographic boundaries accompany the social, ethnic, and cultural ones
in expected ways.” See: Said, Orientalism, 54.
40. David Slater, “The Geopolitical Imagination and the Enframing of Develop-
ment Theory,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 18, no. 4 (1993),
quoted in Escobar, Encountering Development, 9.
41. Pablo González Casanova, “Colonialismo interno (una redefinición) in Con-
ceptos y fenómenos fundamentales de nuestro tiempo (Mexico City: Instituto de
Investigaciones Sociales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2003), http:​//​
conceptos​.sociales​.unam​ mx​/conceptos​_final​/412trabajo​.pdf.
42. Política integral para la mujer.
43. Richard Dyer, Gays and Film (London: British Film Institute, 1977), 28.
44. Stuart Hall, “The Spectacle of the ‘Other,’” in Representation: Cultural Repre-
sentations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London: London Sage Publica-
tions and Open University, 1997), 258 (emphasis in original).
45. “[T]he primary point of subjectification in colonial discourse . . . The stereotype
is not a simplification because it is a false representation of a given reality. It is a
simplification because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation that, in deny-
ing the play of difference (that the negation through the Other permits), constitutes a
problem for the representation of the subject” See: Bhabha, Location, 75 (emphasis
in original).
46. “The subjects of the discourse are constructed within an apparatus of power
which contains, in both senses of the word, an ‘other’ knowledge­­––a knowledge
that is arrested and fetishistic and circulates through colonial discourse as that lim-
ited form of otherness that I have called stereotype.” See: Bhabha, Location, 77–78
(emphasis in original).
47. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Richard Philcox (London, Grove
Press, 2008), 150 (emphasis in original). It is important to note that the production
of subjects as stereotypes has also been criticized by postcolonial feminists like
Chandra Mohanty, who, in a feminist literary review of the so-called “Third World
Women,” questions the arbitrary attribution of characteristics and problematics based
on the universalist style of Eurocentric presuppositions: “Third World women as a
group or category are automatically and necessarily defined as: religious (read ‘not
progressive’), family-oriented (read ‘traditional’), legal minors (read ‘they-are-still-
not-conscious-of-their rights’), illiterate (read ‘ignorant’), domestic (read ‘backward’)
and sometimes revolutionary (read ‘their-country-is-in-a-state-of-war-they-must-
fight!’).” See: Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes,” 352.
48. Hall, “Spectacle,” 258.
49. Lugones, “Decolonial Feminism.”
50. “The long process of subjectification of the colonized toward adoption/inter-
nalization of the men/women dichotomy as a normative construction of the social–-a
 Public Policies on Gender Equality 127

mark of civilization, citizenship, and membership in civil society—was and is con-

stantly renewed.” See: ibid., 748.
51. María Lugones, “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System,”
Hypatia 22, no. 1 (2007): 203.
 PART III

Decolonial Interpretations of
Violence toward Women

129
 Chapter 7

‌‌
Notes on the Coloniality of
Militarization and Feminicidal
Violence in Abya Yala

‌‌‌‌Sarah Daniel and Norma Cacho

Translation by Jennifer Vilchez

For us, racism is the theory and structure of power that justifies colonial-
ist ideology and colonization.1 Five hundred years ago, our continent was
invaded, the Indigenous people were subjugated or eliminated, and the
transatlantic slave trade unfolded with the purpose of expanding the capi-
talist markets of European empires. Human exploitation was justified by a
racist system organized to dominate and oppress non-European populations.
Centuries of colonization have shaped the structures of Abya Yala societies,
their socio-political structures, ideologies, and subjectivities.
If the historical period of colonization has ended, colonialism as a system
of power—coloniality—has not; it continues in our way of perceiving reality
and building social relationships, in our bodily aesthetics, in the racialization
of the gendered division of labor, in the control of territories and populations,
and especially in the multiple forms of violence experienced by racialized
groups, particularly women.
Coloniality established colonialism; its process, according to Quijano,
originates in the colonial, but also continues to be a fundamental and perma-
nent element of the system of power that is linked to racist power relations.
Coloniality produces new patterns of social domination and is based on a
concept of race that goes beyond ethnocentrism and the racial domination
of non-Europeans by Europeans and establishes a difference between who
is considered human and who is considered not human (non-Europeans are
thought of as non-human or semi-human), justifying capitalist exploitation.2

131
132 Chapter 7

For María Lugones, coloniality is a system of classification that sorts people

in relation to both the coloniality of power and the coloniality of gender, as
well as a process of dehumanizing the colonized population.3 Coloniality
is an axis in the system of power that permeates all control over sex, col-
lective authority, labor, subjectivity/intersubjectivity, production of knowl-
edge, and work.
Today, colonialism and coloniality underpin new forms of neoliberal capi-
talism, the globalization of one model of thought, social constructs, and ways
of living. In this neo-colonialism, racism is the basis for the new economic
world order, neoliberal policies, and the expansion of military industry, all of
which impose an idea of “development” that destroys peoples’ autonomy and
self-determination, further impoverishes historically marginalized popula-
tions, and yields global violence and devastation. We consider it important
to contribute to the feminist movement an anti-racist and decolonial analysis,
so as not to forget where we come from and where we want to go: toward
an Abya Yala free from violence and classist, colonial, and heteropatriarchal
domination. Thus, from a decolonial feminist perspective, we propose to
address feminicidal violence in Abya Yala, particularly in Mexico and Brazil,
to broaden the analysis beyond the traditional focus on gender and patriarchy
and understand feminicidal violence as an instrument of control within a sys-
tem of domination where patriarchy, racism, capitalism, and colonialism are
co-constructed and sustained. We seek to understand how controlling Black
and Indigenous women’s bodies and territories is part of a military strategy
rooted in colonialism. Like the coloniality of gender, which is a process of
dehumanizing racialized women, control over Black and Indigenous women’s
bodies and territories conspires with militarization to promote feminicidal
violence as a military strategy for colonizing and neo-colonizing Abya Yala.

A SHORT DEFINITION OF FEMINICIDE

Jane Caputi and Diana E. H. Russell define femicide as

the extreme end of a continuum of antifemale terror that includes a wide variety
of verbal and physical abuse, such as rape, torture, sexual slavery (particularly
in prostitution), incestuous and extrafamilial child abuse, physical and emo-
tional battery, sexual harassment (on the phone, in the streets, at the office, and
in the classroom), genital mutilation (clitoridectomies, excision, infibulations),
unnecessary gynecological operations (gratuitous hysterectomies), forced het-
erosexuality, forced sterilization, forced motherhood (by criminalizing contra-
ception and abortion), psychosurgery, denial of food to women in some cultures,
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 133

cosmetic surgery, and other mutilations in the name of beautification. Whenever

these forms of terrorism result in death, they become femicides.4

These authors’ definition of femicide as a continuum of violence caused by

patriarchy has become a reference point.5 To speak of feminicide in Mexico
is to refer to the violent deaths of women that were most prevalent in Ciudad
Juárez, Chihuahua, a place that became a symbol of feminicidal violence in
the 1990s. The extreme violence, brutality, cruelty, and torture inflicted on the
bodies of the murdered women spoke of an unprecedented situation, forcing
individuals to speak not of the “dead women of Juarez,” but of “feminicide.”
Feminist anthropologist Marcela Lagarde, translating “femicide” as femi-
nicidio (feminicide), defines it as “the set of crimes against humanity that
contains the violations, kidnappings and disappearances of girls and women
within a framework of institutional collapse. It is a fractured rule of law that
favors impunity. Feminicide is a state crime.”6 Lagarde states that “femini-
cide is the gravest visible portion of the violence against girls and women;
it occurs as a culmination of a situation characterized by the repeated and
systematic violation of women’s human rights.”7 This assertion claims that
feminicide is, first, a hate crime against women based on their gender, and,
second, the culmination of a series of violent acts, which women experience
continuously over the course of their lives.
Lagarde’s definition of feminicide seeks to understand a phenomenon
that is proliferating throughout Mexico. For several years, the number of
feminicides in Mexico has grown at an alarming rate. Though the statistics
vary by source, an estimated 34,176 women were violently murdered over
the last 25 years and approximately 7,000 of these deaths occurred between
2005 and 2009, demonstrating the exponential growth in the number of cases.
According to official figures, 1,728 women were murdered between January
of 2009 and June of 2010; only 40 of these cases have been brought to trial
and still, especially since the “war on drug trafficking” was launched by
former President Felipe Calderón (2006–2012), the number of feminicides
continues to increase.8
However, Lagarde does not include in her treatment of feminicide any
analysis of its relationship to racism, like Jill Radford and Diana Russell
do. For them, there are differences in the conditions of violence that Black
women and white women face, that is, differences in the causes, effects,
and consequences of feminicide: “femicide has many different forms: for
example, racist femicide (when Black women are killed by white men);
homophobic femicide, or lesbicide, (when lesbians are killed by heterosexual
men). . . .”9
134 Chapter 7

In addition to accounting for race and sexuality, Radford and Russell

outline the contradictions and racist practices of white hegemonic feminism,
which treats sexual violence as though it were a homogenous experience:

Black women have had to insist that attention be paid to the complex interac-
tions between racism and sexism. White feminists have had to be told how
racism compounds and shapes black women’s experiences of sexual violence—
how, for example, racism and misogyny are often inseparable dimensions of the
violence.10

Lagarde’s “omission” of feminicide’s racial differentiation can be attrib-

uted to national differences in the level of institutionalized racism. For
example, the South African policies of racial segregation and apartheid made
racism visible, whereas the politics of miscegenation in Mexico camouflages
racism and makes it more difficult to discern.
Nevertheless, this comparison also illustrates the approach to feminicide
and feminicidal violence that is most commonly used: what we could call
the traditional approach. Several feminists of Abya Yala have been trained
in this traditional school of thought, presuming a shared experience of gen-
der oppression effected by patriarchy. The classical approach to violence
and feminicide, which focuses its analyses solely on a matrix of patriarchal
power, implies a hierarchy of violence characteristic of the modern west-
ern gender matrix. This is an example of what Kimberlé Crenshaw calls
over-inclusion: “the occasion in which a problem or condition that is particu-
larly or disproportionately visited on a subset of women is simply claimed
as a women’s problem.”11 That is, problems that may reflect an intersection
of various oppressions are considered only in relation to gender oppression,
without taking into account the role of racism, as in the case of hegemonic
feminist analyses of feminicide.
The classist and racist dimension of traditional feminist theory was
exposed by Black feminists in the United States including bell hooks and the
Combahee River Collective, who critiqued the homogenization of women
under a shared experience of subjugation and sexism that emphasizes patriar-
chy as the only system of oppression at work. This traditional position makes
Black women, women of color, and impoverished women’s experiences
of racism and classism invisible, re-inscribing that hegemonic tendency to
hierarchize the needs of women according to a dominant white, bourgeois,
and heterosexual matrix of power. bell hooks questions feminism’s subject
“woman”: predominately representing middle-to-upper class white feminist
women, it departs from other women’s realities and needs, homogenizes
the feminist subject, and thus excludes other impoverished and racialized
women’s realities.12 Bourgeois white feminists strategically maintain the
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 135

supremacy of the “woman” subject, avoiding having to question their own

class and racial privileges while simultaneously invisibilizing the conse-
quences of racism and poverty in the construction of all other women sub-
jects. For bell hooks, the subject “woman” must be re-constructed from the
intersection of gender, race, and class oppressions if it is ever to represent an
actor of counter-hegemonic social and political change.
Thus, the traditional approach to feminicides, with its hegemonic and
whitened category of “woman,” has as its limit the invisibility of experiences
of racialized and impoverished women in Abya Yala and the complexity of
the violence to which they may be subjected. This approach also prevents us
from understanding the multiple causes of the feminicide phenomenon and,
above all, from recognizing the bodies that are most at risk: dark, racialized,
impoverished, and, in the eyes of the system, disposable bodies. Indeed,
as the events in Abya Yala show us, feminicides happen primarily against
Indigenous and Black women during territorial disputes.

REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMINICIDAL
VIOLENCE IN BRAZIL AND MEXICO

In Brazil, according to a 2015 mapping of violence, 4,762 women were vio-

lently murdered in 2013 alone.13 This number translates to 13 feminicides per
day and more than 60,000 women who suffered feminicidal violence such as
physical, psychological, and sexual violence or torture.
In general, feminicidal violence increases every year and primarily tar-
gets afro-Brazilian women. In Brazil, the feminicide rate in 2013 was 4.8
feminicides per 100,000 women, the fifth highest in the world according to
the World Health Organization.14 Feminicidal violence is most prevalent in
impoverished regions such as the Brazilian northeast, but large cities such as
Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo also suffer from it. However, it is in the north-
ernmost state of Roraima, which borders Venezuela, where the highest rate
of feminicide exists. In addition, from 2003 to 2013, the number of Black
women murdered there increased by 54.2%, from 1,864 to 2,875.15 Therefore,
in Brazil, feminicides not only manifest the extreme violence inherent to its
patriarchal system; they also express the deadly rage of racism and colonial-
ism faced by impoverished Black women.
Although the preponderance of feminicide in the north of Mexico has been
addressed, the number of cases elsewhere in the Mexican Republic contin-
ues to rise, with both Chiapas and the State of Mexico recording gradual
increases. According to the National Citizens Observatory on Feminicide,
1,485 women were murdered in Chiapas between 2000 and 2004.16 The
Attorney General of the State of Chiapas registered 612 cases in the period
136 Chapter 7

from 1994 to 2004, contrasting with the Chamber of Deputies’ Special

Commission on Feminicide’s numbers, which count 1,456 women who were
murdered between 2002 and 2004 only.17 Based on the figures reported by the
Special Commission, we can deduce that during that two-year period alone,
an average of 2 women were murdered per day in Chiapas.
Between 2013 and 2015, around 7,296 women were murdered, which
represented an important increase in incidences of feminicide compared to
previous years.18 It should be noted that the highest numbers of reported femi-
nicides come from regions with high economic and social marginalization,
such as the State of Guerrero, Chihuahua, and Mexico, as well as from zones
wrought with territorial disputes and political conflict, particularly the State
of Chiapas, which is also extremely impoverished.19
Following Mercedes Olivera, who defines “feminicide and the feminicidal
violence that it produces as a part and direct expression of the structural
violence of the neoliberal social system,” we consider feminicidal violence
to be intrinsically linked to the racist, capitalist, neoliberal system, which
causes extreme poverty, destroys social networks, causes migratory and/or
forced displacements, and exacerbates violence through class and colonial
relations.20 In this sense, we understand feminicides as situations of sys-
temic violence occurring within an environment that not only allows for,
legitimizes, and minimizes the significance of this violence, but also repro-
duces and normalizes its own structural conditions so that it manifests as an
all-encompassing reality. We think it is necessary to explain the dynamics
of feminicidal violence within a framework that attends to the numerous,
concurrent, and intersecting uses of violence that impact the lives of women
who, insofar as they are linked to colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist power
structures, are part of a continuous process of violence that reaches its climax
in the murder of women.
If we are to understand the mechanisms that make Indigenous and Black
women more vulnerable to feminicidal violence, then it is not enough to
refer only to the classical markers of patriarchal domination; we must also
understand these markers and their functions alongside racism, capitalism,
colonialism, as well as what María Lugones has called the coloniality of gen-
der.21 For Lugones, the logic undergirding the modern gender system and its
categories is a colonial logic. This categorical logic fragments social reality
into monolithic, impervious categories, which are distinct from one another.
Categories are then constituted by those in power, bringing about the homog-
enization and intra-categorical simplification of “women.” As an effect of
categorical logic, “woman,” for example, signifies “white-bourgeois-hetero-
sexual woman.” Subsequently, any analysis that embraces “woman” as the
subject of a coalition fighting against feminicide is hegemonic because the
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 137

category’s signified reality does not correspond to those of racialized and

impoverished women such as Indigenous, Black, and migrant women.22
Aníbal Quijano defines the coloniality of power as a set of material, sym-
bolic, and economic dominations that originated in the colonization of Abya
Yala. According to Quijano, this colonial matrix is central to social relations
of power, particularly those of race and gender. For this reason, the colonial
matrix violates Indigenous and Black women, positioning them at the mar-
gins of modernity.23
For the decolonial feminists, Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso and Lugones,
it is important to analyze the modern, colonial, gender system and rethink
violence against racialized women.24 In doing so, they reveal the colonial-
ity of gender as upholding the concept of “woman” while on a search to
construct a new subject of feminism outside the modern colonial system of
gender. Lugones analyzes the colonial construction of gender based on a
human/non-human dichotomy in which “women” means white, heterosexual,
and bourgeois women.25 When Black and Indigenous women are not consid-
ered human, but rather the female counterparts to the males of their race, they
are not “women.” Lugones refers to this logic that dehumanizes racialized
women as the coloniality of gender.26
In traditional analyses of feminicide, “woman” is considered a homoge-
neous category; its universal and hegemonic application, therefore, rein-
forces the western modern episteme’s expansion. To reassert Ochy Curiel,
“feminists of African descent and in particular black feminists critique the
category ‘woman’ for its homogenization, decontextualization and the way
in which it invisibilizes its relation with race. ‘Woman’ does not exist, she is
a Eurocentric myth.”27
Defining feminicide as, in the most colloquial sense, the murder of women,
reveals a generic etymological construction that does not take into account
the racialization and coloniality of gender. If “woman” in the dominant per-
spective refers to white woman, then feminicide denotes the murder of white
woman. Consequently, in order for us to have a more complex analysis of the
feminicidal violence against Black and Indigenous women, we must analyze
feminicide within its colonial matrix.
If we consider feminicidal violence in the cumulative sense, such that
structural violence against women reaches its climax in their murder, we can
consider it to be direct expressions of the violent, heteropatriarchal, colonial,
and neoliberal capitalist system that, through misogynistic and racist prac-
tices, feeds wars, poverty, militarization, and the accumulation of territory—
namely, the bodies of racialized women and land—by dispossession.
This set of oppressions constitutes a racist, heteropatriarchal, colonial,
capitalist system of power in its neoliberal phase. Within this system of
power, these oppressions interact: they nourish and influence each other,
138 Chapter 7

and they exert force over one another. Each of their various expressions of
violence is a weapon that maintains and reproduces this system of power
and its domination. This system of power was and continues to be built on
continuous colonialism: it took root during colonization and colonial capital-
ism, and now continues to develop with the neo-liberal phase of colonialism
and coloniality. Historically, feminicidal violence has been executed against
Black and Indigenous women as a means to control the colonial power sys-
tem; currently, it also has characteristics specific to contemporary neoliberal
globalization.
Consequently, from a decolonial feminist standpoint, in order to under-
stand the complexity of feminicidal violence, and particularly that which is
exercised toward Indigenous and Black women, we have to reflect on the
colonial construction of gender.

THE COLONIALITY OF GENDER

IN BRAZIL AT A GLANCE

Brazil, an extremely racist country, and its racial democracy, have been
plagued by institutional racism since the beginning of colonization in 1500.
Afro-Brazilian authors like Abadías do Nascimento and Lélia Gonzales criti-
cize widely the concept of racial democracy.28 Brazilian colonial racism is
rooted in luso-tropicalism, an ideology developed by Gilberto Freyre based
on two assumptions: that, as history allegedly testifies, human beings in the
tropics are ultimately unable to build civilizations—the “savages” of Africa
and the Indigenous people of Brazil are, in this view, living proof of that real-
ity—and that the Portuguese, on the contrary, would have positive results;
they would be able to create not only an advanced civilization, but also a
true racial paradise on colonized lands.29 This glorified portrait of the tropical
Portuguese civilization depends in large part on a theory of misgenação, the
biological miscegenation of Blacks, Indigenous peoples, and whites, which
aimed to establish the “morenidade,” a play on words between moreno (dark
skin) and modernidad (modernity).30 In doing so, misgenação actually hides
the structural racism of Brazil, invisiblizing African descent through a whit-
ening process of Brazilians’ skin color and African culture.
The myth of racial democracy, which defines the Brazilian subject as the
product of a fusion of African, Indigenous, and European peoples, constitutes
a foundation in the construction of Brazilian identity. But in racial democracy,
given the colonial matrix, its relations of power, and its racial domination,
mestizaje and miseginação stand for whitening and anti-Blackness. That the
Atlantic slave trade dispossessed African people of their humanity cannot be
erased from history. That is to say, the importation of slaves for economic
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 139

exploitation was justified by the dehumanization of Black people whose only

role in colonial society was to exist as labor power.
Within this colonial matrix, Black women were not considered women;
due to the human/non-human dichotomy, they were considered subhuman.
With their bodies and lives, Black women paid for the construction of Brazil
during the time of colonization and continue to pay for it now; exploitation
and sexual violence are but tools of colonial and heteropatriarchal domina-
tion. On July 2, 1975, Black women denounced this process of colonization
in a manifesto:

Black women received a cruel inheritance: become an object of pleasure for the
colonizers, the fruit of this violent mixture of bloods that, today, is proclaimed
as the only national product that deserves to be exported: the Brazilian mulatto
woman. The treatment received by this premium product is strangely degrading
and disrespectful.31

The misgenação of Brazil has been made possible because of the bodies of
Black and Indigenous women, because of their appropriation, violation, and
now commercialization. The process of mulattization that is founded upon
sexual exploitation also bespeaks genocidal violence; the expansion of the
mestizo population is but a pretense for making the Black population disap-
pear. With the arrival of the authoritarian regime of Getulio Vargas in 1937
and the philosophy of the Estado Novo regime, Brazil’s whitening practices
affected immigration politics: migrant populations of European descent were
desired and welcomed in Brazil, while others were banned from entering the
country. Doing so enabled the white population to increase more rapidly.
Over the course of Brazil’s colonial history, Black women have been
exposed to serious violations and their bodies have been reduced to territories
for Brazilian conquest, suffering sexual violence, forced sterilization, and
assassination.
From the beginnings of miscegenation on our continent––which were born
out of the rape of Black and Indigenous women––to now, the history of the
colonization of racialized women, and certainly their bodies, remains hidden.
Racialized and impoverished women are still the ones who provide cheap
and exploited labor in the fields, in the maquilas, in homes, and in services of
care, all of which are indispensable for the global heteropatriarchal capitalist
system’s reproduction. These women also face ongoing structural violence in
increasingly drastic ways, placing them at risk of feminicide.
When we look through the lens of anti-racist and decolonial feminism,
we can understand that the logic of domination and killing of racialized
women is an instrument of the system of power. Feminicidal violence against
140 Chapter 7

Indigenous women, such as forced sterilization, rape, or displacement, and its

use demonstrate a strategy for controlling and subjugating entire populations.
To understand the full complexity of this phenomenon, we resort to the
theoretical proposal of decolonial feminists: understand oppression as imbri-
cated or co-constitutive. Doing so allows us to analyze feminicide from a
comprehensive perspective that considers this phenomenon as a technique of
control used by the racist heteropatriarchal colonial modern system of power
in its neoliberal capitalist phase.
But we also have to take into account the increase in feminicidal violence
occurring in the context of conflict throughout many countries in Abya Yala,
particularly Mexico and Brazil. The magnitude of feminicidal violence is
rooted simultaneously in geopolitical and territorial conflicts, in socioeco-
nomic disparities, and in the inequalities produced by the heteropatriarchal
system and the colonial and racist matrix, as well as the trend of militariza-
tion across our continent; militarism also has a colonial and fundamentally
patriarchal dimension.

MILITARIZATION AND COLONIALITY

It is interesting to recover the colonial origin of the military strategy of

counterinsurgency or low-intensity conflict (LIC) used by many countries of
Abya Yala. LIC is a military doctrine that was developed primarily during the
Algerian War of Independence. After its defeat in Vietnam, the French army
intensified the development and technical improvement of military tactics for
repression and population control like torture, enforced disappearances, and
attacks against civilians in order to weaken insurgents, isolate them from their
civil bases, and spread terror.32 This war strategy’s enemy was a racialized
and colonized internal enemy: “the native,” “the savage.”33
In his work at the Blida Psychiatric Hospital in Algeria, Frantz Fanon ana-
lyzed how psychological warfare was used to control and take away the con-
science and humanity of the colonized and the oppressed.34 In this repressive
panoply, torture and rape were used against Indigenous women as weapons of
war and territorial control.35 The U.S. Army School of the Americas, located
in Panama at the time, consulted with the French general Paul Aussaresse,
an important military strategist of the Algerian war, to import to and spread
throughout Latin America low-intensity conflict, or counterinsurgency, along
with its imperial and colonial origins.
Established primarily by members of the Special Forces Airmobile Group
(GAFES), the School of the Americas formed distinguished military offi-
cials following the unresolved armed conflict in Selva Lacandona, Chiapas,
incited in 1994. GAFES is an elite unit of Mexican armed forces created
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 141

in 1995 to suppress the insurrection of the Zapatista Army of National

Liberation (EZLN).36 In the Chiapas context, the Mexican Secretariat of
National Defense (SEDENA) planned a counterinsurgency named “el Plan
de Campaña Chiapas 94,” increased the State’s militarization, and endorsed
the emergence of numerous paramilitary groups that were acting as strike
teams, repression, and the demobilization of insurrections. The conflict led to
the involuntary displacement of at least 12,000 people as well as to torture,
enforced disappearances, and assassinations. The majority of the victims
were Indigenous and, primarily, women.37 With the rise of various paramili-
tary groups and as part of a systematic strategy to repress people in the resis-
tance, a series of intimidating practices including persecution, threats, armed
aggressions, enforced disappearances, and the sexual violation of women,
among others, were implemented. Paramilitary groups play a critical role in
contexts of war and political conflict, in geostrategic territorial regions, and
as agents of community devastation.
Despite the fact that the neoliberal policy of militarism, national security,
and low-intensity warfare had been a strategy of the State of Mexico for at
least 3 sexenios (six-year terms), in 2006, during the presidential term of
Felipe Calderón, military actions and strategies were intensified. The fight
against organized crime, particularly drug trafficking, the State reasoned,
warranted the armed forces’ increased participation in matters of public secu-
rity and national security policy.
Felipe Calderón defined this confrontation as a “war.” Since the armed
forces are used intensively in times of war, the designation granted them
unlimited powers and unquestioned access to information and its circulation
as a fundamental component of the State’s strategy. “Enemy” losses were
counted and disseminated regularly by the media, while civilian disappear-
ances, murders, and humiliations were considered “collateral damages,”
made invisible, and, in the best-case scenario, justified as part of the war
strategy. While war tactics like torture, rape, and persecution were carried
out with impunity, military and intelligence techniques also targeted the
civilian population and social movements, including Indigenous peoples and
organized communities. This situation placed Mexico in a relentless spiral of
violence that has not yet diminished.
Today, the outcome of the 2006 Mexican military policy on the fight
against organized crime is summed up in numbers: 80,000 people were killed,
more than 25,000 people were subject to forced disappearance, and at least
250,000 more people were displaced.”38 To these results, we also add the
unquantifiable number of orphaned, widowed, mutilated, and exiled persons,
mostly Indigenous and racialized women and minors, who were displaced
from their territories by a strategy of “war” to which they did not agree and
for which they nonetheless paid the most serious consequences.
142 Chapter 7

The consequences of this scenario included deteriorated living conditions,

exacerbated structural violence, territorial displacement and forced disap-
pearances, a diversion of resources from basic needs to arms and espionage,
an increase in human rights violations, the loss of freedom of movement,
and a series of devasting mechanisms that increased violence against women
like rape and sexual torture, which has led to an increase in feminicide rates
throughout our country.
This wave of state violence also entailed patriarchal and colonial rhetoric,
which compounded the message that Indigenous, Black, and poor women
and their bodies are under the system’s control and disposable. Militarization,
then, “translates into a situation of extreme violence toward women, mani-
fested in confinements, rapes, forced pregnancies, feminicides and traf-
ficking. The complicity of governments and repressive forces exacerbates
the values of patriarchy, configuring the bodies of women as territories for
the horrors of war.”39 Militarism not only reflects the values of patriarchy;
when articulated alongside colonial, racist, and classist conditions, it also,
we affirm, materializes on the bodies of racialized, Indigenous, peasant, and
impoverished women in the most aggressive and dehumanizing expression of
neocolonial military war.
Military domination implies, in addition to a “security” policy, the crimi-
nalization of protesting, organizing, social movements, and also poverty.
Thus, the new national security policies promote the tightening of the State
and state control over a broad spectrum of populations. The expansion of
the armed forces militarizes Indigenous, Black, and peasant regions where
there is organized resistance against neoliberal policies for the geostrategic
control of natural resources, for example. Structural reforms, which are also
part of this neoliberal strategy, deepen inequalities, violence, exclusions, and
poverty in the countryside and cities. These disparities push those affected
to meet their needs immediately in order to ensure their survival, generat-
ing, in the hegemonically-constructed economic and cultural imaginary, an
identification of impoverished areas, be they rural and peasant areas inhabited
by Black and Indigenous people or destitute urban areas made up of those
territories’ migrant population, with crime zones. For that reason, a military
intent on controlling and disciplining must intervene in those crime zones to
ensure order and maintenance, thereby reinforcing these social exclusions;
militarism is part of the system that produces poverty. Classist stereotypes
are created that then intersect with racialized phenotypes, automatically mak-
ing impoverished, racialized peoples the “enemy” of order and criminalizing
poverty and precarity.
This repressive logic, advanced by the legitimizing discourse of national
security, justifies different mechanisms of heteropatriarchal capitalist control
and order, from militarization, military personnel, and the deployment of
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 143

military apparatuses to the criminalization of dissidence and poverty. As a

result, the racialized and colonized internal “enemy” continues to be Black
and Indigenous people, as well as, gradually, impoverished urban migrant
populations and their descendants. We can recognize low-intensity conflict’s
colonial heritage in the methods it prescribes to control racialized populations
and in the violence it enacts against the Indigenous and Black women who
resist and protect their lands whenever their bodies are violated, tortured, or
killed in the name of geostrategic occupation.
In Brazil as well, the militarization process has to be understood through
the colonial matrix, which exerts severe violence on racialized, Black, and
Indigenous women.
Like other countries in Abya Yala, Brazil has been run by an authoritarian
government since 1964, initially under the government of General Castelo
Branco and later a military junta until 1985. Like other dictatorships else-
where on the continent, the Brazilian government enlisted the military train-
ing of the United States to refine its techniques for repressing its people;
the 1967 National Security Doctrine, for example, established Brazil’s main
enemy as an internal enemy to be found in the heart of the population. This
doctrine also incorporated military contributions from the French school,
such as the counterinsurgency executed during the colonial war in Algeria.
Thus, the internal enemy of the Brazilian authoritarian state became poor,
Black, Indigenous, and communist.
In effect, the Jungle Warfare Training Center (CIGS)––a center for
Brazilian land armed forces officers located in Manaus in the Amazon and
specializing in military training––became an important hub for the counter-
insurgency led in March of 1964 by Castelo Branco, the head of the ensuing
military junta. In 1973, in the middle of the dictatorship, French general
Paul Aussaresses gave courses on the Battle of Algeria to several Brazilian,
Chilean, Argentine, and Venezuelan soldiers. The strategy of counterinsur-
gency he taught is not neutral: it is a strategy of colonial war that also targets
civilians and uses physical and psychological torture and rape. The civilian
Indigenous, peasant, and Black populations, especially those who inhabited
the areas where guerrillas advanced, such as the rural areas of the northeast
and the Amazon, suffered at the hands of this repressive dictatorial regime,
The tenth chapter of the National Truth Commission’s final report compiles
the accounts of rape against women and torture by repressive political forces.40
These violations are considered part of “national security.”41 The bodies of
racialized women are again dominated by a military strategy for population
control. Today, however, this authoritarian regime, which officially ended
in 1985, is marked as a special configuration and called “a military-civil
regime”––that is, a congress instituted by a military junta. This designation
dilutes and obscures the borders between democracy and dictatorship, posing
144 Chapter 7

serious implications for the current process of militarism that circulates mili-
tary doctrine and is gradually militarizing Brazil. For example, the Brazilian
government has created military police forces to combat organized crime,
such as the BOPE in Rio de Janeiro and the Rota in São Paulo, as well as the
Police Pacification Units, which are “neighborhood” posts in several favelas
of Rio de Janeiro. The presence of armed soldiers––of the military amidst the
civilian population––has increased feelings of insecurity among women, as it
constitutes a threat to Black and Indigenous women’s wellbeing.
The racist heteropatriarchal capitalist system in its neoliberal phase strives
to exploit racialized bodies and to dispossess them of their territories, demon-
strating the colonial legacy of appropriating the “other.” One of Brazil’s most
elaborate aspects is its militarization, which is understood, not only as the
institution of military equipment and troops in the streets, but also as a doc-
trine of militarism capable of organizing a hegemonic worldview and social,
interpersonal, and territorial relations that are based on control, discipline,
exclusion, accusation, denunciation, and expulsion.

For some, the term has to do with the potentialization of the armed forces;
for others, it refers to the use of armed forces in non-traditional tasks, such as
development. Others define militarization as the use of armed forces to combat
internal threats of a non-military nature or to carry out missions that are the
responsibility of the police, such as the fight against organized crime. Lastly,
militarization could refer to the existence of a de facto, although not de jure,
military government. It should be noted that militarization should not be con-
fused with militarism. Militarism is the imposition of values, perspectives and
military ideals on civil society, which, without doubt, is even more dangerous
than militarization.42

Accordingly, we can also understand militarism as an ideology where

military force, imposed through violence and domination, constitutes the
core of national security. It is an ideology based on and reinforced through
machismo, xenophobia, sexism, racism, and heterosexism. Additionally, it
is an ideology that seeps into the foundations of peoples’ cultural and social
practices, such as their ways of resolving conflicts, organizing the economy,
or relating interpersonally, among others. Understood in this way, militarism
is the naturalization and implementation of military values ​​into the social
and cultural imaginaries that organize our lives. At the moment, militarism
underpins a good portion of our political practices, from strictly military
programs––that is to say, security programs––to the economic policies of
production, “development,” and cooperation. It causes both direct violence
(assassinations, disappearances, feminicides, displacements) and structural
violence, as it is a means to control populations for the benefit of neoliberal
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 145

economic policies, the establishment of mega-investment projects, and the

increasing presence of transnational corporations.
In this scenario, racialized women carry on their bodies the scars of vio-
lence produced by militarism, an imperialist strategy that does not end with
the implementation of warmongering plans, but rather with the neocolonial
development projects that seek to appropriate cultures, forms of community
reproduction, and natural resources like water, land, seeds, and the ancestral
knowledge of native people.
It is necessary to analyze further the relationship between feminicidal
violence, military presence, and geostrategic resources in Abya Yala in
order to understand the full complexity of this wave of racist militarism that
strips people of their lands and subjects racialized women to serious acts
of violence.

COLONIZATION/NEO-COLONIZATION
OF TERRITORIES

Feminicidal violence is used as a tool of militarized racism to strip the

Indigenous and Black populations of their territories. Sexual violations are
carried out in the midst of geopolitical conflicts that destabilize organizations
resisting neoliberal megaprojects and strip populations of their territories and
displace them.
Since the colonization of Abya Yala, the domination of Black and
Indigenous women’s bodies has been used as a military strategy to control
territories––that is to say, land, natural resources like water, gold, and sugar,
as well as human resources like the bestialized Indigenous and Black work-
force. But today, the conquest for territories continues to develop under a new
violent framework; today, we have neocolonization in the context of neolib-
eral globalization. Throughout contemporary global conflicts for the control
over territories and geostrategic natural resources—in which countries of the
Global South, particularly those in Abya Yala, have a dominant role due to
the richness of their soils, water, and biosphere, but also their supply of sup-
posedly exploitable human beings—racialized and impoverished women are
at the forefront. Not only are their bodies most susceptible to violence and
neocolonial feminicidal risk, but they also stand at the frontlines, resisting
and defending against the usurpation of their territories.
The heteropatriarchal, colonial, and capitalist system has hitherto been
sustained through the extermination of Indigenous and Afro-descendant
people; like the feminicide of racialized women, militarism has also been
part of this logic of extermination. The militarization of Indigenous territories
is justified in many ways: among them are appeals to the war against drug
146 Chapter 7

trafficking, social violence, and political-territorial conflicts, to name just a

few. However, in Latin American contexts, militarism also coincides with
strong political conflicts such that the militaristic logic develops another
critical mechanism: counterinsurgency. Thus, in our region, the global model
for the war against terrorism turns into, with appropriate adjustments, the
fight against organized crime, which, nevertheless, has the explicit subtext of
counterinsurgent war.
By this we mean to say that the military strategies for national security and
territorial control are also used as catalysts for violence and targeted attacks
on Indigenous and peasant peoples, their communities, struggle, resistance,
and organizing. These strategies can range from purely technical components
to social initiatives led by the armed forces to obtain information and identify
social movement focal points. Thus, although counterinsurgency, in its most
common sense, struggles for social acceptance and the support of insurgent
and guerrilla groups (as part of a state policy to combat and defeat them), it
also camouflages itself in areas of social conflict with other promoted inter-
ventions like the government welfare and development programs, thereby
insinuating military structures into local, cultural and community contexts.
In situations of war and territorial conflict, military presence is a central
part of the States’ security strategy; it is used to combat not only insurgen-
cies, but also all social and political protests staged on geostrategic territories
against transnational companies. Under the pretext of fighting organized
crime, armed forces are deployed in these territories to further territorial
control strategies by establishing military interventions that can facilitate the
exploitation of Abya Yala’s natural resources.43
For example, in Brazil, a militaristic and racist doctrine is spreading,
which, given the context of geostrategic and neocolonial conflict, is under-
standable. That is, parallel to the construction of an internal enemy (poor
Black women and men) is the justification of “national security” measures
like increasing armed forces, military training, and the profusion of weapons.
Taking a decolonial perspective, we propose to look at this situation from
another side, from the “light” side, of modernity: that is, light as water, like
gold, like the air of the Amazon jungle, and like fresh blood.44 Where there
is an attempt by a military occupation, specifically by the United States, to
have access to the natural resources and territories of Brazil and the rest of
Abya Yala to build a North American military base in the tripartite border of
Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, right next to one of the largest aquifers in
the world, the Guarani Aquifer, we look from the light side of modernity. Or,
at the reopening of the Alcántara base, situated at the mouth of the Amazon
River, where most of the riches of Brazil are extracted, we look from the
light side of modernity. But also, with the presence of North American armed
forces in the Amazon, particularly in Roraima, a state rich in coltan and where
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 147

the highest number of feminicides has also been recorded, and the reinforced
presence of the Brazilian armed forces on the borders between northern
Brazil and the Amazon, along with steady increases in violence against Black
and Indigenous women, we look from the light side of modernity.
Bodies and territories are then occupied by the policies of colonial order
founded on control, discipline, and violence. The bodies of racialized women
have historically and systematically been used as spoils of war, as places to
demonstrate power over the “enemy,” as sites of domestication, and as warn-
ings for other bodies, mainly those of their partners. Racialized bodies are
territories in dispute, where sexual violence operates as a control mechanism.
The racialized bodies are then privileged spaces for the neocolonial occupa-
tion of the territories.
It is important, therefore, to develop an analysis that gives voice to the
memories of racialized bodies, which we understand as historical domains
where racism and colonialism are embodied.

WOMEN’S BODIES-TERRITORIAL APPROPRIATION

Indigenous women, like Lorena Cabnal in Guatemala, have theorized from

their daily reality and corporality the territorial concept earth-body [“cuerpo
tierra”].45 In taking up the idea that the history and survival of Indigenous
peoples is connected to that of the land, Indigenous women have denounced
the destruction of Indigenous territories as a simultaneous attack on both their
lands and their bodies.
This territorial concept addresses the colonial history of slavery in which
African women were taken from their lands and brought by force to Abya
Yala. The immaterial dimension of territory, culture, and spirituality was
historically linked to the corporality of the slaves, since it constituted the
only thing they had left to defend and feel human. There were attempts to
destroy this strength, such as obligating slaves to walk around the Tree of
Forgetfulness (7 laps for women and 9 for men) in a mandatory ritual whose
mission was to make the slaves forget their culture and country of origin, and
then pass through the Door of No-Return in Ouidah, where enslaved women
and men would leave behind their lives and become animals/commodities.
Nevertheless, Black people resisted and preserved their memories through
their respective African cultures and spiritualties, gradually building a rela-
tionship with these new lands of Abya Yala. To this day, Black cultures and
spiritualties are criminalized and demonized in many parts of our continent.
Feminicidal violence is perpetuated as a military strategy for occupy-
ing territories through the forced occupation and sexual abuse of racialized
women’s bodies. According to the terms of Aura Cumes, we can say that
148 Chapter 7

Indigenous and Black women’s territories are violently penetrated by neoco-

lonization and supported by the militarization of the continent.46
With that said, sexual violence in all of its manifestations has as its object
of war the bodies of women. Women are read as bodies with a sexual and
reproductive function, which can be attacked to disturb an entire group.
Their bodies then become preferred places to transmit messages of control,
power, and humiliation, to intimidate, control, divide, and punish people
and communities, not to mention to advance a strategy for controlling terri-
tory as well. Furthermore, wartime rape also becomes a tactic for terrorizing
populations and forcing displacement.47 Sexual violence therefore is not only
a personal dispossession, but also a territorial one; as territories are subdued
and control and power are demonstrated, the bodies of women and girls are
made into resources suspetible to appropriation.
In addition to being one of the most widely used weapons of war in the
contexts of territorial disputes and armed conflict, rape is also an instrument
of colonization and genocide. The sexual violence and murder of racial-
ized women corresponds to the logic of domination and extermination,
which belongs to the racist patriarchal capitalist system. Insofar as it attacks
women’s reproductive capacity, rape has two aims: on the one hand, to create
pregnancies that sow the aggressor’s “seed” in a given territory and children
who represent the aggressors’ control over their group; and, on the other hand,
to transmit infectious sexual diseases to the community. This situation not
only leads to the rejection of women, but also stereotypes women as agents of
disease who will infect the community and/or society. Another, no less seri-
ous effect of rape is ethnic cleansing, as it violates potential mothers of the
group and their potential children.48 In this way, sexual violations can be read
not only as violent attacks on female bodies, but also on the community and
land, according to the social and ideological implications of forced pregnan-
cies. In each situation, enemy groups exert power over the bodies of women,
of allegedly undesirable and disposable women, to limit their reproduction
and thereby ensure another specific group and/or ethnic population’s survival.
For this reason, in Brazil, as in Mexico, feminicidal violence is a tool for
controlling earth-body territories. To recognize this fact, it is necessary to
understand feminicidal violence through a decolonial lens, that is, to take
into account the colonial matrix through which heteropatriarchal, racist, and
classist systems are co-constructed and according to which violence against
racialized women constitutes a military strategy for territorial control.
The colonial matrix subjects Black and Indigenous women to violence by
appropriating and violating their bodies, by exploiting and dispossessing them
of their lands, and by discriminating against and criminalizing their cultures.
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 149

WEAVING RESISTANCES

Colonial racist domination is not just a past memory, nor does it just hap-
pen at certain historical moments; rather, it underlies the project of western
modernity imposed on the world through neoliberal policies and development
plans. Racism is the basis for its economic and colonial world order, and it is
more present than ever before.
Today, in this hybrid world and in our contexts of violence, we have to
confront the new face of racism. Technological advances of military arsenals,
control, and security attempt to exterminate Indigenous and Afro-descendant
people, and efforts to exploit their territories continue to be justified. Racism
is recycled in a way that is reminiscent of neo-Nazi movements: institutional
rights are denied while a nationalist identity that criminalizes migration is
solidified through discourse. This new racism has become so normalized that
walls are built and civilians are shot when crossing the border.
Given this Latin American context that is geopolitically organized around
dispossession, depredation, militarism, repression, disputes over resources,
and feminicidal violence, feminist movements must reposition themselves,
denounce, and expose these practices as direct expressions of the structural
violence inherent to the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist system; they must
show the failure of the neoliberal system as a paradigm for development and
democracy.
If hegemonic feminism does not understand the role that the coloniality
of gender has played in reproducing inequalities by recognizing the role that
privileged women play in propagating systems of oppression, it will remain
debilitated in its transformative potential. In that sense, Breny Mendoza
warns that “ignoring the historicity and coloniality of gender also blinds
white women of the West, who have also struggled to recognize the inter-
sectionality of race and gender and their own complicity in the processes of
colonization and capitalist domination.”49
In Mexico, Brazil, and throughout Abya Yala, global campaigns have been
organized to resist femicidal violence, the colonial matrix, and the systems
of domination that compose it. For example, in Brazil, Black women have
resisted colonization, slavery, and neo-colonization for hundreds of years by
preserving their culture and African-based religions. The Ilaode (Mothers of
Saints) are the embodiment of these Black women’s strength; they preserve
ancestral knowledge, but also play a political, spiritual, and social role in
their communities.50 In November of 2015, the first Black Women’s March in
Brazil was held, bringing together more than 50,000 women. Many of them
are now very active in the movements against the parliamentary-judicial coup
150 Chapter 7

d’etat that took place on August 31, 2016 and the return of white, heteropatri-
archal, evangelist, and militarist political force.
Throughout Abya Yala, Indigenous women, Black women, and lesbians
continue to resist the colonial matrix of violence. Feminism and decolonial
lesbofeminism are expressions of epistemological principles that confront
expressions of intellectual and cultural hegemony, as well as political prac-
tices and forms of resistence that are rooted in Black and Indigenous cos-
mologies. In all corners of our continent and beyond, there are initiatives
to oppose coloniality and violence led by racialized women who organize
themselves into groups and networks, build political solidarities, love each
other, use creativity and healing, and make themselves present in politicians’
spaces, in academics’ spaces, and on the streets.
Our aim is to recognize our powers, to create and act, to open up gaps in the
colonial matrix. We conceive of this decolonial anti-racist lesbian-feminist
proposal as a lens through which we can perceive our realities in manner
that allows us to create and propose alternatives; it is anti-systemic activism
against the racist, heteropatriarchal, colonialist, and capitalist system.
We have begun to weave our anti-racist lesbian feminist proposal to respond
to two needs: our need to identify the traces of gender, race, sexuality, and
class oppressions within us, including the ways in which, through the course
of our lives, we have reproduced them, and our need to build tools with which
to analyze and transform our particular realities and circumstances. It is a
proposal to deconstruct the heteropatriarchal, colonial, and racist capitalist
regime through multiple strategies, including daily resistances, participation
in social and feminist movements, theoretical production and artistic creation,
and spirituality, as well as to vindicate decolonial lesbian practices as dissent-
ing political practices. It is also a call to think and deconstruct our own racist,
classist, and patriarchal practices, for such work is fundamental to the broader
transformation of our own spaces and movements.

NOTES

1. Our decolonial and anti-racist lesbofeminist proposal is dedicated to all the fight-
ers who fell defending the earth-bodies, culture, and land of the Black and Indigenous
peoples, to all those women who fell into the hands of the racist, heteropatriarchal,
colonialist, and capitalist system. This proposal is one of the seeds sown by Bety
Cariño and Berta Cáceres.
2. Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin Amer-
ica,” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000).
3. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” World & Knowledges Otherwise
2, no. 2 (Spring 2008); María Lugones, “Toward a Decolonial Feminism,” Hypatia
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 151

25, no. 4 (Fall 2010); María Lugones, “Radical Multiculturalism and Women of Color
Feminisms,” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 13, no. 1 (2014).
4. Jane Caputi and Diana E. H. Russell, “Femicide: Sexist Terrorism against
Women,” in Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, eds. Jill Radford and Diana E.
H. Russell (New York: Twayne, 1992), 15.
5. Attributed to Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos, feminicide is a political term that
encompasses more than femicide—the killing of females by males because they are
female—because this term not only holds the male perpetrators responsible, but also
the state and judicial structures that uphold misogyny. Feminicide and femicide are
often used interchangeabley in spite of this distinction. In English, the use of femicide
is more common. Whenever possible and appropriate, the authors’ use of feminicide
is maintained unless original citations specify otherwise.—Trans.
6. Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos, “Introducción,” in Feminicidio: Una perspectiva
global, eds. Diana E.H. Russel and Roberta A. Harmes (Mexico, D.F: Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en
Ciencias y Humanidades, 2006), 20.
7. Ibid., 21.
8. “Una Mirada al Feminicidio en México 2009–2010,” Observatoria Ciu-
dadano Nacional del Feminicidio, accessed November 23, 2020, https:​ //​
observatoriofeminicidio​ files​.wordpress​.com​/2011​/09​/informe​-ocnf​-2009​-2010​.pdf.
Observatoria Ciudadano Nacional del Feminicidio (National Citizens Observatory on
Feminicide) is an alliance made up of 49 human rights and women’s organizations
in 21 states of Mexico. Its main objective is to monitor and demand accountability
from the institutions in charge of preventing and punishing violence against women
and feminicides.
9. Jill Radford, “Introduction” in Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, eds. Jill
Radford and Diana E. H. Russell (New York: Twayne, 1992), 7.
10. Ibid., 8.
11. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Gender-Related Aspects of Race Discrimination,” Back-
ground paper for Expert Meeting on Gender and Racial Discrimination, Zagreb,
Croatia (EM/GRD/2000/WP.1, November 21–24, 2000), 5.
12. bell hooks, “Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory,” in Feminist Theory:
From Margin to Centre (Cambridge: South End Press, 1984).
13. Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz, Mapa da Violência 2015: Homicídio de Mulheres no
Brasil (Brasilia: Faculdade Latino-Americana de Ciências Sociais, 2015). http:​//​www​
.onumulheres​.org​.br​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2016​/04​/MapaViolencia​_2015​_mulheres​
.pdf.
14. Ibid., 72.
15. Ibid., 30.
16. “El feminicidio más allá de Ciudad Juárez,” Observatoria Ciudadano Nacional
del Feminicidio, published 2008, http:​//​observatoriofeminicidio​.blogspot​ mx​/.
17. “El Feminicidio en México y Guatemala,” Federación Internacional de los
Derechos Humanos, no. 446/3 (2016): 12.
18. Carlos J. Echarri Cánovas, La violencia feminicida en México: aproximaciones
y tendencias 1985–2016 (Mexico: SEGOB, Secretaría de Gobernación INMUJERES,
152 Chapter 7

Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres ONU Mujeres, Entidad de las Naciones Unidas para
la Igualdad de Género y el Empoderamiento de las Mujeres, 2017): 18. Between 2007
and 2012 there was an increase of 138% in documented cases of feminicides, reach-
ing new records. The numbers started to decrease since 2012, however, they remain
much higher than the indices before 2007.
19. Ibid., 25–26.
20. Mercedes Olivera, Violencia feminicida en Chiapas: razones visibles y ocultas
de nuestras luchas, resistencias y rebeldías (Chiapas: Colección Selva Negra and
Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas, 2008), 31.
21. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender.”
22. Ibid.
23. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power.”
24. Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, “Ethnocentrism and Coloniality in Latin American
Feminisms: The Complicity and Consolidation of Hegemonic Feminists in Transna-
tional Spaces,” trans. Ana-Maurine Lara, Venezuelan Journal of Women Studies 14,
no. 33 (2009); Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso, “Las feministas antirracistas teorizando la
trama compleja de la opresión,” Paper presented at “Género y Etnicidad: Reflexiones
desde el Sur del Mundo,” Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Género, Universi-
dad de Chile, Santiago, 2014; Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender.”
25. Lugones, “Coloniality of Gender.”
26. Ibid.
27. Ochy Curiel, “Los Aportes de las Afrodescendientes a la Teoría y la Prác-
tica Feminista. Desuniversalizando el Sujeto ‘Mujeres,’” in Perfiles del feminismo
iberoamericano, vol. 3, ed. María Luisa Femenías (Buenos Aires: Catálogos, 2007).
28. Abdias do Nascimento, O genocídio do negro brasileiro: Processo de um rac-
ismo mascarado (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1978); Lélia Gonzales, “A Categoria
Político-Cultural de Amefricanidade,” Tempo Brasileiro, no. 92/93 (1988).
29. See: Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development
of Brazilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986), and Gilberto Freyre, O mundo que o português criou (São Paulo: É
Realizações, 2010).
30. Munanga Kabengele, Rediscutindo a mestiçagem no Brasil: Identidade nacio-
nal versus identidade negra (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1999).
31. do Nascimento, O genocídio do negro brasileiro, 61–62.
32. Marie-Monique Robin, Death Squadrons: The French School (New York: First
Run/Icarus Films, 2003).
33. Mathieu Rigouste, L’ennemi intérieur: La généalogie coloniale et militaire de
l’ordre sécuritaire dans la France contemporaine (Paris: Découverte, 2009).
34. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York:
Grove Press, 2004).
35. Raphaëlle Branche, “Sexual Violence in the Algerian War,” in Brutality and
Desire: Genders and Sexualities in History, ed. Dagmar Herzog (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009).
36. Jose Francisco Gallardo, Always Near, Always Far: The Armed Forces in
Mexico (San Francisco: Global Exchange, 2001).
 Sarah Daniel and Noram Cacho 153

37. La política genocida en el conflicto armado en Chiapas: reconstrucción de

hechos, pruebas, delitos y testimonios (San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas: Centro
de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, 2005), https:​//​frayba​.org​.mx​
/historico​/archivo​/informes​/050201​_la​_politica​_genocida​_en​_el​_conflicto​_armado​
_en​_chiapas​.pdf.
38. Ejecuciones extrajudiciales en el contexto de la militarización de la seguridad
pública (Mexico: Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos
Humanos, A.C, 2013), 3, http:​//​cmdpdh​.org​/publicaciones​-pdf​/cmdpdh​-ejecuciones​
-extrajudiciales​-en​-el​-contexto​-de​-la​-militarizacion​-de​-la​-seguridad​-publica​.pdf.
39. “Militarización y violencia patriarcal en Haití o cómo se asocian dos viejos
amigos ante el desastre,” Grupo Antimilitarista Tortuga, published January 2011, http:​
//​www​.grupotortuga​.com​/Militarizacion​-y​-violencia.
40. “Violência sexual, violência de gênero e violência contra crianças e adolescen-
tes,” Relatório da Comissão Nacional da Verdade, Vol I (Brasilia: Comissão Nacional
da Verdade, 2014), http:​//​cnv​ memoriasreveladas​.gov​.br​/images​/pdf​/relatorio​/volume​
_1​_digital​.pdf.
41. Ibid., 427.
42. Craig A. Deare, “La militarización en América Latina y el papel de los Estados
Unidos,” Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica 3, no. 3 (2008): 23–24.
43. Examples of such interventions include military plans that combat insurgencies
like the “Plan Colombia” and “Plan de Campaña Chiapas 94.” The former interven-
tion was directed by the United States and its financing and implementation were
fully documented. Both plans succeeded in displacing Indigenous populations, as
they favored the entry of large megaprojects and foreign investors that seized and
exploited ancestral territories for minerals and hydrocarbons.
44. Lugones considers heterosexual patriarchy as part of the “‘light’ side of the
colonial/modern organization of gender” (“Coloniality of Gender,” 2). Also relevant
here is that Walter Mignolo refers to coloniality as the “darker side of modernity,”
which is in conversation with his account of the “darker side of the Renaissance.” See:
Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 2nd ed., Ann Arbor: Michigan
University Press, 2003; and Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of Western Modernity
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).
45. Lorena Cabnal, “De las opresiones a las emancipaciones: mujeres indíge-
nas en defensa del territorio cuerpo-tierra,” Pueblos–Revista de Información y
Debate, published February 2015, http:​//​www​ revistapueblos​.org​/blog​/2015​/02​/06​/
de​-las​-opresiones​-a​-las​-emancipaciones​-mujeres​-indigenas​-en​-defensa​-del​-territorio​
-cuerpo​-tierra​/.
46. Aura Cumes, “El Feminismo Debe Luchar contra las Múltiples Opresiones que
Enfrentamos las Mujeres Indígenas y Afrodescendientes,” presented at II Encuentro
de Estudios de Género y Feminismos, Guatemala, 2011.
47. In the context of the Guatemalan war, cases of sexual violence against Indig-
enous women have been documented both in contexts of armed conflict and ter-
ritorial displacements that are advanced by transnational and national companies in
the extractive industry. In both cases, the sexual abuses were often linked to forced
displacements and their stories are deeply related to the continuous dispossession
154 Chapter 7

experienced by the indigenous people of the area. See: Luz Méndez Gutiérrez and
Amanda Carrera Guerra, Mujeres indígenas: clamor por la justicia. violencia sexual,
conflicto armado y despojo violento de tierras (Guatemala: Equipo de Estudios
Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial, 2014).
48. Sexual violence against women in the context of war also implies two practices
aimed at preventing the reproduction of racialized populations: forced sterilization
and the rape and murder of pregnant women. In Mexico, particularly in the state of
Chiapas, which has been experiencing a low-intensity war since 1994 as part of the
unresolved armed conflict, both strategies have been used. In the Acteal massacre that
occurred in December of 1997, more than half of the people killed were Indigenous
women, many of whom were pregnant. According to reports, the atrocities against
their bodies were such that some women’s wombs were attacked and pierced and
even some fetuses were extracted and stabbed. See: Martha Patricia Lopez Astrain,
La guerra de baja intensidad en Mexico (Mexico, D.F.: Universidad Iberoamericana
and Plaza y Valdes Editores, 1996).
49. Breny Mendoza, “La epistemología del sur, la colonialidad del género y el fem-
inismo latinoamericano,” in Aproximaciones críticas a las prácticas teórico-políticas
del feminisimo latinoamericano, ed. Yuderkys Espinoa Miñoso (Buenos Aires: En la
frontera, 2010), 23.
50. Jurema Werneck, “Of Ialodes and Feminists: Reflections on Black Women’s
Political Action in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Cultural Dynamics 19, no. 1
(2007).
 Chapter 8

The Killing of Women and

Global Accumulation
The Case of Bello Puerto Del
Mar Mi Buenaventura

‌‌
Betty Ruth Lozano Lerma
Translation by Carolina Alonso Bejarano

In this essay I adopt a critical analytical perspective that allows me to rec-

ognize myself as a historically and socially situated being. I think from my
reality as a Black woman about the conditions of oppression that I share with
other Black people in Colombia. My point of departure is an epistemology of
the borderlands––one that includes political necessities and ethical concep-
tions and operates at the limits of knowledges subordinated by the coloniality
of power and Western knowledges translated into the Black/Afro-Colombian
perspective. It must be recognized that our place of enunciation determines
the way in which we live and understand power relations. That is why it is
necessary to situate ourselves historically, socially and geographically. Our
place of enunciation should be clearly stated; we must acknowledge where
we stand in relation to racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, class and geopolitics.
With regard to geopolitics, I speak from Buenaventura, a seaport city
located in the Colombian Pacific region separated from the rest of the
country by the Western Andes. Of its nearly 400,000 people, 90% are Black
Afro-Colombian, 3% are Indigenous, and a growing 7% are Mestizo or white
“paisas” and come from the country’s interior.1 Buenaventura is the most
important port on the Colombian Pacific coast: 53% percent of the entire
country’s legal imports and exports move through it.2 The city also has many
illegal ports where cocaine is exported and arms are imported, and where

155
156 Chapter 8

a variety of the legal and illegal armed groups that operate in Colombia
can be found.
This situation has a history which I explore in this article that affects the
population that has inhabited the area since ancestral times in a way that has
particular and differential implications for Black women, something I account
for in the article as well. Here, I present different aspects of the cultural and
historical backdrop against which violence against women unfolds in the
Colombian Pacific region. This violence finds its most cruel expression in
femicide, but it manifests in multiple other ways as well.
I am especially interested in establishing that the violence experienced
today in Buenaventura and the Pacific region has external roots that have
nothing to do with the culture of the region, contrary to what the govern-
ment wants us to believe. For example, on March 22, 2014, the Colombian
Minister of Defense said in an interview that the sexual abuse of girls and
women as well as the dismemberment of human bodies “has to do with a
cultural practice that is unacceptable and incomprehensible” on the part of
the Black people of the region.3 Local functionaries in Buenaventura who
come from other parts of the country also hold this idea. What is really hap-
pening today, and what has really happened for more than 35 years already
in Colombia’s Pacific region, is the processal conquest and colonization of
the ancestral Indigenous and Black inhabitants’ territory, bodies––especially
women’s––and imaginaries.

THE PACIFIC TERRITORY/REGION: AN OTHER WORLD

Black Afro-Colombian societies are worlds-other, or other worlds, built out of

the necessity to create modes of life using, among other elements, those origi-
nating in the worlds from which those who were kidnapped from Africa and
their descendents were taken. Foisted into America, these Afro-descendants
used multiple resistance and insurgence tactics in order to give their existence
a purpose and establish new relationships with their natural surroundings and
with others, be they slaves or slave owners. Africans and their descendants
found ways, in the midst of the most adverse circumstances imaginable, to
build worlds within which they could live their lives, and in this way they
created themselves anew.
The Colombian Pacific region, which includes the municipality of
Buenaventura, is considered to be one of the most biodiverse places on the
planet, thanks to its biological, genetic and sociocultural variety, its maritime
and terrestrial ecosystems, and its ecologic and biogeographic characteristics.
In spite of, or precisely because of, its isolation from the rest of society, the
inhabiting population created a different world when slavery ended. As was
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 157

the case in most of the country, formerly enslaved people in the Pacific region
had already freed themselves by the time abolition, which took place through
multiple means, became law in 1851. The new society functioned by means
of peaceful conflict resolution, the authority of elders, extended families, col-
lective childrearing, a means of production that respects nature, and cultural
practices that celebrate life and death and stop people from killing each other
over party differences.4 Those who knew the Pacific region 20 years ago can
testify to the diverse forms of mutual aid and collective work present there:
life strategies of that “new world” in the Pacific, which Black women and
men created for themselves and where harming others in irreversible ways
was unimaginable.5
Figure 7.1 Colombia (natural regions), Carlos Eugenio Thompson Pinzón
(Chlewey) (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Figure 7.2 Pacifica regions map, Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap (CC
BY-SA 2.0)

AND DEVELOPMENT CAME

If the relation between the center of the country and the Pacific region
was always one of extraction, where the ruling administration gave mining
concessions to foreign businesses that extracted resources from supposedly
vacant territory, then the violence that laid the groundwork for what is hap-
pening in the region today began with the push for development in the 1980s.
This is sufficiently documented in Escobar’s and Pedrosa’s work on the
region.6 Violence was imposed, not only through economic strategies, but
also through subjectivizing ones: there was an attempt to change the way of
thinking of Black women and men in the Pacific region so that they would
produce goods for commercial exchange and not for survival. This was
another “encounter” between two worlds: the peoples of the Pacific region
went through a new conquest, a new colonization that sought to render them
modern subjects and save them from “barbarism.” Today, the Colombian gov-
ernment and those who support it pose to the Pacific region the same question
that European conquistadors posed to Abya Yala: civilization or barbarism?7
This mid-1980s cultural collision came with development-oriented poli-
cies and programs consistent with the logic of a document published by the
United Nations that was highly influential after World War II, which stated
that “ancient philosophies”—what it called the cosmogonies of the ethnic
peoples [“pueblos étnicos”] of the Americas—were an obstacle for develop-
ment.8 These policies resulted in the initial displacements that took place
in the Pacific region, impoverishing entire communities that, consequently,
158 Chapter 8

were forced to “emigrate” (a subtle way to describe this uprooting [“desar-

raigo”]) in order to survive.
The Pacific region is a laboratory where the global coloniality of power
expresses itself. Aníbal Quijano argues that in the 1970s––with the crisis of
industrial capital, when financial capital was imposed as the new force behind
modern/colonial global capitalism––the world entered a new historic era.9
This created what he calls “structural unemployment.” It is not a coincidence
that Buenaventura is the city with the highest unemployment rate in the coun-
try, measuring in at 26% according to the city’s Chamber of Commerce.10
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 159

The Pacific region has been a privileged location for the strategic interests
of national and transnational capital. It has been a producer of raw material
since the earlier wave of colonization in the 1960s and 1980s. In the 1990s,
once its biodiversity was recognized, Colombia and Northern countries
160 Chapter 8

created international treaties that designated the Indigenous and Black com-
munities of the area the guardians of the land’s biological resources. Since
then, this biodiversity has been used more and more frequently as a platform
with which to enter international markets. The Buenaventura port was priva-
tized in 1993 as a result of neoliberal policies that rapidly impoverished the
town, separating the city’s social and communal dynamics from the economic
dynamics of the port.
Today, the region is a field for the formulation and execution of numerous
megaprojects, while the native “negredumbre” has become dispensable, an
obstacle to be removed from the path toward consolidating national and inter-
national capital in the region.11 This is how the Pacific has become a violent
region, or a scene of different violences. Marginal, dependent, and absolutely
poor, it is the perfect place for conflicts between paramilitary forces (euphe-
mistically called “Bacrim,” an abbreviation for “criminal mobs” [“bandas
criminales”]) and the spectrum of violences that currently exist in the region.

PARAMILITARY PRESENCE IN THE REGION

In order to continue the aforementioned development policies, paramilitary

forces strategically arrived in the region toward the end of the 1990s and the
beginning of the 2000s. They brought with them violence that manifested
itself in innumerable massacres throughout the rural areas and urban munici-
pality of Buenaventura. Starting with their first massacre in Sabaletas, a
town 45 minutes away from Buenaventura, these groups instigated an era of
unprecedented terror in the region. According to paramilitary member, Ever
Veloza’s (a.k.a. H.H.) confession, the Calima Block (a paramilitary organiza-
tion) murdered more than a thousand people between 2000 and 2001 with the
sole purpose of terrorizing communities.12 This period of time is known in the
area as “the year of the thousand deaths.” Carlos Castaño, paramilitary boss
and top leader of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, told the media
that paramilitaries first came to Buenaventura at the invitation of merchants
and businessmen who wanted protection against the guerrillas’ supposed
boleteo.13 Their presence led to massive displacements and, little by little,
the paramilitary groups—now renamed in different ways—took hold of the
city and imposed their law. The violence waged against the Buenaventura
community included the particularly horrific forced uprooting and murder/
disappearance of women.

Since 1999 Buenaventura has suffered crimes that remain in impunity, like
the Katanga, Cisneros, Naya and Triana massacres carried out by the Pacific,
Calima and Fallarones Blocs of the AUC’s Valle del Cauca chapter. They were
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 161

heavily denounced by the victims’ families and human rights organizations in

spite of the climate of terror that dominated that time, and contain a broad range
of times, places, methods and responsible parties, circumstances which since
2010 have seemed almost impossible to establish due to the shifting nature
and names of the groups involved. The war unleashed by groups today known
as Los Urabeños, La Empresa and Los Rastrojos have covered up deaths and
disappearances, causing a permanent confusion.14

Violence in the Pacific region has been so pernicious in recent years that it
has curtailed anthropological research, which had been very prolific toward
the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s. We can see how after 32 years of
implementing development policies––which came with multimillion-dollar
investments––the region, according to all measurements, has come today
to exhibit the most dramatically low levels of wellbeing in the country. The
region is even poorer and more marginal than it was before. It is not hard to
deduce that the policies, plans and projects for development failed to improve
the quality of life for the region’s population. These policies are directly
related to the increasing impoverishment of the region’s people, resulting
in what we can call systematic impoverishment processes, or historically
created poverty. The policies also exist in direct relation to the violence
that affects the region, and especially the violence inflicted on the bodies of
women: dismemberments, chopping houses [“casas de pique”], acuafosas,
public humiliation and disappearances.15
The communitarian values of the Pacific region, expressed in the multiple
practices of mutual aid that go beyond vertical notions of Christian charity
establishing horizontal relations with the other, are being transformed by the
developmental logic of individual profit that imposes conflict and modern
ways of organizing work which force people to be on their own [“estar del
propio lado”].16 Even greeting one’s neighbor can be jeopardizing. The ben-
efits of communal living are vanishing in the Pacific region, especially for
women. Life becomes untenable when fear of death is linked not only to the
possibility of losing one’s vitality, but also to the possibility of being sexually
abused, kidnapped, or disappeared (knowing that someone might be taken
into the neighboring house to be chopped, which is to say cut into pieces that
will later be thrown into some swamp). All of this makes communitarian life
less and less viable. I call this lack of viability deterritorialization.17
The government has responded with an assistance-based approach that
further fragments the community and contributes to its loss of dignity, with
militarization that does not prevent violence against the community but fos-
ters it, and with more development—for example, the 2050 Buenaventura
Master Plan, which continues the mission of emptying the territory of its
native population to make way for various megaprojects.18 The plan only
162 Chapter 8

refers to investments for the port and infrastructure that benefits megaproj-
ects. For example, the cost of water in Buenaventura is among the highest
in the country. Water is privatized; it is not for drinking and the population
still depends on rainwater. The armed conflict between groups fighting for
the urban and rural territory also produces great population displacements,
even from one neighborhood to another. The mining industry is knocking
down the forest, considered among the most biodiverse on the planet, leaving
behind a trail of poverty and death. Mazamorreo has turned into one of the
most dangerous métiers in the region.19 Despite the fact that the collective
land titles in the region are protected by Law 70 of 1993 (known as the Black
communities law), people are losing their land rights to drug traffickers and
the palm industry.20
There are also food cartels: the plantain cartel, the rice cartel, etc.
Everything that a peasant produces must go through these cartels, which
belong to the armed groups. They conscript the work force into a sort of
neo-slavery as a strategy to control the territory.21 In the urban areas, new
settlements are built to house people from the country’s interior (paisas) who
live in excellent conditions. In these spaces, access to the native Black popu-
lation is stopped or restricted, which creates new segregationist neocolonial
formations that intensify racial discrimination. Everyday, the killings become
more brutal and there is a particularly morbid ruthlessness in the unspeakable
torture and abuse with which women are murdered.

DIVERSE EXPLANATIONS REGARDING FEMICIDE

There are two explanations for the murders of women: some, taking a femi-
nist perspective, consider them to be a consequence of patriarchy; others,
defending family and traditional values, place them strictly within the frame
of inter-family and domestic violence. It is common to hear the second expla-
nation from women who are public officials or leaders in evangelical orga-
nizations, who insist on situating femicide exclusively within the framework
of domestic violence.22 This keeps the problem of violence against women in
the private sphere of the home, which is considered to be a privileged place
for intervention by the fundamentalist Evangelical church. This is also the
model that prevails in the media. They do not understand that this is “abuse
disguised as love,” which takes place in the context of a war where the armed
actors force women to live with them and then, “when the time comes and
they are no longer needed, they are disappeared or killed and the justifica-
tion is that these are crimes of passion, when in reality those young men
belong to [criminal] groups.”23 Numerous testimonies refer to these types of
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 163

situations, as is the case with the following observation from a woman leader
interviewed by the Colombian Defensoría Delegada:

Rapes were very frequent, especially in the neighborhoods where paramilitary

and guerrilla groups had their operation centers. Both groups raped women,
especially younger ones. If the headman of such and such group liked a particu-
lar girl, the only way that she could refuse him was to leave town. Otherwise
sooner or later she would have to be his woman or have sexual relations
with him.24

Local state officials interpret any analysis that goes beyond the private
sphere as a threat to their administration and as a means to discredit the local
government. According to the national government, as was argued in 2014 by
the then-Minister of Defense in the media, these crimes are an expression of
Black communities’ violent cultural practices.25
Affirming that this violence is the cultural tradition of the region’s popu-
lation and confining the problem to the framework of domestic violence
conceals the relationship between violence and the political and economic
dynamics that function at national and global levels. Any explanation that
goes beyond these assumptions is more than a simple theoretical discussion
or interpretation of a phenomenon. It is an unveiling, in the broader horizon
of the modernity/coloniality of power, of the complex network of relations of
domination that act upon Black women and the Black population in general—
which is why patriarchy is also unsatisfactory as totalizing explanation. This
is about questioning the plans for development, modernity and evangelization
that are presented as solutions for the impoverishment and violence experi-
enced in the Pacific region and exposing these proposals for what they really
represent: the deterritorialization of the native population, the destruction of
nature, the exacerbation of individualism, the transformation of subjectivi-
ties. All of these are veiled expressions of a war over the control of territory
and resources, driven by the interests of national and transnational capital.
Violence against women is its most infamous expression; femicide is global
capital’s strategy for the deterritorialization of the Black population, granting
access to its territories for business-funded megaprojects. In order to analyze
what is happening to women in Buenaventura today, we must take into con-
sideration the geostrategic and territorial importance of the Pacific region for
the mega-investment of transnational capital, especially as it relates to the
expansion of the port, which requires territories that have been historically
occupied by Black communities and their ancestors.
164 Chapter 8

MODUS OPERANDI AGAINST WOMEN

Legal and illegal armed groups use violence in a rational way in order to gain
control over territory. These groups evaluate the kind of force that needs to
be applied and the different ways of applying it best suited to breaking the
resistance of the enemy: the communities that own the territories that these
groups want to control. The abuse and torture are not irrational acts on the
part of psychopaths; they are strategies carefully calculated by those who own
the war and live in the country’s interior.
Women in Buenaventura suffer all the forms of violence mentioned in the
Rome Statute, which guides the International Criminal Court:

rape; sexual harassment; sexual humiliation; forced marriage or cohabitation;

the forced marriage of minors; forced prostitution and the commercialization of
women; sexual slavery; forced nakedness; forced abortion; forced pregnancy;
forced sterilization; the denial of the right to use contraceptives or, oppositely,
the imposition of contraceptive methods; threats of sexual violence; sexual
blackmail; acts of violence which affect the sexual integrity of women, such as
female genital mutilation and examinations to prove virginity.26

Other forms of violence can be added to that list, including the exchange of
women between the armed groups or the training of girls for campaneo (to be
informants). Different groups, including the army and the police, recruit these
girls as informants and then disappear or kill them for being sapas.27 Other
forms of violence include the transportation of arms, the killing of women
leaders as a means to clean the territory, the recruitment for sexual purposes
of girls and young women who are considered to be buenas and atrocities
such as those detailed here:28

They put poles up their vaginas and anuses; it’s like saying, “let’s destroy her
because she is our worst enemy.” For me those crimes are about that “let’s
destroy the woman” . . . “let’s destroy her vagina in the most cruel and violent
way possible.” Maybe our power lies there and they are afraid so they want to
destroy it. In so many cases when women are killed they are also horribly raped.
I have always read this as a message from them; for me it’s a message of fear,
impotent fear, because deep down these barbarian warriors are very afraid of
women and the power we have . . . They know how far we will go to defend our
lives and the lives of our children.29

According to flyers distributed by these groups, they are cleaning the area
by killing or disappearing women who are sluts and whores. The ways in
which women are murdered—shoving poles up women’s vaginas before kill-
ing them, cutting off their buttocks and playing soccer with them, cutting off
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 165

their tongues for being sapas when they were forced into being informants by
the same groups—send a message to the community about the conflict waged
against the population and its collapsing moral limits.
In August of 2007, two high school 16-year olds were approached by
paramilitaries on their way out of school. The paramilitaries took the girls to
another neighborhood, beat them up and demanded to know the names of the
women visited by the guerrillas. They then let one of the girls go, and they
strolled around the neighborhood with the other girl naked. Ernestina Rivas
had worse luck. Only 17, she was tied to a pole for two days, and she was tor-
tured and raped, her breasts and buttocks cut off, after which she was buried
up to her neck at the beach where the high tide eventually drowned her. Her
body was found in a mangrove.30
Testimonies collected for a report of the Colombian Defensoría Delegada
[Ombudsman’s Office] mention that girls between 13 and 14 years old are
forced into prostitution and end up pregnant. The racist national imagination
reads these testimonies as proof that Black women are “arrechas” and have
been since they were little.31 Girls are forced into relationships and, when they
refuse to have sexual relations, are publicly tortured. Many young women
have to flee their communities for this reason, a reason that constitutes a form
of forced displacement that is not yet formally registered.

Many mothers have left the area with their daughters after being subjected to
vulgar phrases like, “that woman will be mine.” So, out of fear, seeing that their
daughters have been targeted, many have had to leave town . . . entire families
have been displaced.32

Women are subjected to public nudity and other abuses as punishment for
not falling in line. They are used as informants and they are murdered when
they know too much.33 Boys and girls go missing on weekends, taken to these
groups’ bacchanals. Some of them never return. Many women are reported
missing, but many more are never reported at all because the identity of
the offender is known and people are afraid for the family and children of
the victim.
Disappearing the bodies of victims is a way to lower crime indicators and
uphold the government and police’s projected image of security. This is an
old paramilitary strategy. Additionally, women’s romantic partners involve
them against their will by sharing information about their activities. It is for
all these reasons that we women are asserting that the violence we endure
does not constitute what the government calls crimes of passion that stay
“between the sheets.” This is not domestic violence, as state institutions and
the church want us to believe.
166 Chapter 8

INSISTING ON A DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING

OF CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN

These crimes against women constitute femicide and are executed by war
actors who violently defend the interests of national and transnational capital.
They are not the expression of a violent culture and they do not correspond
to the traditional patriarchal ways of Black men. Those are racist ideas.
There are two purposes for this violence: it empties the land of its ancestral
inhabitants and it blames the victims, which increases racism. When we state
that violence against women is part of the culture of Black communities, we
blame the victims for the deterritorializing violence that affects them. I argue
that violence against women who belong to ethnic minorities is a terrorizing
strategy used to deterritorialize.
In a shortsighted conception of politics, some activists, both men and
women, tend to minimize the political impact of the killings of women who
are not political or community organizers. This trivialization contributes to
the efficacy of the death strategy used against ethnic communities, which
works through the elimination of women’s bodies. These killings are also
belittled and depoliticized because the supposed perpetrators are delinquent
groups and mafias.
It is also not recognized that these armed actors operate and commit vio-
lence according to the same logic as mafias do; all of these groups have the
same orientation and (regardless of whether or not each actor is conscious of
it) the same end goal: to maintain the social order—an order that obeys the
principles of the neoliberal state, the economy of the free market, and the
mafias by any means necessary.
Violence against women, even when their partners inflict it, damages the
person, the family and the community. The purpose of this violence is to
divide the community and erode the traditions of solidarity and mutual aid.
That is why it can be argued that violence against women is political violence,
since its end goal is the destruction of communal power. When the perpetra-
tors of this violence are members of the community, the result is a sort of
cultural hara-kiri.34
This violence is part of a war that hides its political character, pitting neigh-
bors and families against each other, and individuals against everyone and
everyone against each individual. The war’s width, length and depth multiply
as each violent act destroys the community’s material base and, worse, its
cultural and spiritual base, turning the traditional culture of solidarity into one
of destruction and mutual hatred. It is also through the conflict’s violence that
hegemonic masculinity and patriarchal culture are reinforced.
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 167

We must oppose the normalization of war, especially in the Pacific region,

where violence had always been an extraordinary event. Violence and death
have now been turned into everyday occurrences. The daily, constant threats
against youth and, increasingly, women provoke the dehumanization of
everyone. We can see evidence of this in the quotidian and public expressions
against women: “Don’t say anything or I will chop you,” “Don’t act funny or
you will be chopped,” “Women behave because women are being chopped.”35
That is why it is impossible to stay silent. We must first scream in horror if
we are to overcome the war and violence that are part of our daily lives. We
must go back to seeing war as exceptional and we must demand justice and
reparations.36
Violence against women, and particularly femicide, is symptomatic of
structural and systemic problems that cannot be solved unless the underlying
cause—the literal imposition through blood and fire [“a sangre y fuego”] of a
hegemonic development model—is addressed. The State is incapable of solv-
ing these problems because it has been bought by corporate global capital.
Corruption invades all state institutions, exacerbating the violence against
the community. The government and its justice apparatus, which act with
impunity and comply with paramilitary aggressors, subject surviving victims
and their families to permanent and intense insecurity, as though they do not
care to dispense justice.
There is an undeclared war against women in the world, which is experi-
enced acutely in the Colombian South Pacific region. This war is fueled by
the legal and illegal actors that push a development model forward and by
the global colonial matrix of power that institutes itself through megaprojects.
These megaprojects endanger all life: not only human life, but also nature,
which represents the possibility of human life since it offers the conditions
for human existence.

DIFFERENTIAL ETHNIC AND

ORGANIZATIONAL AFFECTATIONS

These crimes against Black and, in some cases, Indigenous women have dif-
ferential implications for the women themselves, their families and their com-
munities. The victims belong to both an ethnic minority and their extended
families, so the effects are wide sweeping. The repercussions of femicide
go beyond the personal, the family and the community: they also affect the
traditional organizational forms that support the sociocultural network of life
in the territory.
168 Chapter 8

The death threats facing women, which are present throughout the whole
country (and many other places in the world), take on particular dimensions
in ethnic territories [“territorios étnicos”] such as Buenaventura.

Women who belong to ethnic minorities encounter more obstacles accessing the
justice system, both because of state officials’ racism and because of the lack
of differential frameworks in the institutional processes’ delivery of justice. The
impunity and indifference with which those who, in the name of state institu-
tions, act are proof that women’s lives and integrities are seen as disposable.
Evidence tells us that crimes against women are not isolated events or crimes of
passion, yet both the State and society legitimize these crimes by treating them
with impunity. The death of a woman is not just the death of one woman; it is
the destruction of an entire family and also a whole community if we take into
consideration the extended family in black communities. The killing of women
constitutes ethnocide in the context of ethnic minorities.37

Furthermore, women who are societal and community leaders, and women
who advocate for human and land rights are all at high risk of becoming
victims of femicide.

No one wants to come forward as a leader. They are afraid someone will hurt
or target them . . . At this point the organization and all of us women are very
afraid. The neighborhood action boards are afraid of doing any activity, small as
it might be. We are afraid to walk the land; we no longer do the normal activities
we once did.38

The violence against women is inflicted as a means to keep other women

and their organizations in line and as a threat to the general community.

The flyer with the threat says that we who represent the organizations for the
displaced population are also under threat for publishing the government’s pub-
lic policies. We are not asking anything of them; we are making demands of the
government . . . Maybe it’s the government that’s threatening me . . . I’m telling
the government to give me what I’m entitled to as a displaced person because
it failed to guarantee the protection of the area. So I don’t understand why the
Black Eagles [a paramilitary group] is threatening the organizations of displaced
people. That’s my question: I don’t know why they are threatening us.39

Women are direct victims of the armed conflict, as both mothers and fam-
ily members of the young women and men who have already disappeared or
been murdered. Traditionally, ethnic minorities regarded death as a natural
event and developed cultural practices around it that allowed for the strength-
ening of communal life and collective mourning. Today, death is a tragedy
insofar as homicides and femicides are carried out as warning signs for those
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 169

who dare oppose the developmental logic of capital and the armed conflict.
Disappearances and dismemberments force the community to partake regu-
larly in the ritual of saying goodbye to the dead and thereby prevent the com-
munity from strengthening its communal ties.
In conclusion, this paper offers a general view that privileges the viewpoint
and experiences of Afro-Colombian women who are subjected to multiple
oppressions, resist them nonetheless, persist, and imagine insurgent processes
in order to create and recreate their worlds. I hope to have corrected some of
the most common erroneous characterizations which stigmatize and/or ren-
der banal the violence to which they are subjected. This violence is part of a
strategy of deterritorialization, which targets the Colombian Pacific region’s
Black population in favor of advancing the global accumulation of capital.

NOTES

1. Censo general de población (Colombia: Departamento Administrativo de

Estadísticas, 2005), https:​//​www​.dane​.gov​.co​/index​.php​/estadisticas​-por​-tema​/
demografia​-y​-poblacion​/censo​-general​-2005​-1. The “paisa” region consists of the
Colombian departments of Antioquia, Risaralda, Caldas, and parts of Quindío and
Norte del Valle.
2. “Ventajas Competitivas,” Cámara de Comercio de Buenaventura, accessed 2014,
https:​//​www​.ccbun​.org​/articulos​/ventajas​-competitivas.
3.Albert Traver, “El Gobierno colombiano militariza a Buenaventura, la ciudad
más violenta de ese país,” La información, March 22, 2014, accessed June 8, 2021,
https:​//​www​.lainformacion​.com​/espana​/el​-gobierno​-colombiano​-militariza​-la​-ciudad​
-mas​-violenta​-del​-pais​_4e33aBQli2PFJLsiGQLjA1​/.
4. One of the most gruesome periods in Colombian history, known as “La Violen-
cia” [The Violence], started with the killing of populist leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
on April 9, 1948. This was a bipartisan and brutal conflict between liberals and con-
servatives, which left more than 300,000 people dead over a period of 10 years. The
Colombian Pacific region did not experience this magnitude of violence.
5. See Henry Granada, “Intervention of Community Social Psychology: The Case
of Colombia,” Applied Psychology 40.2 (1991): 165–179. See also: Stella Rodríguez,
“Fronteras fijas, valor de cambio y cultivos ilícitos en el Pacífico caucano de Colom-
bia,” Revista Colombiana de Antropología 44, no.1 (January-June, 2008).
6. Arturo Escobar and Álvaro Pedrosa, eds., Pacífico ¿Desarrollo o diversidad
(Bogotá: CEREC, ECOFONDO, 1996).
7. Translator’s note: In the Kuna Tule language spoken in Northern Colombia and
Southern Panama, Abya Yala means “land in its full maturity” and is the name given
to what is known today as the Americas. Bolivian Aymara leader Takir Mamani sug-
gested that Indigenous peoples and Indigenous organizations use the term to refer
to the Americas, and many organizations and intellectuals have embraced this idea.
170 Chapter 8

8. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the

Third World. 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 4.
9. Aníbal Quijano, “¿Bien vivir?: Entre el ‘desarrollo’ y la des/colonialidad del
poder,” in Cuestiones y horizontes: de la dependencia histórico-estructural a la
colonialidad/descolonialidad del poder (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2014), http:​ //​
biblioteca​.clacso​.edu​.ar​/clacso​/se​/20140424014720​/Cuestionesyhorizontes​.pdf.
10. Redacción Noticiero 90 Minutos, “Desempleo en Buenaventura: un panorama
crítico, especialmente para los jóvenes,” February 11, 2021, accessed June 8, 2021,
https:​//​90minutos​.co​/desempleo​-buenaventura​-panorama​-critico​-jovenes​-11​-02​-2021​
/.
11. Among the projects about to be executed or currently in the process of execu-
tion: Water Industrial Project, Cement Dock, Arquímedes Project (Buenaventura-
Tumaco Waterway), Delta of the Dagua River, Deep Waters Port in Bahía Málaga,
Port Expansion and Pier Project in urban Buenaventura. The category “Negredum-
bre,” coined by anthropologist Rogerio Velásquez from Chocó, refers to the “masses
of Blacks that are the object of his investigation, in a semantic audacity that relates
Blacks [‘negros’] with crowds [‘muchedumbre’]. It is not just any crowd, but the
one that consists of Afro-descendants put in a situation of exclusion and marginal-
ity, ‘those at the bottom,’ ‘the cursed race,’ ‘the enslaved,’ ‘the miserable.’ . . . They
inhabit a specific territory: that of the rivers, the jungle and the rural world.” See:
Claudia Leal, “Recordando a Saturio. Memorias del racismo en el Chocó,” Revista
de Estudios Sociales, no. 27 (Summer 2007), quoted in Germán Patiño, “Prologue,”
in Ensayos escogidos: Rogerio Velásquez, ed. Germán Patiño (Bogotá: Ministerio
de Cultura de Colombia, 2010), 12. They also inhabit the belts of poverty that sur-
round the big cities. The negredumbre are all those who belong to the Black mass of
impoverished people that inhabit this nation; it is the social block of those who are
oppressed for reasons of race, ethnicity and class. This negredumbre is the mass, a
sociological category, like Patiño proposes, more than a subjectivity. It is the people
at the base of the social pyramid who are stigmatized because of the color of their
skin. See: Patiño, “Prologue.”
12. Javier Arboleda, “HH contó cómo fue la entrada al Valle y el Cauca,” VerdadA-
bierta.com, January 22, 2009, accessed June 8, 2021, https:​//​verdadabierta​.com​/hh​-o​
-carepollo​/
13. Ibid. The word boleteo designates a guerrilla group’s war tax (extortion) levied
on businesses and merchants in exchange for leaving them alone and not kidnapping
them, and as a means to finance the guerrilla’s subversive activities. Paramilitary
groups also charge this tax and offer protection against criminals and guerrilla groups
in exchange. Today, paramilitary groups levy this tax in Buenaventura, particularly on
small street vendors, threatening to kill whomever does not pay.
14. Misión Permanente por la Vida en Buenaventura, “S.O.S. from Colombia’s
Largest Port,” Solidarity Collective, published January 21, 2014, accessed June 8,
2021, https:​//​www​.solidaritycollective​.org​/post​/s​-o​-s​-from​-colombia​-s​-largest​-port​​​
---s​-o​-s​-del​-puerto​-principal​-de​-colombia.
15. Translator’s note: “Casas de pique” are houses used by criminal bands to dis-
member and disappear bodies. Acuafosas are clandestine cemeteries in the swamps.
 Betty Rush Lozano Lerma 171

16. The idea of vertical notions of Christian charity was suggested to the author by
Jeannette Rojas Silva in conversation. Translator’s note: By “estar del propio lado,”
the author refers to “a situation in which many people and communities find them-
selves in the context of the armed conflict in Colombia. People are afraid that those
who have been their neighbors for decades and generations are secretly members of
an armed group, and that just by saying hello to these neighbors one can become a
target of the opposing group and be killed. This fear breaks the ancestral communal
bonds that existed between people, it individualizes each person to the point that
most feel that ‘everyone should mind their own business’” (email to the translator,
March 12, 2018). See: Betty Ruth Lozano, “Estar del propio lado,” Boletín Territorio
Pacífico, no. 1 (2007).
17. By deterritorialization I refer not only to forced displacement, but also to the
violent processes that break communal ties and facilitate rootlessness. Deterritorial-
ization is taking the population out of the territory and taking the territory out of the
community’s collective and personal imagination.
18. “Master Plan Buenaventura 2050,” Grupo Gonval, published July 2014, https:​
//​www​.grupogonval​.com​/2014​/10​/master​-plan​-buenaventura​-2050​ html.
19. Mazamorreo is a traditional way of looking for gold in rivers with a flat wooden
pan used to wash the sand from the riverbed.
20. Norman Lazano Jackson and Peter Jackson, trans, Law 70 of Colombia (1993):
In Recognition of the Right of Black Colombians to Collectively Own and Occupy
their Ancestral Lands, accessed November 22, 2020, https:​//​www​.wola​.org​/sites​/
default​/files​/downloadable​/Andes​/Colombia​/past​/law​%2070​.pdf.
21. cf. Odile Hoffman, Comunidades negras en el Pacífico colombiano (Quito:
Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2007).
22. This viewpoint has been shared at various meetings with women organizations
and institutions in Buenaventura.
23.Laura Marcela Hincapié, “Violencia sexual, delito invisible detrás del con-
flicto armado,” El País, published August 2011, http:​//​www​.elpais​.com​.co​/judicial​/
violencia​-sexual​-delito​-invisible​-detras​-del​-conflicto​-armado​ html; Violencia contra
las mujeres en el Distrito de Buenaventura: Informe Temático, Defensoría delegada
para la evaluación del riesgo de la población civil como consecuencia del conflicto
armado Sistema de Alertas Tempranas (SAT) (Bogotá: Defensoría del Pueblo, 2011),
66, https:​//​www​.sdgfund​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/Colombia​_VBG​%20Buenaventura​
.pdf. All quotes from this document that appear in this chapter have been translated
by Carolina Alonso Bejarano.
24. Ibid., 77.
25. Traver, “El Gobierno colombiano militariza.”
26. Gonzalo Sánchez and Martha Nubia Bello, ¡Basta Ya! Colombia: Memories
of War and Dignity, trans. Jimmy Weiskopf and Joaquín Franco (Bogotá: National
Center for Historical Memory, 2016), 82, http:​//​www​.centrodememoriahistorica​.gov​
.co​/descargas​/informes2016​/basta​-ya​-ingles​/BASTA​-YA​-ingles​.pdf.
27. Sapo/sapa (“toad” in Spanish) is a popular name given to an informant who
infiltrates a group to obtain information.
172 Chapter 8

28. Buena (literally, “good” in Spanish) is a popular vernacular to refer to attrac-

tive women.
29. “Violencia contra las Mujeres,” 56, 72.
30. Jeannette Rojas, Danelly Estupiñán and Teresa Casiani, Derrotar la invisibi-
lidad. Un reto para las mujeres afrodescendientes en Colombia: El panorama de la
violencia y la violación de los derechos humanos contra las mujeres afrodescendien-
tes en Colombia, en el marco de los derechos colectivos (Colombia: Proyecto Mujeres
Afrodescendientes Defensoras de Derechos Humanos, 2012), 18, 24.
31. Arrechas: Popular Colombian expression that refers to a sexually aroused per-
son, someone prone to sexual acts.
32. “Violencia contra las Mujeres,” 64.
33. Alexandra Riveros Rueda, “¿Por qué nos duele Buenaventura? Feminicidio,
racismo, etnocidio e impunidad,” Feminismo afrodiaspórico, published November
16, 2013, accessed June 8, 2021, https:​ //​feministasafrodiasporicas​
.blogspot​
.com​
/2013​/11​/deja​-de​-normalizar​-el​-asesinato​-las​ html. See also: “La impunidad reina en
el caso de los feminicidios en Buenaventura,” Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del
Cauca, published October 2013, http:​//​anterior​ nasaacin​.org​/index​.php​/2013​/10​/12​
/buenaventurala​-impunidad​-reina​-en​-el​-caso​-de​-los​-feminicidios​-en​-buenaventura​/.
“La impunidad reina en el caso de los feminicidios en Buenaventura” was originally
produced by various organizations, including the Colectivo Akina Zaji Sauda, en el
que participaba la autora.
34. Betty Ruth Lozano, “El feminismo no puede ser uno porque las mujeres
somos diversas. Aportes a un feminismo negro decolonial desde la experiencia de las
mujeres negras del Pacífico,” La manzana de la discordia 5, no. 2 (2010).
35.Kuagro Ri Ma Changaina Ri PCN (Women’s Collective of the Black Communi-
ties Process), “Shadow Report to the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimina-
tion Against Women,” United Nations CEDAW Convention to Eliminate All Forms
of Discrimination Against Women (2013), http:​//​www​.afrocolombians​.com​/pdfs​/
AfroColombianWomen​-AbstractCEDAWReport2013​.pdf.
36. Franz Hinkelammert, Yo soy, si tú eres. El sujeto de los derechos humanos
(Mexico City: Centro de Estudios Ecuménicos, 2010).
37. “La impunidad reina.”
38. “Violencia contra las Mujeres,” 57.
39. Ibid.
 PART IV

Indigenous Cosmologies,
Struggles for Land,
and Decoloniality

173
 Chapter 9

This Knowledge Counts!

Harmony and Spirituality in
Miskitu Critical Thought

‌‌‌Jessica Martínez-Cruz

The relationship between Indigenous medicine and Western biomedicine has

long been fraught with difficulty.1 In Nicaragua, long-standing institutional
efforts are attempting to advance therapeutic cooperation between Indigenous
and biomedical health systems in the framework of interculturality.2 Mostly,
these efforts see Indigenous knowledge as what Kyle Whyte calls “supple-
mental value,” where Indigenous knowledge is only considered relevant
when it can be put at the service of scientific knowledge by means of being
translatable or translated into a Western value system.3 At the core of the
so-called cooperation, a major challenge is the undermining of traditional
health systems by the Westernized hegemonic view of health that leaves aside
broader narratives of wellbeing from Indigenous people.4
I will discuss here the slow, late and contradictory response to a crisis in
the Miskitu community of Raiti by the central level of Nicaragua’s Ministry
of Health to reflect on the complex hierarchy of knowledge embedded in the
narratives of public institutions, constitutive of the “coloniality of power” in
Latin America, where other ways of knowing become “minor,” “other,” or
not even considered knowledge, thus subalternized and colonized.5 I refer to
the term coined and developed by Aníbal Quijano and other Latin American
and Caribbean thinkers to explain the Eurocentrification of modern/colonial
capitalism that emerges in the colonization process of what is known today
as the Americas, hand in hand with modernity.
Coloniality as power structure came with its specific cognitive model:
“Eurocentrism” as a specific rationaliy or way to produce knowledge.

175
176 Chapter 9

The latter is understood in the dominant modern/colonial worldview as

the new perspective of knowledge that since its conception systematically
classified non-Europe as the past and therefore inferior, non-modern or
primitive and even non-human. Eurocentrism was actively formed before the
mid-seventeenth century and became hegemonic with the dominion of the
European bourgeois class, the secularization of its thought and the experi-
ences and needs “of the modern colonial global capitalist model.”6
What is of most relevance for this article is the current prevalence of
Westernized views in the institutions of countries with colonialist experi-
ences. Similar to the discussion of Indigenous environmental knowledge and
governance-value in Whyte’s work, the negation in Nicaragua of Indigenous
knowledge by the biomedical system not only poses a serious ethical prob-
lem, but also shows the efficacy of the nation-state to produce continuous
threats against Indigenous autonomy and self-determination in different
ways, for instance through its politics of knowledge.7
I am a mestizo feminist scholar-activist from Nicaragua. While briefly
working at the country’s Ministry of Health from 2003 to 2004, I participated
in a public health response to an outbreak of Grisi Siknis or Krisi Siknis suf-
fered by the Miskitu population of Raiti, a community on the bank of the
Wangki River in the municipality of Bocay. Raiti is part of the Indigenous
territory of Kipla Sait Tasbaika (KST), between the department of Jinotega,
mostly populated by mestizos, and the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous
Region (RACCN). In this Afro-Indigenous region, the Miskitu people com-
prise the largest Indigenous population. KST is one of six Indigenous territo-
ries that make up the heart of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve.
Unlike the Caribbean part of Nicaragua colonized by the British Empire, the
Pacific region was colonized by Spaniards and their decendants forged their
own version of Eurocentric rationality, what I call the Pacific Eurocentered
authority, which is hegemonic in the public institutions.
As an outsider, a mestizo social researcher working on a public health
response in a different and problematic place in the colonial axis of power,
I remained silent for ten years about what I witnessed in Raiti: Miskitu
people’s experiences with Grisi Siknis. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has pointed
out with great accuracy “the epistemological dilemma of ethnography: the
key linguistic and cultural untranslatability, characteristic of the asymmetri-
cal relationship between individuals and cultures whose cognitive horizon is
diametrically opposite.”8 This does not mean that a critical understanding of
these experiences cannot be reached by social analysis, but that the critical
understanding here is in another place. It is not in social scientific narratives,
but in Miskitu oral histories and in the renunciation of the notion that we,
the researchers, can explain better how the world functions for others––those
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 177

others who have been portrayed by the hegemonic history as perpetually

in need of Western rationality, scientific knowledge, categorizations, and
translations.
I kept working in these Indigenous territories in other moments of my
activist and professional life. In 2014, with a mate from Aula Propia, my
feminist collective, and the Institute of Traditional Medicine and Community
Development (IMTRADEC) of the University of the Autonomous Regions
of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN), an institution working
with traditional healers, I regained contact with Porcela Sandino Hemsly, the
Indigenous doctor who healed Raiti of Grisi Siknis in 2003. With her permis-
sion and because of my relationship with IMTRADEC, I put my journal notes
together and did a retrospective reflexive account of what I have witnessed
and have been told in Raiti over the years. Building on scholarly contributions
from critical thinking in Latin America, mostly decolonial thought, appeals
and practices, Miskitu intellectual production and healers’ narratives, as well
as my own ‘ethnographic experience,’ this article looks at the ways in which
Western knowledge embedded in an institutional health system has worked to
subordinate and negate Indigenous knowledge, in particular knowledge about
health and illness processes in the Grisi Siknis experience of Miskitu peoples
from Nicaragua.

COLLABORATION OF KNOWLEDGE? NICARAGUAN

INTER-CULTURAL HEALTH MODEL

After the 1979 revolution, the Nicaraguan health model of attention changed
radically. In the following decade, the country was awarded the Alma-Ata
prize for Primary Health Care for their efforts to guarantee universal access.9
Since that date on, one of the strengths of the Nicaraguan health system is its
nationwide community-based health network with home-based community
clinics, maternal homes (casas maternas), and extended networks of health
promoters (brigadistas) and midwives (parteras).10
A major transformation in the 1980s was the constitution of the regional
and departmental health systems. In 1985, the Ministry of Health created a
program to “revitalize popular and traditional medicine.”11 From 1987 with
the new Autonomy Statue—the proclaimed Law 28 for the two regions North
and South of the Caribbean Coast—the relationship between the Nicaraguan
state and the ethnic groups from those regions was formally acknowledged
as based on historical rights.12 By that time, the concept of interculturalidad
(interculturality) became an important part of the conception of a new health
model where cultural differences were claimed to be respected, the inter-
connectedness between cultures was represented, and the inequalities based
178 Chapter 9

on ethnic relations constituted historically in society were acknowledged.13

Hence, this is the place where the Indigenous knowledge acquires formal
value in the Nicaraguan health system.
There are more state moves at the policy level to add as milestones in
the official narratives. According to the account of Carrie, Mackey, and
Laird, 1996 saw the incorporation in the National Health Plan of an aim that
refers to the integration of the “cosmovision” of the communities into the
health system practices.14 In 2005, the General Health Law that followed the
designed new National Health Plan 2005–2015 became consistent with the
international framework for Indigenous rights. By the year 2011, with a dif-
ferent government elected in 2007, the health policy moved again toward the
interest of universal care access, and this time a new law––No. 759, Law of
Traditional Ancestral Medicine––granted space to “incorporate intercultural
concepts into the health care models.”15
Decentralization policy has been changing since the 1980s, sometimes
with quite opposite strategies such as the neoliberal policy used in the 1990s,
together with the current supracentralization of the state’s decision-making
processes, particularly in regards to the autonomous project of the Caribbean
Coast.16 What is happening in reality with cultural diversity and autonomy
in a multicultural and multiethnic space, according with the National
Constitution, is not easy to describe. The following poem is a glimpse of
how challenging it is in practice to exercise this “constitutional right” in the
country for Afro-descendant and Indigenous populations.

This ya resitation a true reality

So mi want unu listen to me A wa only talk the thru about we
municipality
And how polititian go on, about changing wi destiny.

All day ne come de talk bout true democracy

So come de tell we se we have autonomy But remember autonomy
da self governing by
an by me
Then how ina the world a stranger da maniger over we17

Looking at experiences in the Region Autonomous of the Caribbean Coast

North (RACCN), Carrie, Mackey, and Laird argue that health care accessibil-
ity and the delivery of integrated health services appears to be very deficient
in Miskitu communities.18 There are also some particularities on how it hap-
pens, when it happens, the acceptance of traditional ancestral medicine or
cultural differences in the institutional Inter-cultural Health Model. Based in
an anthropological fieldwork in the same region, Wedel reveals how Miskitu
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 179

healing knowledge is used as last resort to face the failures of biomedical

approaches and calls attention to the necessity of a better understanding from
health authorities and biomedical personnel to local explanatory models of
health engaging in ontological negotiations that could lead to more equal
forms of therapeutic cooperation.19 Both studies point out how medical prac-
tices in health services position biomedical providers as the medical authori-
ties acting as gatekeepers to the traditional healers.20
In addition to this complexity, the majority of biomedical doctors came
mostly from the Pacific dominated by Mestizo culture and the health per-
sonnel are mostly trained in the Pacific; they are the ones directly in charge
of implementing an unclear “intercultural” institutional model when an
Indigenous, an Afro-Caribbean, a rural woman, or the usual “other” requires
health care.21
After almost 30 years of autonomy, there are many critics of a health model
that has been ideal on paper but not quite in reality. For some, interculturali-
dad has been absent in the implementation of health policies in the autono-
mous regions. Even when health authorities at the different levels (central,
regional, and local) acknowledge interculturality as a guiding element of the
regional health system, how this is interpreted by the actors involved is very
different. For national health officials, this concept “is simply recognition
that culture is an important variable in health and that indigenous medicine
should be accepted. [For the regional authorities] interculturalidad is a politi-
cal concept that also refers to the transfer of decision making and power to
the region.”22
From the narrative of Miskitu people with whom I have talked about
Grisi Siknis over the years, whether they are traditional healers, intellectu-
als, or health practitioners within the biomedical systems, if interculturality
is ever to be a reality in the country, beyond social and political recognition
of cultural differences and historical rights, it must involve the acknowledge-
ment of a different “cosmovision” and thus of an own Miskitu epistem.23 As
Catherine Walsh has argued, this epistemic recognition has become a visible
component in the struggles of both Indigenous and Afro-descendant people
in Latin America in recent years, where these “struggles that . . . are not just
social and political but also epistemic in nature.”24

Locating Grisi Siknis in Mainstream Narratives:

Health and Anthropological Texts
In biomedical language, Grisi Siknis is situated within the scope of mental
health narratives. It is part of dissociative cultural mental disorders, together
with other “culture bound syndromes,” as uniquely characteristic of some
Indigenous people, such as the pibloktoq or Arctic hysteria of the Inuit’s living
180 Chapter 9

within the Arctic Circle, Navajo “frenzy” witchcraft, chakore of ngawbere of

the northern Panama, and some forms of amok in Indonesia and Malaysia.25
According to these sources, because of its features of a trance-like state, high
levels of activity, exhaustion, and posterior amnesia of the episodes, it is also
commonly known as “running” or “fleeing” syndrome.
According to the psychiatrists and biomedical doctors participating in eval-
uating or reporting the 2003 episode of Raiti, it was certainly a mental disor-
der culturally determined, very likely to be defined as massive or collective
hysteria that is contagious. Some of the psychiatrists and bio-medical doctors
gave relevance to the conditions under which this episode has happened (i.e.,
isolation and adverse economic conditions such as extreme poverty). Plenty
of others within the health sector continue to think of Grisi Siknis as a matter
of “those crazy-acting Miskitu people.”26
The treatment has been through the use of Indigenous traditional medicine,
and in the words of professionals in the health system and anthropology, this
is recognized as the only possible treatment. Among the explanations that
anthropologists have given to this phenomena is Phillip Dennis’s, which
attributes it to stress-related issues in life situations.27 The “disease” has also
been thought of as an expression of liberation of tensions in situations that
need the search for solutions to a shared crisis, or the pressures on young
women during their transition to womanhood, almost a ritual of such transi-
tion.28 Others see the illness from wider perspectives, pointing at the neces-
sity to understand the social, personal and environmental context and the
role of culture in relation to illness and suffering.29 The latter writing called
attention to see Grisi Siknis from a cross-cultural perspective, beyond the
“culture-bound condition” classification occurring only in Miskitu culture,
toward an understanding of it as a Miskitu version of involuntary mass spirit
possession. Some of these anthropological records also report the spreading
character of the “disease.”
In the first records, Grisi Siknis was understood as commonly experienced
by female teenagers from Miskitu communities; however, there are some
episodes such as the one in Awastara in 1978–1979 where five men were
affected. According to Dennis and Jamieson, those men were considered
“feminine” by the community.30 In contemporary episodes, the gender feature
has changed, like the event in war camps in Honduras in the late 1980s, or the
event of Karata Lagoon affecting only men, or the outbreak in Raiti where 68
young and adolescent men were affected.31
In 2010, in a journey to Amak, the capital of the Mayangna Sauni Bu
(MSB), a neighbouring territory of Raiti where Mayangna Indigenous people
live, I heard for the first time from the voice of a communitarian leader that
two episodes of Grisi Siknis occurred in 2004 and 2008 in this community to
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 181

Mayangna women; one of those women was his wife. In my experience in

Raiti in 2003, when asking Mayangna people passing through the community
about Grisi Siknis, they usually answered, “that is a Miskitu issue.”

YAMNI IWAIA: MISKITU NARRATIVES OF

WELLBEING FROM THE WANKI RIVER

In the narratives of Miskitu people from the community of San Andrés de

Bocay, in the Indigenous Territory of Miskitu Indian Tasbaika Kum, a neigh-
boring place of Raiti, located also in the bank of the Wangki River, Yamni
iwaia means living according to a way of conceiving life influenced by reli-
gion, Miskitu spirituality and politics––a way of living that goes in agreement
with guiding principles of individual and collective life. An important part of
this is Pain iwaia, which means living well according to material conditions,
to have a good home, to be successful in social and productive activities
within the community, to have health, to dress well, to eat well, and to live
without problems with other members of the community.32
Pain Iwaia was the most frequent term to refer to the meanings and experi-
ences of wellbeing; according to the participatory research mentioned above,
crucial principles to achieve Pain Iwaia were laman laka (harmony) and asla
iwaia (living in unity) amongst others, and the exercise of territorial sover-
eignty was an indispensable condition. Asla iwaia is a guiding principle of
collective efforts; it was also identified as the central element for the com-
munity to be able to sustain any effort in support of its wellbeing.
Miskitu wellbeing is closely related with their spiritual world. Accounts
from Miskitu intellectuals and researchers highlight how in Miskitu cosmol-
ogy, different spiritual beings that dwell in the environment could cause seri-
ous imbalances into the life of Miskitu people.33 A curandero (spiritual/herbal
healer) told me that laman laka is not only about relations between human
beings, it is also about relations with the environment, because there must
be a balance in the different realms of power. Later in a group conversation
in which adults and elderly men were doing an in depth reflection about the
changes in their own productive practices (i.e. fishing, hunting, and farming)
they explained to us (the researchers):

M1: The kingdom is a power; it means that there is human power, the power of
plants and the power of animals.
I: Do plants also have spirit? And the animals, too?
M2: That’s right, it’s always the same, so when you transmit all that, people
respect a tree, and they don’t use the machete.
182 Chapter 9

M3: Because it’s bleeding just as human.34

Fagoth argues that traditional Miskitu language does not have a word for
sickness; even though in current times they use the word siknis, what they use
to identify an ill being are imbalances with the environment.35 Those imbal-
ances have been translated for Western people as illnesses. Spiritual imbal-
ance means more than physical ailments; the state of equilibrium or the lack
of it is at the centre of this Miskitu cosmovision. This precept gives forms to
the ways that they see their wellbeing and how they deal in practice with the
world in which they live. To experience health and being well with nature and
other human beings are inseparable parts in this vision.
Looking at Grisi Siknis can provide us with a glimpse into the Miskitu way
to see and experience the world. According to the most recent Miskitu schol-
arly production about Grisi Siknis, based in a case study in the community of
Krin Krin, black magic or occultism is the cause of the problem.36 Through
this practice, some people manipulate spirits, who later take possession of the
people in the community, producing imbalances in their health and conse-
quences in their families, as well as in the whole community. As stated by the
authors, to cure this spiritual ailment Miskitu people need not only to resort to
their ancestral knowledge but also to the plants and supplies that nature gives
them to prepare their treatments in specific territories.37 Thus, they need to
ensure some essential rights that national and international frameworks are
obliged to meet: rights intertwined with territoriality and self-determination.
As pointed out by Bernal and Robertson, “cultural integrity, territorial rights
and autonomy . . . form part of the ‘ingredients’ for healing.”38
The ethno-history of Grisi Siknis has been recorded in travelers’ written
texts and anthropologists’ accounts for more than a century. Now it is almost
unquestionable that Grisi Siknis has a long history amongst Miskitu popula-
tions in Honduras and Nicaragua where they live; Dennis and Jamieson have
identified features of “Miskitu hysteria” closely related to Grisi Siknis in
Bell and Conzemius.39 There are later accounts, such as Dennis’s reference to
the Awastara epidemic with a duration of 20 years and more than 60 people
affected, and Jamieson’s analysis about sporadic episodes in the 1990s in
Kakabila and outbreaks in Raitipura in 1992 and 1993, which bring Grisi
Siknis to contemporary times.40
Since 2000––considered a moment of the increase of registered episodes–
–there is also a close follow up from the IMTRADEC, the sole organization
in the country working systematically to approach Grisi Siknis.41 The long
presence of these events, the ways that the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health has
been repetitively managing the illness through the use of traditional ancestral
medicine, and how Grisi Siknis has been dramatically affecting the lives and
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 183

health of Miskitu communities, particularly women and teenagers, highlight

the relevance to discuss this issue with a more critical view.42

NARRATIVES OF (DIS)HARMONY: THE

EPISODE IN RAITI, WANGKI RIVER

In December 2003, I was part of the team of psychiatrists, doctors, traditional

healers, nurses and social scientists sent by national and regional health
authorities to Raiti to participate in the research and treatment of the outbreak
of Grisi Siknis, which began almost three months before. I traveled with the
Director of the National Programme of Mental Health and another psychia-
trist from the central level of the Ministry of Health. At the time, Grisi Siknis
was medically known as a “cultural-bounded syndrome.” The other doctor
had known about this “Miskitu aliment” since the late 1980s, when he was
an authority at the National Psychiatric Hospital where some Miskitu people
with mental health challenges were treated. The central level of the Ministry
sent us with specific roles; while the Director would deal with Miskitu
authorities and the national press, the other doctor and I were to conduct
social research and accompany the healers.
We were all Mestizos, coming from Managua (the capital of Nicaragua) to
Wiwilí, a municipality in the department of Jinotega, in the northern part of
the country, where representatives from the Organization of American States
(OAS) and a nurse joined us. They had a development project for postconflict
communities in Raiti. We used their means of transport because they were
better equipped for travel. We then traveled by boat through the Wangki River
for almost twelve hours before reaching the community.
A well-known healer from the region, Porcela Sandino, a prapit (prophet)–
–one of the wisest in the organization of the Miskitu healer system and
cosmovision––plus her assistant (and husband), two nurses, and a professor
were sent by the health authorities of the RACCN and the IMTRADEC. All
of them were Miskitu and arrived from the opposite direction of the river.
They did a shorter but riskier traverse, coming from Bilwi, the capital of
RACCN, to Waspam, the neighboring municipality, and then by river; their
voyage passed through the rapids of the Wanki, a dangerous place especially
in December because of the rainy season, but a very frequent passage for
Miskitu people from the Wanki River.
The only doctor of the health centre of Raiti (at the same time its director)
and the Miskitu authorities were expecting us. The situation was very seri-
ous. After two failed attempts in the last months to treat the epidemic with
traditional healers, the illness was still spreading and affected at least 139
184 Chapter 9

people, roughly ten percent of Raiti’s population. The majority of them were
teenagers; mostly girls and boys, but also young and adult women were suf-
fering the illness. They constituted also a substantive part of the productive
force for hunting, fishing, farming and harvesting, vital activities for Raiti’s
sustainability.
In the main meeting between the health authorities, the local traditional
authorities, and the elderly council in Raiti, there were four demands
addressed to very different actors. The first request was to the healer: they
wanted to know the kind of witchcraft used, the responsible person, and
a guarantee of the full recovery of all those affected. Two other demands
were to the central government: They asked for better and quicker responses
in emergencies such as a Grisi Siknis outbreak, for support to face the
post-epidemic situation and the possible food shortage in the coming months,
given the quantity of affected people who were not working on their harvest.
Their last demand was from a very different kind and was directly addressed
to the mass media: Miskitu people did not want their home and territory to
be portrayed in the national newspapers and television programs as an exotic
and dark place in the jungle where Grisi Siknis occurs.
In the national and international press, the messages from the main institu-
tional health authorities were clear: this is an illness that can only be treated
by traditional Indigenous medicine. The most renowned British newspaper,
The Guardian, reported at the time that the Nicaraguan health minister, José
Antonio Alvarado, explained why they sent Miskitu healers: “If [the affected]
are given anti-convulsive drugs or anti-depressants there is no improvement,
but if they are given remedies by the healer they feel better.”43 This answer
was similar to the first description about Grisi Siknis that I heard by the psy-
chiatrist who treated some Miskitu people in the 1980s.
The Director of the Regional Health System of the North Caribbean
Region, Dr. Florence Levy, confirmed that the Miskitu healers were leading
the team to face the outbreak: “There’s not much our doctors can do; we are
giving support to the healers as they know the problem better than us. . . . The
population doesn’t make use of [the Nicaraguan health services] because
the illness is more spiritual than physical, so they turn to the healer for the
spiritual part.”44 The anthropologists were also consulted. The Guardian read:

Western health care people have often been skeptical of these attacks, label-
ling them ‘mass hysteria,’ or simply ‘those crazy-acting Miskitu people,’” said
Professor Phil Dennis, an anthropologist at Texas Tech University who spent
two years studying the phenomenon in the late 1970s. He says the attacks are
very serious to those experiencing them and their families, and often to entire
Miskitu communities. He witnessed four attacks during his research and said
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 185

the patients were “clearly in another state of reality.” . . . Grisi siknis is a very
serious health problem for Miskitu people.45

The director of the health centre, a Mestizo and the only biomedical doctor
in the community, showed at every moment a sensitive attitude about the suf-
fering of the people in Raiti, without any comment about his own judgments.
In the case of the Miskitu nurses accompanying the healer, their attitude to the
ailment and therapy was also very respectful but less clear to me. I could not
identify whether they believed in the spiritual ailment as such; or maybe their
ambiguity was only an attitude in front of me, a Mestizo professional sent by
the central level of the Ministry to research the situation. One of them told
me that she did not know anything about “magic” because she was Christian
and the Church forbids these beliefs. However, she has been with people
suffering Grisi Siknis since the epidemic in 2000 at the Luxemburgo School
in Bilwi, the capital of the Autonomous Caribbean Region of the North. Her
final remarks were: “They are my people and they suffered a lot.”
At the national level, in newspapers and television, the discourses of health
authorities were severely criticized by religious authorities of the Pacific
because they were using sukias (shamans in Miskitu language) to cure people
instead of Western medicine. Besides that, the journalists were pointing
out the lack of capacity in the Ministry of Health to deal with this situation
because of the obvious length of the illness in Raiti, the quantity of people
affected, and the failed previous attempts to cure them. The national contro-
versy added more pressure to the role of the Ministry of Health; however, it
was mostly because of an unresolved issue, rather than questioning the lack of
understanding of the Indigenous vision of health and illness in the Ministry.
The detailed account of the journey to Raiti reveals how the response by
the authorities was mediated even geographically by power relations. The
Mestizo team coming from Managua, accompanied by the media, was in
charge of research and public relations with the media and authorities, while
the Miskitu team coming from RACCN was in charge of accompanying the
healers and delivering the appropriate “therapy.” This is not necessarily a
negative distribution of tasks, but it does illustrate the instrumental use of the
healers in contrast with the negation of their voices. It must be noted that even
the strongest critics within the Ministry of Health said that the traditional
healers were part of the Ministry actions.

Conversational Moments
The apparent leader of the affected people was Cornelio, who was 17 years
old and with whom I had many conversations during my journey. He was
a hard-working and very responsible young man: the son of a mother who
186 Chapter 9

raised him alone and the main support of his family. I also talked with others
affected by the malady (most of them girls of about 15 years of age) and their
families, as well as with some traditional leaders respected by the community,
which were not present in the “formal” meetings between the Ministry of
Health and Miskitu traditional authorities. They gave me important insights
not expressed in the public meetings or interviews with the doctors and jour-
nalists in which I participated.
One of the issues raised by the people with whom I had these informal
conversations was the abusive role played by the Mestizo guardian of the
building of OAS in the community. This problematic role was expressed in
two intrinsically linked ways. First, he held a lot of power: as a worker of
OAS in charge of key logistic aspects—the access to the building, the keys
to use some places, and so forth—his proceeding was more like gatekeeper
of the material power of OAS over the community without their professional
team’s awareness. Second, his behavior directly toward Miskitu girls: being
a foreign man in his 50s, the “seduction” of at least five of the affected girls
was not only a felony under Nicaraguan Law, but also an abuse of power by
all means with unknown consequences for the life of the girls. At the end
of our stay in Raiti, the health authorities and the OAS team negotiated the
suspension of the guardian and his immediate leave. Later, in Managua, the
Prosecutor of Children’s rights responsible of following up this kind of situ-
ations was informed.
When the attacks occurred, the symptoms were repeatedly the same:
headaches, feelings of anxiety and fear, blurred vision, and loss of immedi-
ate (short term) memory. The manifestations were also almost the same:
long periods of trance-like unconsciousness interrupted by sudden bouts
of frenzied behavior, attempts to flee their communities with extraordinary
strength, and sometimes seizing weapons like knifes, axes, or sticks to
defend themselves against something invisible to others. Through my eyes
(and understanding), the most striking feature of these collective attacks was
the performance of these actions with extreme ferocity against the doors or
walls of the main institutional buildings: the Moravian church, the school,
the Wihta house (Miskitu judge house), the elderly council house, and the
health centre.
For some persons with whom I talked, the girls that suffered from Grisi
Siknis were not always safe and something had to be done. The unexpected
attacks in the middle of the night led some families to tie down their affected
relatives because they could flee to the jungle, river or to places away from
the protection of their families. A well-respected leader told me that he had
seen how some men were taking advantage of this situation, touching a girl
who was in trance, and he had to intervene until her family came.
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 187

Cleaning the River, the Cemetery, and the Ceiba Tree.

My account of the successful treatment in Raiti goes far beyond the therapies
described in others accounts. Perhaps this is because of the experience of the
healer Porcela Sandino, who besides the preparations of some medicinal sub-
stance, individual treatment with herbs––baths and smoke––and collective
ritual with the affected people, did a therapeutic journey in the community.
As I remember, the spiritual therapy consisted of three main moments with
the people––individual and collective––and the environment. The collective
ritual was in a central place called the auditorio, a big Tambo house of a tra-
ditional construction made with wood high above the ground, high enough
to avoid flooding during the rainy season. Neither I nor the director of the
Health Center participated in this ritual. Porcela warned me that it could be
very dangerous because of the previous attacks against health authorities, and
because this time it would not be a small group of people, as the days before;
in the auditorio, larger groups of affected people would be entering gradually.
Then came the cleaning journey through the community. I followed Porcela
in this ritual. There were three spiritual and, at the same time, physical places
to clean: the cemetery, the jungle through the ceiba tree, and the water of the
Wangki River. Here, it must be highlighted again that in Miskitu cosmology,
the spiritual beings dwell in their landscape and cosmos, such as lasa (spirits)
that are the owners of and control nature. For Porcela, Grisi Siknis was caused
by spirits invoked by sukias or curanderos that in order to produce damage
and gain money provoke the illness. During this ritual, our longest conversa-
tion took place. According to Porcela, the severe attack in Raiti, considered
the longest and the most massive in the last years, was caused by the absolute
absence of harmony in the community, evidenced by the neglect of a sacred
place such as the cemetery, the misuse of the water from the river, and the
practice of black magic by young healers in the Miskitu communities (not
necessarily from Raiti).46 Porcela was very surprised about the abandonment
of the place where their ancestors rest (cemetery) as well as angry for the
use of black magic, which she considered to have begun during Nicaragua’s
war time (1980s), when many young Miskitu people were either displaced or
combatants in Honduras. They learned in the war camps from Miskitu people
that used the black book, a kind of magical knowledge, which was not taught
by Miskitu healers in Nicaragua.47
The third and last moment of the ritual was for me the embodiment of
interculturality. In a long queue, girls, boys and young women, sometimes
held by their relatives, one by one stared at Porcela, who was doing their last
in-depth medical review. Besides her was the assistant to help her in case she
needed support, and the director of the Health Center with a notebook. The
health authorities and the journalists were beside her as silenced observers
188 Chapter 9

also taking note. The review of the results of the therapeutic process was not
only concerned with the state of the last spiritual ailment; it was also about
the biomedical condition of the people. One by one, Porcela said: anemia,
problems in her ovaries, and so forth, while examining the people’s hands
and eyes. The doctor listened carefully and registered every word Porcela said
about each person examined in order to follow up his or her health situation.
There were some individual minor episodes of Grisi Siknis during this pro-
cess, but the aggressive and collective episodes that all of us had witnessed
days before disappeared.
From that day, Porcela kept providing medicine to the communities
until she considered the Grisi Siknis was over in Raiti. She returned home,
received national and international media attention, and became a renowned
healer beyond regional borders.

THE NATIONAL FORUM OF GRISI SIKNIS

In February 2004, a national forum of Grisi Siknis took place in Managua,

the first of its kind. The institutional goal was to promote a scientific and
mass media discussion around the issue and a better understanding of the
illness. According to Ruíz, who, like me, participated in the forum, the objec-
tives of the event were two: one strategic and the other instrumental.48 The
former sought to transform the negative image of the North Caribbean Coast
at the national level, seen in contrast to the Pacific of Nicaragua as an exotic
place of sorcery and paganism, a long standing racialized stereotype about
the people from the Caribbean Coast. It also sought to make visible the role
that the Regional Health System and the Regional University––through the
work of IMTRADEC––have played in the health of Nicaragua. The latter
sought to discuss and inform about ways to prevent and treat Grisi Siknis to
wider audience.
The people from the Health Ministry sent to Raiti the preceding December–
–the traditional healer Porcela Sandino, doctors, researchers and nurses––also
participated. Porcela and IMTRADEC participated as presenters in the forum,
wich also counted with presentations by journalists from the national media
and by the Director of the National Mental Health Program. As speakers were
the anthropologists Phillip Dennis and Jorge Grumberg, who have been writ-
ing about the topic.
Ruíz makes an interesting analysis of the event, arguing that the regional
health authorities were trying to validate Miskitu culture and Grisi Siknis
as part of their world, and, in a broader context, were trying to negotiate
with the national authorities a real decentralization process and inclusion of
cultural diversity in the health system.49 I add to his point that the national
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 189

health authorities were trying to validate their response to the illness in front
of national public opinion.
Whether the voices were from journalists, psychiatrists, or anthropologists,
the leading strategy in the forum was to find ways to translate the illness into
“scientific” language and through cross-cultural comparison locating Grisi
Siknis within a broader context, leaving almost silenced the perspective of
the traditional healers embodied in Porcela Sandino. Sandino’s is a voice that
defines Grisi Siknis within the domain of the spiritual world, which involves
dark magic and witchcraft, thus bringing traditional ancestors’ knowledge to
the center of the process.
At the end, as Ruíz pointed out, the forum reinforced an institutional way
to see the illness, disregarding the voices of Miskitu healers: “their approach
was restricted by wider racialized perceptions in society and the academic
conventions of Western knowledge.”50

UNPACKING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

WESTERN KNOWLEDGE AND ‘OTHER’ KNOWLEDGE

This section draws attention to the ways in which the predominance of bio-
medical and even anthropological views that offer explanations about this
Miskitu ailment undermine the broader narratives of Miskitu people, their
processes of health and illness, and thus their ways of seeing, living and
enjoying their wellbeing.51

Critical View of the “Critical” Call: From

“Local Knowledge” to Plural Thoughts
Instead of discussing the “uneasy” relation between development and anthro-
pology widely found in the literature, I will focus on some of the arguments
that anthropologists have raised within this discussion, highlighting how
development promoted by international aid agencies and nation states has
systematically privileged global, technological, Euro-US contemporary cen-
ter knowledge over local, autonomous, traditional and non-hegemonic west-
ern knowledge.52 Some have argued that the disregard for “other” people’s
worldviews reflects and promotes a view of them only as exotic beings
permeated by traditional beliefs, in contrast with sophisticated, modern and
formal knowledge.53
Sillitoe accurately calls the hegemony of Western science a “global phe-
nomenon involving many scientists from non-Western backgrounds.”54 He
also comments on the contested nature of such dominance, citing some exam-
ples, such as postmodern sociology, which raises issues as the existence of the
190 Chapter 9

subjective and value-laden side in the quest for truth in sciences. In a similar
line, Sillitoe highlights the inquires by historians into the human side of sci-
entific endeavors, and the work of others like Latour, who spot the impact of
social interaction and values in scientific outcomes and technology.55
The interest of critical anthropology in validating local knowledge and
experiences is an attractive but yet insufficient task. As Sillitoe argues, any
attempt to incorporate “local” sciences alongside techno-scientific knowl-
edge in development work must challenge the hegemony of “global” sci-
ences;56 however, it is such challenge what remains a critical endeavor of
anthropology. He is trying to contribute to the connection between what they
term “local” and “global” sciences, leaving out the critical understanding of
the power relation between knowledges.
Put in other words, in the omission of a structural and historical analysis
of the “Eurocentrism” implicit in the constitution of Western science’s domi-
nance and its effect as a universal categorizing pattern in the production of
knowledge, he ignores an essential aspect of the relation of power between
Western science and the other sciences.57 For instance, in the text the lack
of discussion on how the mere use of the categories “local” and “global” is
naturalized in development debates.
The narratives involved in the public health response to the Grisi Siknis
experience of the community of Raiti show some key mechanisms of colo-
niality. While mainstream biomedical narratives are backed by science and
modern rationality, the narratives of Miskitu people are permeated by cultural
beliefs in “need” of scientific rationality.58 When acknowledged as a mental
disorder, a “cultural-bound syndrome,” Grisi siknis falls in the specialized
field of psychiatry or psychology, fragmenting the Miskitu holistic and spiri-
tual way of seeing it. By using systematically traditional ancestral doctors to
cure Grisi Siknis and placing them in a subordinate position to the gateke-
peers of scientific knowledge, the biomedical system instrumentalizes and
minimizes Indigenous knowledge, traditional healers, Miskitu communities,
and their relations with their territories and environment.
The biomedical mental approach and the cultural anthropological perspec-
tive are hegemonic narratives about Grisi Siknis in Nicaragua that act as
privileged binary explanatory views which leave narrow space for Miskitu
interpretations of their own reality. Beyond Nicaraguan borders, these two-
fold domains––the mental and the cultural––are constituted within the same
meta-narrative of Western knowledge, quite opposite to the spiritual domain
in which Miskitu narratives circumscribe their health and wellbeing. The lat-
ter domain is where the healers’ knowledge and experience take relevance.59

Of course, the problem is not with the existence of such frames but rather
with the ways they have historically worked to subordinate and negate “other”
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 191

frames, “other” knowledge, and “other” subjects and thinkers. That is to say, the
problem is in the ways that critical thought in Latin America tends to reproduce
the meta-narratives of the West while discounting or overlooking the critical
thinking produced by indigenous, Afro, and mestizos whose thinking finds its
roots in other logic, concerns, and realities that depart not from modernity alone
but also from the long horizon of coloniality.60

As the discussion over Grisi Siknis and Miskitu thought shows, beyond the
validation of “local” knowledge to address communitarian health issues, what
seems to be needed is the acknowledgement of different sites of knowledge,
where Indigenous views of health and illness are part of critical knowledge:
“a collective mode of thinking produced and thought from difference . . .
knowledges lived and constructed within and marked by the context of colo-
nialism and its processes of subalternization and racialization; that is by the
common connector of coloniality.”61

APPROACHING DECOLONIZATION
AS A FINAL REMARK

The location of some voices in a hierarchical position over the voices of

“others” in the mainstream narratives of development is a main feature of
the hegemony of Westernized knowledge over “other” knowledges. This
hegemony is shown in the prominence of legitimized “scientific” voices to
validate Grisi Siknis as a relevant (public) health matter of the Miskitu popu-
lations in Nicaragua, rather than the voices of Miskitu people themselves,
whether they are traditional healers, community base organizations, commu-
nitarian leaders and/or those who, at the same time, are the ones experiencing
this illness directly.

How am I going to control them [Indigenous healers]? They speak for them-
selves. And they are the ones who know about this illness better than any of the
other presenters. I can’t control them, especially when I agree with them. How
can we have interculturalidad this way? We were given very little time to pres-
ent but Porcela [healer and prophet that works with Grisi Siknis] is presenting,
she has to present.62

The naturalization of biomedical and anthropologists’ voices as the autho-

rized to talk about the health of Indigenous people and its consequent silenc-
ing of Miskitu voices in the public narratives and of those who know about
Grisi Siknis, the traditional ancestral healers, give a clear message of what
is allowed by the Pacific Eurocentered authority. Miskitu people can talk but
just within the framework and control of biomedical knowledge, translated
192 Chapter 9

and brokered by anthropology, where Grisi Siknis is understood as “cultural

sickness” and happening only in Miskitu culture because of its beliefs.63
In this manner, the radically different onto-epistemic place from where the
Miskitu people speak is erased in the public narrative. Thus, the possibility of
a comprehensive intercultural process is also challenged, one in which social
and political mechanisms go accompanied by epistemic dialogue. The public
authority misses the opportunity to discuss Indigenous knowledge with their
main holders (healers) and interconnections (community and so forth), a mat-
ter of health relevant to all, non-Westerners and Westerners.

I think that even though this disease has been horrible for those communities,
it will probably help to promote the model, maybe finally they will pay more
attention to the curanderos [healers].64

Healers in particular did not subscribe to an interpretation of grisi siknis as

caused by economic conditions. As a healer argued, “We have always been
poor, if it were poverty [that causes Grisi Siknis], almost everyone here [in the
RACCN] would be affected.”65

The instrumentalization of the labor of traditional ancestral healers,

together with the negation of their voices as reflected in the discussion of
the Grisi Siknis forum, call attention to another issue of the hierarchical
positioning and negation of “other” knowledges. The healing work done by
traditional ancestral healers is reduced to a simplistic task of herbal cure done
by curanderos losing all the epistemic relevance that this healing process has
in Miskitu culture. Rivera Cusicanqui’s critical analysis of interculturality in
Bolivia describes how crucial activities carried out by Indigenous societies,
which are the axis of a worldview that represent other forms of sociability
different and alternative to that of the West, are represented as minor tasks,
dividing and positioning the intellectual work over the manual in a similar
manner as it has been done historically with the work of women.66
The conflictive relations between biomedical and traditional knowledge
can be traced at least to the 1920s—under US occupation. Ligia Peña points
out that between 1915 and 1928, a broader project of modernization in the
public health in the country, emulating the North American model of health,
imposed legal and penal mechanisms in the practices of healers, leaving them
in disadvantage in front of “professional” doctors and feeding negative per-
ception and stigmatized visions questioning the validity of their knowledge.67
Going back to the early written descriptions about Miskitu people by Bell
and Conzemius, the role of sukias (shamans) and spirits in curing maladies
particularly called my attention.68 Bell writes: “I have seen a young girl,
who was shrieking hysterically in a dreadful manner, carried in a canoe a
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 193

long distance to consult a celebrated sookia.”69 He also notes the presence of

sukias to cure sickness and protect from spirits in every village that he has
visited in the 19th century.70 In Conzemius, the quote is even clearer:

Presumed cause of diseases.—The cure of the sick is practically always left to

the sukva; the latter is generally a clever herbalist, and the treatment applied by
him is often excellent, but the remedy in itself is considered of no avail unless
certain rites are observed by the healer as well as by the patient. According to
these primitive people, indigenous diseases and accidents are always due to
the agency of some evil spirit (M.: lasa; T., P.: walasa; U.: nawal) under whose
power the sick person is supposed to be.71

The relevance of the healers in Miskitu worldview and in the com-

munities is far beyond the discussion of this article; oral history in many
Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities give account of powerful heal-
ers who were not only “herbalists,” but also leaders of their people and of
complex healing systems. Knowing this, how can we read Raiti’s experience?
In a moment when historical communitarian figures have been disap-
peared from institutional narratives, in a community where all the institutions
appear to be failing, in a context where the state intervention has impacted so
negatively the community fabric, it was striking the way that the community
understood and followed the healer and how Porcela Sandino moved without
translation from one health system to another, from the spiritual imbalance
to the biomedical condition of people with the full support of the Director of
the Health Centre. What can we learn as researchers, anthropologists, and so
forth, from this experience? Could we understand Porcela and her actions as
embodiments of interculturality?
As a mestizo social researcher looking at the experiences of Miskitu people
with Grisi Siknis, the answer will be probably “no,” I will not be able to
understand it in such a way with a Westernized critical lens. To do so, I would
have to give up what academia has taught me about critical thinking, and
attempt to decolonize my thoughts and practices, trying to craft a decoloniz-
ing practice of dialogue with and within subaltern groups. Rivera Cusicanqui
posits how oral histories become the place of emergence for collective
memories of struggle and resistance in the colonial experience; myth and
history recover their hermeneutic relation beyond the Cartesian distinction,
identifying the cyclical character of Indigenous resistance and retaking their
character as subjects of history. Oral history is a practice that links a structural
analysis with the colonial axis as the foremost articulator of the positioning
and hierarchization of our socities.72
194 Chapter 9

Oral history in this context is therefore much more than a “participatory” or

“action” methodology (where the researcher is the one who decides the orienta-
tion of the action and the modalities of participation): it is a collective act of
desalienation, both for the researcher as for their interlocutors. If this process
involves the combination of conscious interaction efforts among different sec-
tors, and if the basis of the exercise is mutual recognition as well as honesty
with respect to the place occupied in the “colonial chain,” the results will be so
much richer in this sense.73

CONCLUSION

Throughout 2017, more than five outbreaks of Grisi Siknis were reported.
The communities affected were located in the Northeastern part of the coun-
try, the last one in Walakitan.74 In all cases, there is a striking resemblance in
the way that public institutions perform their response in the public narrative,
presenting it as an adequate institutional response, and once again using tra-
ditional doctors without recognition of Indigenous knowledge.
For Miskitu cosmovision, dreams, spirits and harmonious relations (in the
community and with the non-human world) are key elements that constitute
medicine, or, in a broader perspective, healing processes and wellbeing.
Porcela Sandino opened a portal to another way of knowing. In discuss-
ing the institutional narratives about Grisi Siknis in Nicaragua, I am trying
to highlight that Westernized hegemonic views on illness continue to dis-
place traditional ancestral knowledge by using the knowledge and skills of
Indigenous healers and their success in their treatments without recognizing
of their knowledge, which is a way of knowing that cannot be replicated by
Westernized science.
Mainstream health discourses and practices about processes of illness in
Indigenous communities are mainly framed by the knowledge of the autho-
rized voices, whether they are biomedical doctors or anthropologists, and not
by the voices of Indigenous people or of their healers. The biomedical narra-
tives become the gatekeepers of the appropriate knowledge about the health
of the communities, and the anthropological narratives act as the authorative
translations of Miskitu life experiences. These perspectives guide and inform
decision-making processes concerning emergency health situations, which
are realized in a top-down logic without considering, or even disregarding,
the knowledge of the very Indigenous people who are supposed to receive the
health services in question.
In a broader analysis, this tendency in the construction and hierarchies
of knowledge is not unique to the Nicaraguan experience; instead, it is part
of the coloniality of power in Latin America, where a criolla version of
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 195

Eurocentric knowledge continues to be hegemonic, reinforcing the colonial

difference. Although such unequal power relations challenge the possibili-
ties of interculturality, Miskitu healers’ counter-narratives and practices open
alternatives for collective and spiritual ways to approach knowledge and
wellbeing when faced with individualistic Eurocentric views that fragment
and separate reality.
My invitation here is to go beyond the recognition of the validity of “local”
knowledge to the full acknowledgement of other epistemes and other ways of
understanding the world and of experiencing life and wellbeing.

NOTES

1. This article is in memory of Porcela Sandino Hemsly, beloved Miskitu traditional

healer who passed away on March 19, 2018. It is an expanded version of Jessica
Martínez-Cruz, “Whose Knowledge Counts? Harmony and Spirituality in Miskitu
Counter-Narratives,” in Latin American Perspectives on Global Development, eds.
Mahmoud Masaeli, Germán Bula, and Samuel Ernest Harrington (Newcastle Upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018), 309–29. There are contributions from
Serafina Espinoza (Institute of Traditional Medicine and Community Development
(IMTRADEC) - University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean
Coast (URACCAN), Marissa Olivares and Fernanda Soto (Central America Univer-
sity, UCA) and Goya Wilson (University of Bristol).
2. Johan Wedel, “Involuntary mass spirit possession among the Miskitu,” Anthro-
pology & Medicine 19, no. 3 (2012), 303–14; Heather Carrie, Tim K. Mackey, and
Sloane Laird, “Integrating Traditional Indigenous Medicine and Western Biomedicine
into Health Systems: a Review of Nicaraguan Health Policies and Miskitu Health
Services,” International Journal for Equity in Health 14, no. 129 (2015).
3. Kyle Whyte, “What Do Indigenous Knowledges Do for Indigenous Peoples?,” in
Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environ-
mental Sustainability. New Directions in Sustainability and Society, ed. M. Nelson &
D. Shilling, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018): 62.
4. I am using the term “Westernized” to refer not exclusively to a geographic
region. Instead, I use the concept in the sense of decolonial thought to speak of a
hegemonic thought embedded in the institutions of non-Western geographies. I use
the concept of “wellbeing” through this chapter to refer to a field that at the time of
writing this article in 2017 had been problematized in Nicaragua in two ways that I am
interested in highlighting: (a) as a counternarrative to the emphasis on development in
the public policies in Nicaragua—this includes each government since 1988 whether
named neoliberal or socialist, in both cases extractivists governments; the criticism
came mainly, but not only, from the visions of Indigenous and Afro-descendent
peoples in the country—, and, (b) as a counterweight to poverty studies that continue
to make scientific measurements without taking into account people considered as
“poor”—particularly I refer to the efforts of feminist women from the north of the
196 Chapter 9

country, aiming to raise attention to the different notions of happiness and collective
well-being of campesino and Indigenous women. In both forms, there are clear epis-
temological contributions that strain the official narratives of the nation state.
5. See Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,”
Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533. See also: Arturo Escobar, “Worlds
and Knowledges Otherwise: The Latin American Modernity/Coloniality Research
Program,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007); Catherine Walsh, “Shifting the Geo-
politics of Critical Knowledge: Decolonial Thought and Cultural Studies ‘Others’ in
the Andes,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007).
6. Quijano, “Coloniality,” 549.
7. Whyte, “ Indigenous Knowledges.”
8. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “El potencial epistemológico y teórico de la historia
oral: de la lógica instrumental a la descolonización de la historia,” Voces Recobradas,
Revista de Historia Oral 21 (2006): 13.
9. Carlos Rodriguez and Jeannette Hamersma, Las contrapartes en salud de
América Central y el Caribe. 25 años después de Alma Ata: Experiencia en cuatro
países (Guatemala: CORDAID, 2006).
10. Magda Sequeira, et al., The Nicaraguan Health System: An Overview of Criti-
cal Challenges and Opportunities (Seattle: PATH, 2011), https:​//​path​.azureedge​.net​/
media​/documents​/TS​-nicaragua​-health​-system​-rpt​.pdf.
11. “Regulatory Situation of Herbal Medicines: A Worldwide Review,” World
Health Organization, published 1998, 8–9, https:​//​apps​.who​.int​/iris​/bitstream​/handle​
/10665​/63801​/WHO​_TRM​_98​.1​.pdf​?sequence​=1​&isAllowed​=y.
12. “The Autonomy Statue (Law No. 28),” Centro de Asistencia Legal a Pueblos
Indígenas, published 2010, https:​//​www​.calpi​-nicaragua​.com​/the​-autonomy​-statute​
-law​-28​/.
13. Edgardo Ruíz, “Cultural Politics and Health: The Development of Intercultural
Health Policies in The Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua” (PhD diss., University of Pitts-
burg, 2006).
14. Carrie, Mackey, and Laird, “Integrating.”
15. Ibid., 4.
16. Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Sarah Zimmerman, and Richard Garfield, “To Decen-
tralize or Not to Decentralize, It That the Question? Nicaraguan Health Policy under
Structural Adjustment in the 1990s,” International Journal of Health Services 30,
no. 1 (2000); Miguel Gónzalez, “La Costa del comandante Campbell,” Confidencial,
published August 2015, https:​//​confidencial​.com​.ni​/archivos​/articulo​/22630​/la​-costa​
-del​-comandante​-campbell.
17. Tishany Morales Allum, untitled poem, quoted in Diana Castillo, et al., Mujeres
Jóvenes Multiétnicas Costa Caribe Sur, Participación Ciudadana y Violencia de
Género (Maryland: Global Communities, 2017), 34. Tishany, an Afro-Indigenous
poet from Pearl Lagoon in the South Caribbean of Nicaragua, performed her poetry
as her answer in a group interview of a research process between 2016 and 2017, in
which I participated as co-researcher. Her refusal to speak only about violence in gen-
der terms, illustrate how for these girls violence against Afro-Indigenous women and
girls cannot be separated from other forms of violence, state politics and, primarily,
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 197

from their claims about real autonomy. The above is only a piece of a longer poem
handwritten in its creole language.
18. Carrie, Mackey, and Laird, “Integrating.”
19. Wedel, “Involuntary.”
20. Carrie, Mackey, and Laird, “Integrating,” 5.
21. Pan-American Health Organization, Health Systems Profile in Nicaragua:
Monitoring and Analyzing Health Systems Change/Reform, 3rd ed. (Washington,
D. C.: PAHO, 2009), https:​//​www​.paho​.org​/hq​/dmdocuments​/2010​/Health​_System​
_Profile​-Nicaragua​_2008​.pdf; Sequeira, et al., Health System.
22. Ruíz, “Cultural Politics,” vi.
23. Avelino Cox, Cosmovisión de los pueblos de Tulu Walpa: Según los relatos
de los sabios ancianos miskitus (Managua: URACCAN, 1998); Avelino Cox, Sukias
y Curanderos, Isigni en la Espiritualidad (Managua, Nicaragua: URACCAN and
BID, 2003); Ana R. Fagoth, Fulvio Gioanetto, and Adan Silva, Wan Kaina Kulkaia:
Armonizando con Nuestro Entorno (Managua, Nicaragua: Imprimátur Artes Graficas,
1998).
24. Walsh, “Shifting,” 230.
25. Guía Latinoamericana de Diagnóstico Psiquiátrica, Asociación Psiquiátrica
de América Latina, Sección de Diagnóstico y Clasificación, 2003, http:​//​www​.sld​.cu​
/galerias​/pdf​/sitios​/desastres​/guia​_latinoamerticana​_diagn​_psiq​_gladp​.pdf; American
Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th
ed. (DSM-IV) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000); The ICD-10 Clas-
sification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders: Diagnostic Criteria for Research,
World Health Organization, published 1993, https:​//​www​.who​.int​/classifications​/icd​
/en​/GRNBOOK​.pdf.
26. Philip A. Dennis, “Part Three: Grisi Siknis Among the Miskitu,” Medical
Anthropology 5, no. 4 (1981).
27. Ibid.
28. Jorge Grumberg, presentation at a forum on Grisi Siknis, February 2004, Mana-
gua, Nicaragua, quoted in Ruíz, “Cultural Politics,” 188; Mark Jamieson, “Masks and
Madness: Ritual Expressions of the Transition to Adulthood among Miskitu Adoles-
cents,” Social Anthropology 9, no. 3 (2001).
29. Wedel, “Involuntary.”
30. Philip A. Dennis, “Grisi siknis una enfermedad entre los Miskitu,” Revista
Wani, no. 24 (December 1999); Jamieson, “Masks and Madness.”
31. Loyda Stamp, Prácticas de atención y tratamiento del Grisi siknis utilizadas
por los médicos tradicionales en los municipios Puerto Cabezas y Waspam (Mana-
gua: IMTRADEC-URACCAN, 2008).
32. Salvador García and Jessica Martínez-Cruz, Significados y trayectorias sobre
el bienestar y la felicidad: Una aproximación relacional y participativa Comunidades
del Alto Wangki y Bocay (Managua: Mimeo, 2014).
33. See: Cox, Sukias y Curanderos; Fagoth, Gioanetto, and Silva, Wan Kaina
Kulkaia; Cipriano Henríquez Levas, Norberto Chacón Mendoza, and Serafina Espi-
noza Blanco, “Percepción y prácticas de atención del Grisi siknis de la comunidad
de krin krin, Waspam, Río Coco,” Revista Caribe URACCAN 16, no. 1 (2016);
198 Chapter 9

Rigoberto Guido, Catalina Yunkiath, and Serafina Espinoza Blanco, “Percepción

sobre Isigni de la comunidad de Sawa, Waspam, Río Coco,” Revista Caribe URAC-
CAN 16, no. 1 (2016). See also: Charles Napier Bell, “Remarks on the Mosquito Ter-
ritory, its Climate, People, Productions,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society
32 (1862); Charles Napier Bell, Tangweera: Life and Adventures Among Gentle Sav-
ages (London: Edward Arnold, 1899); Eduard Conzemius, “Ethnographical Survey
of the Miskitu and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua,” Bureau of American
Ethnology Bulletin 106 (1932).
34. M1, M2, and M3 are used to distinguish the men, while I is used to distinguish
the interviewer; See: García and Martínez-Cruz, Significados y trayectorias, 26.
35. Fagoth, Gioanetto, and Silva, Wan Kaina Kulkaia.
36. Henríquez Levas, Chacón Mendoza, and Espinoza Blanco, “Percepción y
prácticas.”
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 16.
39. Dennis, “Enfermedad”; Jamieson, “Masks and Madness”; Bell, “Remarks”;
Conzemius, “Ethnographical Survey.”
40. Dennis, “Enfermedad,” 10; Jamieson, “Masks and Madness.”
41. “Las epidemias de grisi siknis en la Costa Atlántica,” IMTRADEC/URACCAN
(n.d); Stamp, Prácticas de Atención; Henríquez Levas, Chacón Mendoza, and Espi-
noza Blanco, “Percepción y prácticas.”
42. Bernadine Dixon and María Olimpia Torres, “Diagnóstico de género en las
Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe,” Cuaderno 3, Serie Cuadernos de Género
para Nicaragua, Banco Mundial (2008).
43. Rupert Widdicombe, “Nicaragua Village in Grip of Madness: Doctors and
Traditional Healers Reach Remote Jungle Community where 60 people are Suffering
from Mysterious Collective Mania,” The Guardian, published December 2003, http:​
//​www​.guardian​.co​.uk​/world​/2003​/dec​/17​/1.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. See numbers in Stamp, Prácticas de Atención.
47. For a resemblance of this thought, see Sandra Davis Rodríguez, Sasha Marley,
and Gerhild Trübswasser, Algo anda mal. El Bla o Wakni en el río Coco (RACCN:
URACCAN, 2006). In the text, adults sometimes accuse young people of lacking the
will to work and of being practitioners of black magic, particularly those who were
displaced and settled in Honduras in the early 1980s.
48. Ruíz, “Cultural Politics.”
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 196.
51. There is a very strong influential religious view coming from pastors of the
Moravian Church, historically the major religion adscription amongst the Miskitu
people, but this is not included in this analysis.
52. I have changed the original “Euro-American” term used in Sillitoe to echo Qui-
jano’s views. “America” has been a changing term through time deeply impacted first
by colonization and then by the imperialist vision of the United States of America.
 Jessica Martínez-Cruz 199

See Quijano, “Coloniality,” 574. By recalling an “American” vision in order to name

a country, and in this case a point of view, it is easy to deny the historical and cultural
realities of diverse places and geopolitics. For more on “Euro-American,” see Paul
Sillitoe, “Local Science vs. Global Science,” in Local Science vs. Global Science:
Approaches to Indigenous Knowledge in International Development, ed. Paul Sillitoe
(New York: Bergahn Books, 2007).
53. Emma Crewe, “The Silent Traditions of Developing Cooks,” in Discourses of
Development: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. R.D Grillo and R.L Stirrat (Oxford:
Berg, 1997).
54. Sillitoe, “Local Science,” 6.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Quijano, “Coloniality.”
58. This implies also that sciences are not influenced by culture (see, for instance,
Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1999), quoted in Sillitoe, “Local Science,” 6. A critique that many authors have
pointed out about development practices and health systems too.
59. Note here that not all the healers in the communities know and can treat suc-
cessfully Grisi Siknis.
60. Walsh, “Shifting,” 224.
61. Ibid., 231.
62. Director of IMTRADEC, forum on Grisi Siknis, February 2004, Managua,
Nicaragua, quoted in Ruíz, “Cultural Politics,” 182.
63. My idea is to highlight the ways that a Eurocentered production of knowledge
worked here to subordinate Miskitu cosmovision. It is not to blame anthropology; the
same logic applies to other social science disciplines when scientists intend to repre-
sent realities disregarding the knowledge of racialized communities.
64. Ruíz, “Cultural Politics,” 178–79.
65. Ibid., 182.
66. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Violencia (re)encubiertas en Bolivia (Bolivia, La
Paz: La Mirada Salvaje, 2010).
67. Ligia Peña Torres, “Entre curanderos y médicos: disputas por las prácticas
médicas curativas en el contexto de la modernización de la salud pública (1915–
1928),” presented at VI Congreso Centroamericano de Estudios Culturales, Managua,
Nicaragua, July 11–13, 2017.
68. Bell, “Remarks”; Bell, Tangweera; Conzemius, “Ethnographical Survey.”
69. Bell, Tangweera, 97.
70. Bell, “Remarks,” 253.
71. Conzemius, “Ethnographical Survey,” 123. The Eurocentric visions of Bell and
Conzemius and their interpretation of the Miskitu world vision give space for other
discussions. Here, what I want to note is the relevance of both the spiritual world and
sukias in the records regarding to experiences of Miskitu people in the last centuries,
those that could not be overlooked, even for the eyes of these Western authors.
72. Rivera Cusicanqui, “Potencial epistemológico.”
73. Ibid., 20–21.
200 Chapter 9

74. EFE, “Detectan nuevos casos de ‘locura colectiva’ en el norte de Nicaragua,”

El Nuevo Diario, published December 2017, https:​//​www​.elnuevodiario​.com​ ni​/
nacionales​/450267​-detectan​-nuevos​-casos​-locura​-colectiva​-norte​-nicar​/.
 Chapter 10

Fighting for Life with Our

Feet on the Ground
Anticolonial and Decolonial
Wagers from Indigenous and
Campesina Women in Mexico

‌‌ armen Cariño Trujillo

C
Translated by Amanda González Izquierdo

We have had to overcome much resistance to get here: from those who
hold power, who want to keep us divided and silent; from the rich in
Mexico, who want to have us as animals to exploit; from foreigners, who
take our best lands and want us as their slaves; from the military, who cage
our communities, rape us, threaten our children, bring in drugs, alcohol,
prostitution, and violence; from those who wish to think and act on our
behalf, who hate when we Indigenes speak up and who fear our rebellion.
. . . We have also come this far by overcoming the resistance of members
of our own communities who do not understand the importance of women
participating just like men.

––Comandanta Ramona during the First Indigenous Women’s Summit,

Oaxaca, 1997.

In this text I reflect on what I consider to be decolonial wagers that emerge

from the struggles of Indigenous and campesina women in Mexico.1 These
women, alongside their communities, build, sustain, defend, and create politi-
cal strategies for the defense of their lands and territories in the face of dis-
possession supported by the government as well as national and international
201
202 Chapter 10

enterprises. Their struggles and forms of resistance have generated processes

of decolonization that seek to shatter the models of “development” and
extractivism that threaten their territories and the lives they nurture.
The reflections I share here form part of a dialogue with my Indigenous and
campesina sisters who launch the struggles against various megaprojects and
who oppose the dispossession of their lands and territories. They are women
from the San Francisco Xochicuautla and the San Salvador Atenco communi-
ties in the State of Mexico and Triqui women displaced from the autonomous
municipality San Juan Copala in Oaxaca. As sisters in the struggle, we have
been reflecting on these topics in kitchens, on walks through the forests and
the lands that the government and big businesses want to take from them, in
marches, in the fields and campsites that they have cultivated and continue to
sustain materially, emotionally, spiritually, and politically. From these spaces
and with these women I look on, share, and reflect on what I consider are
decolonial wagers for the defense of life and the communal.
Even though only 32 percent of Indigenous and campesina women in
Mexico own land, they have been instrumental to the defense of lands and
territories.2 Not owning the land does not nullify the land-women relation.
Non-propriety has led them to establish other forms of connections to the
lands that go beyond “owning” them. Because of this, even though many of
them do not hold land titles, they nevertheless maintain ties to their lands by
developing territorialities based on celebrations, rituals, tenant farming, and
committees to manage the waters, the roads, tequio, etc.3 Rural Indigenous
and campesina women play a fundamental role in the defense of their territo-
ries when these are threatened.
The modern/colonial capitalist system has seen Indigenous women, their
communities, and their lands as objects to exploit since the beginning of
colonization. Consequently, it has also persecuted these women’s ways of
living and relating with their territories because it is this very relation to the
land that enables living in community. In this way, their modes of existing are
abnegated and their lands and territories are seen as commodities for national
and international enterprises in pursuit of territories rich in water, minerals,
forests, etc. These territories are sacred and integral to the reproduction of
the social, cultural, and material lives of their communities, not mere sites
for exploitation.
In the face of threats of extractivism waged against their territories,
Indigenous and campesina women have played an increasingly visible role
in the defense of shared resources, so much so that they have generated and
continue to generate theoretical and political proposals against dispossession,
making their participation continuously more forceful. Taking up the space
to raise their voices, reflect, propose, and analyze is met with challenges
both within and without their communities and movement. Women confront
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 203

spaces that often invalidate their ideas, which upset the patriarchal structures
within and without their communities. They are also invalidated for question-
ing the capitalist and racist system that continues to subordinate and deny
their existence, demands, and modes of being. This is the same system that
sees them as enemies and as obstacles to the concretization of political proj-
ects of dispossession, culminating in their murders, incarcerations, persecu-
tions, and the criminalization of their political participation.
Women put their bodies and souls into their participation, proposals, and
actions for the defense of land-territory. This puts them in the frontlines of
the struggle against the government and private enterprises scouting their
lands, making them targets of aggressions that have led to their persecu-
tion, incarceration, or murder. Women are defending their territories because
dispossession entails the rupture of their modes of being, the fragmentation
of their social and communal fabric, the threat to their ways of working and
organizing, the depravation of the fields that feed their families and constitute
their legacies, the dissolution of their families and communities, the distortion
of their social environment, the destruction of sacred sites, and the interrup-
tion of the continuity of communal life. Dispossession expels them from their
territories either through forced displacement or other, more subtle but no
less violent forms of displacement that prevent them from walking peacefully
along roads, hills, and rivers, and little by little strips them of their livelihoods
and their historical relation with their territories.
I therefore propose that these women’s struggles for the defense of their
lands question the capitalist, neoliberal, patriarchal, racist, and colonial sys-
tem and that they go beyond the traditional demands of hegemonic feminism,
which focuses on gender oppression without problematizing or even seeing
other forms of violence against women in diverse contexts and conditions.
Thus, community-based women’s struggles confront questions that go beyond
the scope of feminist demands to fight for their existence not just as women,
but as collectives. These women launch struggles based on epistemologies
and ontologies radically opposed to the logic of capitalist and racist moder-
nity/coloniality that for more than 500 years has sought to destroy everything
and everyone unaligned to the needs of those who self-attribute the right,
knowledge, and power—and therefore the superiority—to call them “others.”

COMMUNITY-BASED WOMEN’S STRUGGLES:

ANTI-AND DECOLONIAL WAGERS

Coloniality as a constitutive element of modernity has as its origin the con-

quest and colonization of Abya Yala in 1492, which marks the beginning
204 Chapter 10

of a new global order whose impact is still felt today, as per Yuderkys
Espinosa-Miñoso, Diana Gómez, and Karina Ochoa Muñoz:

Modernity came to be in 1492 as a new world-order, built upon a European sub-

jectivity that awarded itself a position of superiority-civility over the colonized
“others”: the Amerindians. The imposition of this presumption of European
“superiority” was translated into a will to power that held Western civilization
as the only replicable model at a global level, disavowing (overlaying) all other
cultures, assumed “barbarous,” “immature,” and/or “underdeveloped.” In this
way, coloniality, as subjectivity and epistemology, played a fundamental role in
the intellectual criticism of Our America, because it was understood as a found-
ing and constitutive element of modernity.4

Modernity/coloniality in turn established the claim of North-Eurocentric

superiority, which considers Europe as the beginning and end of History.
This superiority is sustained upon the negation of the humanity of the “oth-
ers,” as well as of their ways of knowing, thinking, creating, and living. Thus,
colonized peoples were considered “barbarous,” “savages,” “non-human.”
This colonial model of power (“patrón colonial de poder”) persists in spite
of the struggles for independence in our countries and constantly reaffirm
themselves through the construction of dichotomies and hierarchies that it
has imposed on all scopes of life. Ramón Grosfoguel has noted at least 14
overlapping global hierarchies that uphold what he calls the “European/Euro-
American,” “modern-colonial capitalist patriarchal world-system.”5
Coloniality also manifests as discourse and practice that simultaneously
proclaims the inherent inferiority of certain subjectivities and the colonization
of nature, reifying some subjects as dispensable and seeing nature as a mere
site of raw materials for the production of goods for the international market.6
Coloniality as a process of dehumanization persists and acquires new charac-
teristics. As Quijano notes, “in the past 500 years coloniality has proved to be
far more extensive and enduring than colonialism. Nevertheless, colonialism
was without a doubt engendered within coloniality; what’s more, without it,
it could not have been imposed on the intersubjectivity of the world in such
entrenched and prolonged ways.”7
Since coloniality is a current issue, decoloniality remains a pending issue.
Colonization has been for a long time the modus operandi of globalization.
Therefore, colonization reaffirms itself now, at the peak of neoliberal global-
ization, as “the continued impoverishment of racialized peoples, the invasion
of their territories by a new imperialism that seeks to make of them key pieces
in the triumph of the expansion of the logic of capital throughout the world.”8
As Frantz Fanon noted, “the colonized world is a world divided in two,”
and this dichotomous and hierarchical division of the world into the fortunate
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 205

and the condemned (damnés) has a colonial basis.9 In this context, gender
relations are also modified by colonialism. Thus, including the topic of gen-
der in the decolonial debate is not a minor task; gender is a central category
that, as Rita Segato has posited, is “capable of illuminating all other aspects
of the transformation imposed on the lives of communities once they are
captured by the new modern/colonial order.”10 In this respect, María Lugones
proposes that from the beginning of the colonial period, the colonized deemed
nonhuman could not be considered men and women and therefore only the
colonizers would be considered fully human.11 Accordingly, whenever it was
of colonial interest to exploit women as if they were men, they were treated as
if genderless, and when it was convenient, their female bodies were exploited
as the progenitors of the enslaved workforce.
Breny Mendoza has also argued that today “colonized societies con-
tinue to be genderless societies in a perverse way, not because they lack a
gender-based hierarchy like in the past, but because men and women have
been dispossessed of their humanities by the coloniality of power and the
coloniality of gender.”12 This is what María Lugones calls the dark side of the
modern/gender system that transforms the colonized being, and the colonized
woman in particular, into a being that can be mistreated, raped, exploited to
death, and eliminated with impunity, physically and culturally, from the face
of the earth.13
Today, more than 500 years after the start of colonialism, its voracity
increases and its eyes are set on lands-territories that have been guarded and
cared for by Indigenous peoples. Women of these communities have been
essential in the care and upkeep of these lands-territories, which is why their
protagonism in the struggle is increasingly visible. In the twenty-first cen-
tury we are facing a reiteration of the colonial reality, as Raúl Zibechi has
remarked, and thus the dichotomous and hierarchical structures are strength-
ened, as is the case for the human/nature binary.14 Carefully reflecting about
this binary is essential to understand the complexity of the struggles for the
defense of the land and territories being led by Indigenous peoples.
The continuity of this hierarchical and dichotomous construct has as its
fundamental axis not only dehumanization, but also the capacity to objectify,
to make into exploitable and disposable objects people and nature, animals,
waters, mountains, etc. In the logic of modernity/coloniality, nature is an
exploitable object, but for Indigenous peoples, nature is not an object and
thus, it is not negotiable, and it is not on sale. These opposing worldviews
manifest in conflict on a global scale that increases when Indigenous peoples
oppose projects of death that seek to dispossess them of their lands and
territories.
206 Chapter 10

In this context, it is necessary, following Sylvia Marcos, to devise new

conceptual tools that account for the specificities of gender oppression in
Indigenous and campesino/a contexts. In this regard, Indigenous and campe-
sina women propose a theory “rooted in their bodies and in matter, matter
which forms an unstable and fluid whole with nature and all the beings that
comprise it. It is not ‘theory’ of ideas and abstract concepts, of symbolic and
semiotic language. It is theory spoken, lived, felt, danced, smelled, touched.”15

THE STRUGGLE FOR NATURE-TERRITORY,

THE FIGHT FOR LIFE

The fight we have started does not end with the recuperation of the lands and
waters. Each day and each instant is the moment to fight for life and for every-
thing life gives us, the moment to fight for our children and for future genera-
tions. A long task awaits us in our society, and as women we know that we have
the right to act and to participate.16

––María Antonia Ramírez, Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Madre Tierra-

Xochicuautla, 2015.

The struggle for land is not recent. When the conquistadors invaded the
continent, each of the Indigenous peoples had their own land propriety sys-
tems, based on a communal and sacred understanding, so they did not think
of themselves as owners of the land, but as its guardians; land was not an
object that could be sold or owned. For this reason, the dispossession of land
denoted, from the beginning of European colonization, an attack on life and
on the existence of native populations.
In post-independence Mexico, communal lands were harshly attacked; the
criollos who ascended to power considered the collective ownership of land
an obstacle to the nation’s progress. The so-called Leyes de Reforma and Ley
de Colonización y Titulación de Terrenos Baldíos (Laws of Reform and Law
of Colonization and Titulation of Vacant Lands, more commonly just “Land
Tenure Laws”) had as their objective the privatization of land and the disso-
lution of Indigenous territories.17 The collective discontent at the disposses-
sion led the people to organize a Revolution, buttressed by men and women,
Indigenous and campesinxs, whose principal demand was the restitution of
their lands. The most important accomplishment was the creation of ejidos
(communal lands), proclaimed in Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution,
leading to the creation of 28,965 ejidal lands with an area of 85,148,116
hectares.18 Nevertheless, in spite of this achievement of great relevance that
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 207

resulted in 54.1% of the Mexican territory being socially owned, the titles for
existing lands and waters­­––what constitutes their territorial space––remained
in the jurisdiction of the state. Stemming from this control that the state exerts
over lands and waters is its authority to accord them to individuals and it is
the form in which the land is bestowed that determines whether it is private
or social (ejidal, or, communal) property.19 Thus, the last word on land owner-
ship was constitutionally granted to the nation and not to Indigenous peoples.
In 1992, the Mexican state promotes the reform of Article 27 of its
Constitution. Modifications are made to regulate ejidal lands under the pre-
text of providing legal certainty and avoiding conflicts. Thus begins another
stage of threats to communal ownership that paves the way for private capital
by reinvigorating the land market.
For Indigenous peoples, the land is a territorialized space. It is not simply
a geographical place or a commodity; rather, the land-territory is material,
social, historical, cultural, symbolic, and sacred and it grants meaning to the
lives of the people and the communities that have inhabited it generation after
generation. It is through the land-territory that men and women collectively
build and project their conception of the world and establish their modes of
living founded upon the relationship with this territory inherited from their
ancestors. Therefore, without the territories, the peoples (los pueblos) do
not exist.
In Mexico and in many corners of the continent, women lead the struggles
for the defense of land-territory, as members of a people, always as a collec-
tive. The struggles in recent years have been against wind farms, airports,
highways, dams, oil companies, hydroelectric plants, etc. All these extractiv-
ist projects appear to the peoples living in the lands-territories as neocolonial
projects that continue to see Indigenous lands as sites to colonize. Through
these struggles for land-territories, women confront the modern-colonial-
capitalist-neoliberal logic that continues to see them, their peoples, their ter-
ritories, and the Pachamama as objects to be exploited; for this reason, they
posit that their struggle is for life and against the logic of coloniality.
The women who belong to Indigenous and campesina communities in
many parts of the continent define their struggles on the basis of the defense
of the land, waters, forests, mountains––in other words, on the basis of the
defense of life. For these women, their individual rights are interwoven with
the collective’s rights, with the rights of Mother Earth, and it is not possible
to think them separately. It is from this notion of interlinkage that they defy
and challenge the canons of knowledge production and theorize, analyze
their realities, and establish new anticolonial and decolonial practices and
discourses. The struggles against dispossession and the destruction of Mother
Earth are struggles against a way of understanding and creating the world
that sees only economic gains, money, and individual benefit, as opposed to
208 Chapter 10

other ways of seeing and creating worlds in which relationality and caring for
multiple forms of life are of the utmost importance. Forging these anticolo-
nial and decolonial struggles entails recognizing that these sites of women’s
struggles are also sites of knowledge production.
For Trinidad Ramírez, from the San Salvador Atenco community, “us
women are willing to defend the earth because it is Life, to put our bodies
and hearts on the line to defend it. We will not allow a capitalist system to
impose itself upon and make decisions about our territories, lives, bodies,
and communities.”20 The struggles and contributions of these women––who
in the vast majority of cases do not self-identify as feminists––pose important
challenges to hegemonic feminism because they question the universal notion
of woman along with the presumed demands that are particular to women.
I believe that the actions, words, ideas, and proposals of community-based
Indigenous and campesina women contribute key elements to the radical cri-
tique of hegemonic feminism that began decades ago with other racialized,
Black, Indigenous, and campesina women.
There is no epistemic and theoretical decolonization without material
decolonization, nor is there a single form of decolonization. This is why my
thought is in plural and ongoing, with the struggles of women with their feet
firmly on the ground born out of specific and politically committed contexts
for the defense of life and the communal. The struggles of Indigenous and
campesina women who grow up in the mountains, deserts, and valleys are
built on quotidian sites of resistance: in community work, assemblies, cel-
ebrations, manifestations, etc. It is from there that they theorize, think, and
fashion new strategies of resistance, as well as new ways of defending life.
In the face of deadly projects that currently threaten their lands and territo-
ries, women have risen up, defending their forms and modes of living, their
sons and daughters’ birthright, and Mother Nature. They are housewives,
farm workers, artisans, they prepare food, cultivate crops, and live the daily
struggle alongside their communities’ men, children, and elderly. In most
cases, they are the first to go out to protest, organize, and convene men and
women to organize, to not give in, to defend what is theirs. Women have
defended the land, as have men, laying down their bodies, fighting the police
that guard machinery that arrives to their communities to destroy forests,
lagoons, rivers, valleys, mountains, jungles. Women have not rested because
they know what these projects presage, and they and their peoples will find it
increasingly difficult to meet their needs because many of these projects will
in the short or long term involve forced displacement, water and air pollution,
the rise of unknown diseases, as well as the loss of plants and animals that
also inhabit those territories. For these reasons they fight and muster up the
strength to oppose dispossession.
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 209

The contributions of Indigenous and campesina women are, from my

perspective, fundamental to critically rethink enlightened, hegemonic, rac-
ist, and classist feminism. Beginning with the defense of the land and their
territories, these women rework women’s demands and generate an other
political practice that reveals interlocking oppressions. Departing from these
struggles, they question the capitalist system that sees commodities in their
bodies-territories and challenge the racist logic that sees them and the men
of their communities as exploitable, disposable, and deserving of dispos-
session. From there they problematize the patriarchal system that oppresses
them as women.
The struggles of Indigenous and campesina women take place in different
spaces: against national and international capital and the neoliberal govern-
ments that intend to dispossess them and inside their own communities,
where they question the patriarchal, racist, and sexist order that, though
imposed from the outside, is reproduced within their families and communi-
ties and keeps them in positions that make their participation even more diffi-
cult. It is a simple reality that inside their own communities, there is no equity
in the relationships between men and women. In that sense, the violence that
women face is also reproduced inside their own families and communities.
Their struggle must therefore take place on multiple fronts.
Women refuse to be mere “companions” to their male counterparts in their
struggles and they play the leading role in the production of proposals, analy-
ses, and pathways to the strengthening of their resistance. In this way they
propose creative ways to launch movements, convoke and actively participate
in community assemblies, prepare food, develop resources to sustain their
struggles, make public denouncements, and make appearances in university
campuses or spaces they had never been before to make their voices heard
and demand their rights as Indigenous women and as members of native
populations with ancestral rights.
These women’s struggles call into question the notion that “women”
are primarily concerned with gender-based violence and discrimination.
Indigenous women know that this is a major problem in their daily lives, but
it is not the only one and they face other forms of violence that neoliberal
capitalism and coloniality reproduce on their bodies and lives at an indi-
vidual level but also at a collective level inside their communities. They are
distinctly aware of the importance of fighting from within to transform the
systems of oppression that have relegated them to the least privileged posi-
tions, but at the same time they recognize their own capacity to enact change.
They also fight from without, against the system that seeks to deprive them of
their right to a harmonious life in their territories as members of an ancestral
peoples. Therefore, their struggles are aimed at the defense of their land-terri-
tories, which is the defense of life as a whole. As women who are members of
210 Chapter 10

collectivities with their own modes of existing, they have, since the beginning
of colonization, been considered an obstacle for plans of “development,” first
for the colonizers, and then for the nation-state.
These women’s struggles are not isolated from the struggles of their people
but are interwoven with the demands of their communities: the concerns
of the collective are the concerns of the individual and to think of them
separately is simply not possible. In that sense, these women’s demands issue
from the weight of interlocking oppressions on their bodies and on their lives
as people who are part of a community. This is why I think that the wagers
these women make go beyond gender-based demands and in this sense these
wagers are more radical because they entail the defense of life in the multi-
plicity of its expressions and they question the structures of oppression within
and without their communities.
It is important to note that these wagers are not new and that it has
been Black and Indigenous feminists who, for several decades now, have
denounced overlapping oppressions based on their concrete realities. These
contributions have insisted on the existence of a global capitalist system (neo-
liberalism) in which racism, sexism, and classism exist as entities that can-
not be separated. This intermingling of oppressions has taken many names:
manifold and simultaneous oppressions, matrix of domination, intersection-
ality, inter-relatedness of oppression, and triple oppression.21 Ever since the
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994, Zapatista women have denounced
the violence they suffer as not only due to their gender. Comandanta Esther
noted: “We have to fight more because as indigenous we are triply looked
down upon: as indigenous women, as women, and as poor women.”22
Indigenous women recognize a realm of existence beyond the material.
They defend these other realms, too, which include the sacred and the guard-
ians of the forest, the river, and the mountain, because they are fundamental to
existence itself. These realms, considered by the logic of modernity to be irra-
tional, are ones they recognize alongside their communities. They resort to
that “irrationality” because it is from there that they forge other, non-colonial
relations whose demands do not assume an anthropocentric vision according
to which the human owns everything that exists. They therefore reinforce
“irrational” practices and knowledges and from there promote resistances in
favor and defense of life.
Their wagers seek to overcome the theory-practice binary: women dis-
cuss, theorize, and analyze the conditions in which they make decisions, and
know that they face corporations with national and international capital as
well as their government-represented interests. From this space they think,
act, and generate “other” theoretical-political reflections. Women defenders
of life have been able to walk, learn, discuss, contribute, theorize, and act
as part of the struggle itself—the struggle for life. Thus, the dichotomous
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 211

and hierarchical separation of individual/community and individual/nature

is questioned in their concrete sites of resistance to reaffirm that the indi-
vidual—be it man or woman—cannot be thought without community or the
relationship with nature. Nature is not an object divorced from the individual;
it is Pachamama, madrecitatierra, which provides sustenance, the sacred, life
and that is why communities gather in it and ponder what is at stake, for it is
not possible to live except in relation to everything that inhabits the territo-
ries, humans and non-humans alike.
These community women are aware of the power they have, but also of the
risk of being seen as enemies of the capitalist system and the governments
that promote it. They are repressed, threatened, dispossessed, displaced, mur-
dered, not just because they are women but because they are poor Indigenous
women who are tough and conscientious and who know to raise their voice
and make themselves heard. Being women does not exempt them from the
repression, criminalization, and death to which their male counterparts are
subjected. They, too, are prosecuted, threatened, tortured, incarcerated, dis-
placed, or raped.
In these struggles, decoloniality is not a project of returning to the past,
but a project of sowing the seeds of the present and the future, always with
an eye to the past. These struggles are formed with our feet on the ground
and with the roots this ground grants and they are expressed in “other” epis-
temologies and ontologies––non-Western ways of seeing the world that have
resisted colonization. These are worldviews that could not be annihilated, that
persisted and continue to persist, and that people never stopped holding and
renewing against the colonizer.
Colonial domination inaugurated a violent transformation of community
relations that guaranteed the dispossession and exploitation of the colonized
with the end goal of fracturing the ways of life of Indigenous peoples, thereby
preventing their resistance. For this reason, coloniality sought to destroy their
vital spaces and their modes of life. In spite of this, colonial history is marked
by stories of resistance and anticolonial and decolonial wagers ranging from
the quotidian to armed rebellions. Colonialism, as well as the coloniality it
produces, is a reality and today it finds itself in a state of greater intensification
as multiple mechanisms generate the conditions for its global reproduction.
Today the colonial crusade requires bodies at its service, springs, mountains,
minerals, winds, rains, ancestral wisdom, genetic information, etc., and the
main obstacle to this predatory system are communities in resistance.
Therefore, Indigenous campesina women and Black racialized women
do not speak only of the liberation of women and many of them do not call
themselves feminists. When women participate in struggles alongside their
communities, they fight for their rights as women, but they do not do so as a
separate fight from the defense of their lands and territories, for they affirm
212 Chapter 10

that they cannot speak of their rights as women when their territories are
being pillaged. This does not mean that their rights as women take a back
seat, but rather that they cannot think as either individuals or collectives
without the territories that guarantee them life.
The struggles of Indigenous and campesina women call into question the
methods and demands of hegemonic feminist theory to the extent that it does
not account for the realities of racialized women in our own contexts. And
in that sense,

White-bourgeois feminism that aspires to overcome “gender inequality” or the

domination and oppression of women is no longer just unsustainable, but also
an impediment to a real transformation that disrupts the modes of community
social organization and of the historical-political-economic order as a whole and
that reverses the notion of the human against the non-human and the episteme of
hierarchical differentiation between what is considered the one and the other.23

Hegemonic feminism has seldom concerned itself with these women’s

struggles since these women’s demands do not correspond to their own.
Hegemonic feminists see Indigenous campesina women as “guardians of cul-
ture,” not as ideologues, activists, radical thinkers within their communities,
women who question the interlocking oppressions to which they are subjected
alongside the men of their communities and fight against these oppressions to
create an other world. Faced with this deadly system, the struggles of these
women and their communities pose a radical decolonial wager for life.
When speaking of the commitment to life, I am not only referring to a
wager for human life, but for life in its multiple expressions: water, wind,
rain, animals, mountains, the sacred. The defense of territory and the sacred
that exists within this wager for life is another element that radically ques-
tions the principles of enlightened modernity in its placing of man above
other beings that inhabit the planet. The human/nature binary places the
former as superior in a hierarchical relation that does not coincide with the
cosmovision of Indigenous peoples. So the demands of Indigenous women
are not limited to the recognition of their rights as people, as women, but
instead concern themselves with the defense of life in all its forms. Therefore,
the demands of Indigenous women who fight alongside their communities go
beyond the demands of hegemonic feminism and pose radical challenges to
their principles.

Conclusion
My parents are the lake and the mountains.
My siblings are the peoples who defend life.
­­––San Salvador Atenco, Texcoco, Mexico.
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 213

Second Meeting on the Defense of the Lake

We will win this fight. . . . the river said so.

––Berta Cáceres (1969–2016)

Indigenous and campesina women fight from their kitchens, fields, and
streets, protest inside and outside their homes, organize the sowing of the plot,
select the seeds, know nature’s cycles, and speak in their assemblies, making
contributions and motivating the men and women of their communities to
participate in the struggle for the defense of their land-territories, which is
to say, in the struggle for the defense of their lives. The paths they pave con-
tribute to the theoretical-practical and political construction of anticolonial
and decolonial wagers that question multiple forms of oppression. Yet these
women’s struggles are not always recognized by hegemonic feminism, which
believes that they are not sufficiently aware of gender oppression. Hegemonic
feminism, then, sees these women as passive victims incapable of liberating
themselves, but reality shows us otherwise.
The struggles of Indigenous and campesina women are not new: they
have their origins in daily life, where our mothers, grandmothers, and sisters
resist against the current predatory capitalist system. They defend themselves
against the false idea of progress and modernity/coloniality imposed by neo-
liberal governments and multinational corporations that threaten their sacred
lands and territories as well as their forms and ways of life. Indigenous and
campesina women fight their battles with their feet on the ground and occupy
a radical space aware of the multiple forms of oppression that are part of
everyday life. From there, they recognize that not all women are equal and
that only by recognizing not just our differences, but also the hierarchies that
affect us, will we be able to build bridges and bring about change to really
transform our conditions.
The struggle of women in defense of land-territory does not pretend to
“save” others, but intends the defense of the communal, which allows for
the continuation of life for the collectives that inhabit the territories. They do
not build a “them,” but an “us.” The war against the peoples is a reality and
women and men, as well as the waters, forests, winds, mountains, and every-
thing that exists in the territories are targets of oppression. The community
women in the struggle for the defense of land-territory know that their fight
is for life in all its expressions and it is therefore fundamental to recognize
that the battlefronts are multiple and inseparable. These struggles are the way
forward if we want to build a world where all worlds belong.
214 Chapter 10

NOTES

1. Mine is a willful choice not to translate campesina/o. Campesinxs are people

who not only work the land, but also have an intimate relation with it. Their ways of
life are inextricably tied to the land, as they do not only work in rural areas, but also
live there and their labor is a form of sustenance and community. This community
aspect is a cornerstone of the culture associated with the lifestyle of campesinos.
Thus, the term “farm-worker” is not appropriate because it does not connote the
culture of this life and work. I also reject “peasant,” a popular translation, both for its
derogatory connotations of ignorance and because it does properly signify that to be
a campesinx is to hold an honorable profession. I also take this opportunity to note
that translations of epigraphs are my own.––Trans.
2. “Más tierra para las mujeres, mejor seguridad alimentaria para todos,” Orga-
nización de las Naciones Unidas para la Alimentación y Agricultura (FAO), pub-
lished 2013, http:​//​www​ fao​.org​/americas​/noticias​/ver​/es​/c​/320313​/.
3. Tequio is an Indigenous concept referring to community work for collective
benefit.––Trans.
4. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, Diana Gómez, and Karina Ochoa Muñoz, eds,
Tejiendo de otro modo: Feminismo, epistemología y apuestas descoloniales en Abya
Yala (Popayán: Universidad de Cauca, 2014), 28.
5. Ramón Grosfoguel, “The Implications of Subaltern Epistemologies for Global
Capitalism: Transmodernity, Border Thinking, and Global Coloniality,” in Critical
Globalization Studies, eds. Richard P. Appelbaum and William I. Robinson (New
York/London: Routledge 2005), 284, 289.
6. Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “La descolonización y el giro des-colonial,” Revista
Tabula Rasa, no. 9 (July-December 2008): 64.
7. Aníbal Quijano, “Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social,” in Cuestiones y
horizontes: De la dependencia histórico-estructural a la colonialidad/descolonialidad
del poder, ed. Danilo Assis Clímaco (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2014): 325.
8. Maldonado-Torres, “Descolonización,” 64.
9. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York:
Palgrave, 2004): 3.
10. Rita Segato, “Género y colonialidad: del patriarcado de bajo impacto al
patriarcado moderno,” in Des-posesión: Género, territorio y luchas por la autode-
terminación, eds. Marisa Beausteguigoitia Rius and María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo
(Mexico: PUEG-UNAM, 2015), 332.
11. María Lugones, “Colonialidad y género: Hacia un feminismo descolonial,”
trans. Pedro DiPietro with María Lugones, in Género y descolonialidad, ed. Walter
Mignolo, (Ediciones de Signo, 2008), 47.
12. Breny Mendoza, Ensayos de crítica feminista en Nuestra América (Mexico:
Herder Editorial, 2014), 53 (emphasis by the author).
13. Ibid., 54.
14. Raúl Zibechi, Latiendo resistencia: Mundos nuevos y guerras de despojo
(Oaxaca, Mex: El Rebozo, 2015), 16.
 Carmen Cariño Trujillo 215

15. Sylvia Marcos, “Feminismos en camino descolonial,” in Más allá del femi-
nismo: Caminos para andar, ed. Márgara Millán (Mexico: UNAM, 2014), 21.
16. María Antonia Ramírez, member of Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Madre
Tierra in the San Francisco Xochicuautla community, in the municipality of Lerma
in the state of Mexico, in personal communication on November 15, 2015. Frente de
Pueblos en Defensa de la Madre Tierra was created to defend the Otomí-Mexica sacred
forest after the 2006 announcement of the construction of the Naucalpan-Toluca Air-
port Highway, a private highway whose layout affects 230 hectares of the forest and
the lives of the communities in the region, among other things. Since then, the com-
munities directly affected have founded the Frente and have been fighting against the
imposition of this project by the Mexican government and Grupo Higa, the Mexican
company that received the permit for the construction of the highway.
17. Francisco López Bárcenas, “Territorios indígenas y conflictos agrarios en
México,” Estudios Agrarios 12, no. 32 (2006): 91.
18. Francisco López Bárcenas, ¡La tierra no se vende! Las tierras y los territo-
rios de los pueblos indígenas en México, 2nd ed (Mexico: CLASCO, EDUCA A.C,
ProDESC, COAPI, Centro Intradisciplinar para la Investigación de la Recreación,
2017), 82.
19. Ibid., 79–80.
20. Trinidad Ramírez, personal communication with author, March 15, 2016.
Trinidad Ramírez is a member of Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra (FPDT)
in San Salvador Atenco, state of Mexico. In 2002, under the slogan “La tierra no
se vende, se ama y se defiende” (“The Land is not for Trading, it is for Loving and
Defending”), stopped the expropriation of 5,000 hectares on which the Mexican
government wanted to build an airport. Since then, Trinidad is an acclaimed member
in her community and in Mexico for her fight for the defense of the land, a fight that
has not stopped and which resulted in the definitive cancellation of the airport project
in November 2018. [The literal translation of the 2002 slogan is “The Land is Not for
Sale, it is Loved and Defended,” but I choose to translate it as “The Land is not for
Trading, it is for Loving and Defending” to keep the rhyme of the original.––Trans.]
21. The Combahee River Collective, “A Black Feminist Statement,” Women’s Stud-
ies Quarterly 42, no. 3/4 (2014): 271; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought:
Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd edition (London:
Routledge, 2014), 18; Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race
and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory
and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 140;
bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Cambridge: South End Press,
1984), 14; Indigenous women of the Zapatista Uprising of 1994.
22. “International Day of the Rebel Woman,” in Dissident Women: Gender and
Cultural Politics in Chiapas, eds. Shannon Speed, R. Aída Hernández Castillo, and
Lynn M. Stephen (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 28.
23. Espinosa Miñoso, Gómez and Ochoa Muñoz, Tejiendo, 31.
 Chapter 11

Resisting, Re-existing, and

Co-existing (De)spite the State
Women’s Insurgencies for
Territory and Life in Ecuador

‌‌Catherine Walsh

We continue and we will continue

cultivating life, and flowering rebellion.

––Katy Machoa1

For María Lugones,

long-time friend and comrade of struggle,

who asked me to write this text.

In Ecuador, as in much of the territory long ago baptized “Latin America”

by colonial invaders, the Church, and creole elite, history erases women––
women´s subjectivities, agency, and voice––and, most especially, women-led
struggles. It is a history of geopolitical, hetero-patriarchal, and racialized
nature, project, and form. The violence of this history continues until today,
replicated and reconstructed in what Breny Mendoza calls the male ethos of
state, an ethos reified in the ten-year reign of Ecuador’s “progressive” presi-
dent Rafael Correa.2

217
218 Chapter 11

Although my interest here is not with the state per se, the project of
Correa’s state and its authoritarian, patriarchal, racialized, gendered, hetero-
normative, and extractivist politics are what give context and reason to this
chapter. My interest instead is with the herstories of resistance, re-existence,
and co-existence that spite this state.3 Most especially, it is with the emergent
and rising insurgencies of community-based women to defend territory and
life against the spoliation, pillage, land grabbing, destruction, and death that
in Ecuador is the state-led capitalist extractivist policy-project.
Of course, the very idea of women’s insurgencies challenges not only the
male ethos of state, but also the male ethos present in many––if not most––of
Indigenous and Black communities. While women have always been a fun-
damental––if not central––part of territory-based struggles, seldom are they
recognized, even within communities themselves, as protagonists, insurgents,
leaders, and carriers of the struggle, of knowledge, and of the word.
In the last couple of years of his life, Juan García Salazar, “worker of the
process” and guardian of Afro-Pacific oral tradition and collective memory,
recognized his own omissions in this regard:

For so many years I have assumed that the words and teachings of Abuelo
(Grandfather) Zenón represent the voice of collective memory of the Afro-Pacific,
that the words of Zenón are also present in the memory of women, including
my Abuela Débora. The absence of the voice-seed of Abuela Débora and all
the Abuelas in my texts reflect my “de-formación” (my bad training) that is part
of the coloniality of gender that makes us (males) think that the man represents
the woman. This is not my intention, nor is it my thought. Today I recognize the
pending debt, a charge that is not only mine but of all Afro-Ecuadorian men and
women, especially women in making visible their own thinking and planting (of
seeds of memory and thought) as and for women, but also as teachings for all.4

The foundational texts of María Lugones have taught us that the colonial-
ity of gender permeates virtually all territories, spaces, places, and aspects of
life.5 It is part of a patriarchal and racialized geopolitics that works globally,
nationally, and in urban, rural, and ancestral communities not only to omit,
negate, and exclude, but to also render extraordinary and strange women-led
and women-conceived insurgencies. When recognition does appear, it is most
often as individual, isolated, and exemplary cases sometimes long after the
women have died. Such are the cases in Ecuador of Dolores Cacuango and
Tránsito Amaguaña, historical Kichwa figures––Cacuango in the 1940s and
Amaguaña in the 1960s––described by the Kichwa intellectual and lawyer
Nina Pacari as “pioneers in the struggle, not only for land and education, but
also for their philosophical profoundness.”6 Similarly, in the Black ancestral
lands of the Afro-Andean Chota-Mira Valley, the eighteenth century freedom
 Catherine Walsh 219

fighter Martina Carrillo has become in recent years “the” historical female
figure, as if there were and have been no others.
The passing in 2017 of another Black woman leader and native of this
Valley, Doña Zoila Espinoza, further exemplifies the problem. “Mama
Zoilita,” as she was known by many, carried in her body both the wisdom and
struggle of her female ancestors. In announcing her passing, the public and
private media was quick to laud her folkloric contributions in the realms of
music and dance. Folklore, of course, is the acceptable domain of recognition
in the racist and sexist society that is contemporary Ecuador. Rendered invis-
ible was her leadership among women of all ages, and most especially with
other women elders, in defense of territory, territory-based knowledges, and
women-based collective memory, that which for centuries has sustained life
despite the violences of enslavement, internal colonialism, and state.
Of course, the problem here is not with much due recognitions. Rather, it
is with the ways “national” (that is, public nation-based) recognitions work to
shroud––to make invisible and relegate as non-existent––the multiple, ongo-
ing, and everyday knowledges, practices, and forms of Indigenous and Black
women’s subjectivity, agency, and insurgency of resistance, re-existence, and
co-existence. But the problem is also of the persistence of a patriarchal and
male-dominated framework and logic, including in rural communities, that
portends to define leadership, insurgency, and struggle.
For example, and despite Indigenous cosmological-cultural claims of gen-
der parity, complementarity, alliance, and relation, men remain the “usual”
protagonists and leaders of both Andean and Amazonian community-based
Indigenous governance and organization. While a man and woman may
together assume leadership roles, or while men and women may occasionally
alternate roles, men typically delineate and circumscribe the criteria, model,
relational sphere, and voice of “leader.” The lived experience of a Nasa
cabildo leader in southern Colombia’s Cauca region is illustrative:

My leadership is constantly put in question just because I am a woman; some

immediately look to highlight my weaknesses and faults, and many of the
women who I thought would support and ally with me in a collaborative and
communal sense lead the scrutiny and critique. I thought it would be possible
to build a different practice of leadership: collective, communal, and relational
in a much more female-sense, of women thinking and acting together. Instead I
find myself mostly alone in this pursuit. The logic and frame remain that of men,
generalized as cultural and cosmological by most in the community.7

The concerns of this leader as well as those of this chapter are not with the
role of individual women in leadership, nor are they with increasing female
representation. While such concerns–––part of the Western principle and logic
220 Chapter 11

of equality––may be important for white, whitened, and urban feminisms

and feminists, they are not typically so for grassroots and community-based
Indigenous and African-descended women. “There is a code at work in the
question about women’s role and representation in communities and commu-
nity leadership,” Nina Pacari contends, “and this code is Western in logic and
stance.”8 Undoing the centrality and supposed universality of this code can,
as this chapter will suggest, open and push considerations of and toward femi-
nism’s pluriversals, including with respect to women-led insurgencies, strug-
gles, praxis, and thought. Some may refer to this resurgence and insurgence
of thought-action as feminist, locating it within the pluriversal of decolonial
feminisms present beyond and despite the West. As we will see later, others,
particularly women from rural communities, tend to shy away from this label.
The aim of this chapter is to make present the increasing force (most espe-
cially in Ecuador) of women-conceived and women-led struggles; that is, of
insurgencies understood as collective actions, strategies, and methodologies/
pedagogies of praxis that do not only resist but, more crucially, create and
construct possibilities of re-existence, co-existence, and inter-existence (that
is, of life). The focus, in specific, is with the Indigenous women-led insurgen-
cies that sustain and re-vindicate life against the violences of global capital,
its patriarchal and colonial culture, and its project of pillage, spoliation, land
grabbing, destruction, and death. It is with the insurgencies and praxis of
resistance, re-existence, and co-existence for life that in the specific case of
Ecuador contest, dispute, and challenge the so-called progressive state and
(now ex) President Rafael Correa’s three-pronged amalgam, project, and
rallying cry of extractivism, anti-poverty development, and modernization.9
The organization of the chapter is in three parts. The first is focused on the
politics, policies, and problematic of Ecuador’s “progressive” state under the
reign of the now ex-President Rafael Correa. It moves from a brief descrip-
tion of the 2008 Constitution to a consideration of the foundational triad
President-Government-State and its three-pronged project of extractivism–
antipoverty development–modernization which defined and organized the
“Citizens Revolution,” also referred to, more broadly, in its earlier years, as
Twenty-first Century Socialism and in the last years as Twenty-first Century
Capitalism. The second part opens reflection on women-led insurgencies, giv-
ing specific attention to the insurgent praxis, most especially of Amazonian
women, against the state project of extractivism–as development–as mod-
ernization. It explores the strategies, methodologies/pedagogies, and praxis
of these insurgencies and considers how they create and construct ways to
resist, persist, re-exist, and co-exist against and despite state, giving credence
to the Constitution’s plurinationalizing, interculturalizing, and decolonizing
propositions and intentions. Finally, the third part affords broader reflections
on feminism’s pluriversal and the otherwise that is decolonial praxis.
 Catherine Walsh 221

Suffice it to say that this is not an ethnographic study, a research-based

analysis, an academic treatise, or a theory-inspired paper. It is reflective, in
great part, of ongoing conversations and participation over the course of the
last three decades in Ecuador, in social movement and community-based
processes and struggles (at the movements’ and communities’ request). In
addition, it is reflective of my own active involvement in the conceptualizing
and making of Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution and in the collective hope-filled
processes to build a radically distinct social and political project, processes
which were undercut by Correa’s government and state. I am not a disinter-
ested observer. I am a militant intellectual, an engaged feminist, and a vocal
critic that has refused to be silenced, as well as an immigrant from the North
to the South who continues to unlearn in order to relearn, and to make this
unlearning and relearning constitutive of my engagement, commitment, and
praxis. To listen to, accompany, and walk, think, and learn with and from
social movements, communities, and their members means to challenge the
apparatus of research, the hierarchical binary of theory versus practice, and
the authority and universalizing pretentions of academic knowledge. All of
this is part of my decolonial pedagogical/methodological praxis and stance, a
praxis and stance that is never stable but always becoming.

THE POLITICS, POLICIES AND PROBLEMATICS

OF ECUADOR’S “PROGRESSIVE” STATE

In 2008, Ecuador approved in popular referendum a Constitution considered

by many as the most radical in the world. By making Nature the subject of
rights, establishing buen vivir10—living in harmony and plentitude—as the
transversal principal and the horizon of a distinct social project, and giving
recognition and base to an Intercultural and Plurinational State––among other
aspects––, the Constitution took a historical step toward the decolonization
of Ecuador.
As I have argued elsewhere, both the Constitutional Assembly (in
which I had the privilege to participate as an “unofficial” advisor) and the
Charter itself were the reflection and result, in large part, of the political
and epistemic insurgency of social movements in the decades before. These
movements, most especially the Indigenous movement, gave impetus to
a proposition, project, and thought that proffered to transform the state,
interculturalizing and pluriversalizing the here-to-fore monocultural and
uninational social-political order. With the Constitution and the government-
named “Citizen’s Revolution” came the idea and belief of substantial and
profound change. President Rafael Correa repeated on numerous occasions
that the long neoliberal night had finally ended. His political project was
222 Chapter 11

to recuperate national sovereignty, redistribute wealth, and propel produc-

tive forces through alliances with certain progressive and leftist sectors.11
Neoliberalism was to be replaced by a new moment in which the “Citizen’s
Revolution” and “Twenty-first Century Socialism” (the latter linking Ecuador
and Bolivia with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela) promised transcendental shifts
and transformative horizons.
Certainly one of the most transcendental shifts was with regard to Nature.
As Ecuador’s Constitution states:

Article 71: Nature or Pacha Mama, where life is materialized and repro-
duced, has the right to an integral respect of its existence and the right to
the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions,
and evolutionary processes.
Article 72: Nature has the right to be restored.12

Here Pachamama (Mother Nature or Mother Earth) is a living being with

intelligence, sentiments, and spirituality. Nature is neither an object nor a
use-based exploitable good controlled and dominated by humans; it is an
integral part of life itself.
In the language of the Charter, natural resources and the environment are
also differentially positioned; “persons, communities, peoples, and [ances-
tral] nation[alities] shall have the right to benefit from the environment and
natural wealth enabling them to enjoy the good way of living [‘buen vivir’],”
but exploitation cannot put in permanent danger natural systems or perma-
nently alter Nature’s genetic makeup.13 With such declaration, it was thought
that the colonial matrix and extractive tradition would end and with it, the
massive exploitation and contamination associated with capital and national,
foreign, and transnational interests.
The Yasuni-ITT initiative launched in 2007 by President Correa and the
then Minister of Energy Alberto Acosta (subsequent Constitutional Assembly
president) seemed to solidify the path toward postextractivism. The Initiative
asked the international community to compensate Ecuador with $3.6 billion
(half of what Ecuador would have realized in revenue from exploiting the
resources at 2007 prices), for keeping 850 million barrels of unexploited oil
in the ground. The argument was that this would avoid the emission of 407
tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, protect Indigenous peoples living in volun-
tary isolation, and preserve the Yasuni National Reserve, considered the most
biologically diverse in the world.14
In its communication within the country and to the world, the Ecuadorian
government described the Initiative as historic for its questioning of the
model of life and consumption of contemporary society. “It symbolizes an
example of the willingness of a country to change the playing rules of energy
 Catherine Walsh 223

consumption,” said the National Secretariat of Planning and Development,

and it marks a “transition toward a model of sustainability. It is a wager
for life and the planet.”15 However, in 2013, President Correa cancelled the
Initiative, arguing monetary issues, and announced the forthcoming exploita-
tion of oil––an unavoidable evil, the president said, for eradicating poverty,
particularly in the Amazon.16
Postextractivism, it seems, was never part of the President’s and “his
progressive” state’s agenda. In December 2008, less than three months after
the approval of the Constitution, Correa pushed through a new Mining Law,
enabling the exploitation of previously unexplored resources, and opening the
door to megaprojects of open-sky mining. With declining oil reserves, Correa
argued, mining is an economic necessity, a policy and public good that will
contribute to development, the elimination of poverty, and modernization.
Development-poverty/elimination-modernization became, from here on in,
the foundational project and rallying cry not only of the President himself but,
more crucially, of “his” government, state, and political-economic venture
of “progressive extractivism.” So took form another foundational triad and
triumvirate: President-Government-State, here understood as a paternal-het-
eropatriarchal formation of inseparable unity in which Correa became––and
was––both government and state. That is, the father who intended to control
and wield power over virtually all aspects of governance, but also of life,
including what he referred to in the later years of his reign,as the ideology of
gender and sexuality. This ideology is “an offence against all natural laws,”
said Correa in one of his Saturday broadcasts; men need to act and look like
men, and women need to act and look like women.”17
Along with the Mining Law came the criminalization of protest under the
legal-penal figure of “acts of terrorism” and “state sabotage.” Acosta, who
left the Constitutional Assembly in its last months because of his differences
with Correa, became an outspoken critic of what he called “the hand of
Twenty-first Century neoextractivism.” The fighters for life are pursued and
persecuted as terrorists so that the transnationals can loot natural resources
and attack Nature and communities, Acosta said. “Repressive practices con-
stitute an inheritance of old politics, oriented to disavow, disqualify, and even
punish social movements.”18
So too began the President’s ongoing attacks in his weekly Saturday radio
and television broadcasts––and in the media in general––on social move-
ments and their leaders. In ways that reproduced and replicated colonial-
ity’s racialized and genderized violences, Correa repeatedly used the trope
of infantilization to discredit Indigenous leaders, ecological feminists and
environmental activists, and their organizations and movements. His ongo-
ing references to “the infantile indigenous movement” and “the infantile
ecologists” worked to wrest rationality and make child-like the leaders and
224 Chapter 11

activists struggling against extractive policies and for life, territory, and
nature. “We’ve already lost too much time for development,” said Correa.
“Those that make us lose time are demagogues, ‘no to mining, no to oil,’
enough with these stupidities! We will not permit the infantile Left, with
feathers and ponchos, to destabilize this process of change.”19
The assault was not just discursive. Up until the end of his presidential
term (May 2017), Correa endeavored not only to continue to discredit but also
even to close the women-run NGO Acción Ecológica (Ecological Action), this
because of its documentation of the criminalization of protest against extrac-
tive projects and its defense of the collective rights of Indigenous peoples
against extractivism and territorial displacement and destruction.20 Similarly,
the National Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador (CONAIE)
was a principal and ongoing target of attack. The idea of a Plurinational state,
the initiatives of extractivism, and the public policies regarding Indigenous
peoples were points of tension from the beginning. However, as CONAIE’s
opposition to the government took more visible form––including in the 2009
mobilizations against the Mining Law, the March for Life and Water in 2012,
and the actions against the Law of Lands, among others––the President-
Government-State’s attack also intensified. The criminalization of Indigenous
men and women leaders swelled. At the same time, spaces won through
CONAIE’s historic struggle, such as the autonomy of Indigenous bilingual
intercultural education, were eliminated; thousands of community-based
schools (sites of social-cultural-political organization) were closed, replaced
by large modern “millennial schools” (often far from the communities them-
selves) with a nationalized curriculum and instruction in Spanish only. In the
Amazonian region most impacted by extractivism, “Millennial Cities” were
built, forcing families and clans to relocate and “urbanize” so that extractive
industries could do their work. Of course, the repression and disciplinization
did not stop there. In 2015, the triumvirate attempted (unsuccessfully) to evict
CONAIE from the building it has legally occupied since 1991 (part of the
agreements reached between the Indigenous organization and the government
after the 1990 historic uprising).
Certainly, the examples are excessively many to continue to elaborate here.
Suffice it to say, as Cartuche clearly argues, “state modernization for capital-
ist development [i.e., Correa’s project] needs the disciplining of critical social
organizations.”21

The government argues the need for a re-centralization of the state and its insti-
tutions in order to liberate itself from “particularized interests” of organizations,
unions and associations. This implies, according to the government, the need to
construct a politics from the state that helps to counter the excess of autonomy
of some public institutions; a politics that also closes paths of influence,
 Catherine Walsh 225

including that of indigenous organizations and peoples. This anti-corporative

politics is aimed at neutralizing the influence not of all sectors, but only those
who dispute and question the character of the state in the “citizen’s revolution.”
The criminalization of protest focused on organizations like CONAIE and those
with an anti-mining stance, is the result of a centralized politics of state in ben-
efit of certain groups of economic power.22

Authoritarianism, in this sense, was deemed a necessary and component part

of the centralized and consolidated state regime; a state–as president–as gov-
ernment that, under the banners of revolution, progressivism, and moderniza-
tion-progress, promoted the individual inclusion of historically subalternized
sectors (e.g., women, and Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples) while at
the same time negating and severely repressing their collective rights, stance,
and struggle. With the extractive industries of mining and oil passed, during
the Correa government, into the hands of Chinese public and private compa-
nies (the result and condition of a debt with China that in at the end of 2017
totaled more than 8 billion dollars, and that includes the obligatory hand over
of most all of oil production to this nation until 2021), extractivism became
the activity, project, and motor of the economy.23 It is the state against terri-
tory and life.

FLOWERING REBELLION, RE-EXISTING,

AND CULTIVATING LIFE

In Ecuador, as is true in much of Latin America/Abya Yala’s south today,

it is women who are leading the struggles against extractivism and global
capitalism’s predatory and pillage-oriented model of development. These are
struggles of and for territory and life against and (des)spite state.
As Katy Machoa (director of women’s issues in CONAIE’s governing
council from 2014–2017) sustains, these struggles are part of a historical
continuum. They have root in colonization and its civilizatory project: in
the diverse forms of violence––territorial, ideological, and knowledge and
existence-based––that this process and project continue to manifest. “Here
the relation of runa-nature [human being-nature] has been particularly
impacted, leaving Indigenous women with an overload of disadvantages as
compared to men. Numbered are the historical registers that recognize and
take up the process of struggle of women. For us [women], they dug a deeper
hole,” says Machoa.24

They erased us from history, from philosophy, from science and from society,
but we never stopped being there. I remit to the present and I listen; as we take
226 Chapter 11

the streets of the capital city, the most felt voices that chant “the land isn’t for
sale” are those of women. We know that we were present before because today
we are fiercely defying the obstacles of the femicidal society. We continue giv-
ing birth to Quilago, Dolores Cacuango, Tránsito Amaguaña, Manuela León, to
the indomitable Amazonas and so many others that, like us, forged the history of
resistance told not from the official sources but from the mobilizations that push
us and from the inherited dignity. We continue and we will continue cultivating
life, flowering rebellion so that the new era —the pachakutik—does not come
upon us by surprise.25

Indigenous women have always been component parts of resistance-based

struggles, including in the numerous uprisings and mobilizations of the
decade of the 1990s, when CONAIE and the Indigenous movement estab-
lished themselves as political actors that the state could no longer negate,
disregard, and dismiss. Yet there is a marked difference in women’s protago-
nism, agency, and participation today. While the national and regional orga-
nizations continue to be predominantly male-led, women are at the lead of
many of the territory-based struggles, most especially in the Amazon where
the bulldozer of state propelled extractivism moves ahead with full force.

THE RESURGENCE OF AMAZONIAN

WOMEN WARRIORS

In recent years, Amazonian women have come together in Ecuador as a

formidable, plurinational, insurgent force. These women-conceived and
women-led resurgence and struggle have as their principal objective the pro-
tection and defense of territory, forest, rivers, families, Indigenous nations,
and life itself: understood in an integral and relational sense as Mother Forest,
Mother Nature, or Mother Earth. Such protection and defense have meant
mobilizing against extractivism, massive deforestation, and the immense
contamination of the ground, rivers, and streams. The images made viral
in the now infamous Texaco-Chevron litigation (a case filed in 1992 by the
Siona and Secoya nations against the multinational, and which––thanks to
the power of capital––continues in 2021 without final resolution), afford just
a small glimpse of the toxic legacy that Amazonian peoples struggle against.
This legacy and threat has not only been perpetuated, but also made much
worse by the policies and project of Rafael Correa’s so-called “progressive”
state––policies and projects propelled by Chinese capital with little or no
concern for the forest, the living beings, and life-as cosmos-as territory and
land. Machoa explains:
 Catherine Walsh 227

The state’s presence in the region is with police and armed guards in order to
protect the Chinese; we do not exist for the state, and, as a result, the state does
not exist for us. What is the state when it negates life, when it negates access to
schooling and health as has occurred with the establishment of a state of excep-
tion in the Shuar community of Nankits, justifying state violence, subjugation,
and aggression, massive displacements, and even threats by police of the rape of
women and young girls, all to enable the go-ahead of copper mining?26

“We are the makers of our history. We are Amazonian women warriors
fighting for dignity and territory-life, for an ‘other’ model, system, way and
plan of living and life,” Machoa goes on to say.27 “Our territories continue to
be threatened, and we continue to defend the inheritance of our children. We
have the force, determination, and courage to do so. We women are together
in the struggle, we will not be bought, and we will not be sold. We have dig-
nity. So we are the women of the Amazon.”28
The examples of Amazonian women’s resurgence, insurgence, and defense
against oil and mining and for territory-life are present both within communi-
ties and the various Indigenous nations, as well as in the collective alliances
and actions that cross nation, region, and language. For the Sapara nation, for
instance, these struggles are literally about survival. With only approximately
400 members left, this nation, whose language was declared by UNESCO
as World Cultural and Immaterial Heritage, is struggling against the threat
of extinction. “The oil project puts in question our survival as a peoples,”
argues Gloria Ushigua, leader of the Sapara Women’s Association, defense
of our territory is defense of life. “Those that want to take out the oil won’t
be affected, but we will all die.”29
The first visible public manifestation of an Amazonian-wide women-led
and conceived insurgency occurred on October 16, 2013. Approximately a
hundred women from the Kichwa, Sapara, and Waorani nations organized
under the banner of “Women mobilized in defense of life” arrived to Quito,
many with their children and in what they termed a “March for Life,” to
demand that the crude in the Yasuni Park remain in the ground. The march
was a response to Correa’s announcement several months before of the end of
the Yasuni-ITT initiative and the beginning of oil exploration and exploitation
in the Yasuni Park, the most bio-diverse rainforest in the world.
Among the women’s objectives and motivations: to evidence the ransack-
ing of natural resources through extractivism and within a model of capital-
ist accumulation, and to socialize and make visible their community-based
model of life “Kawsak Sacha” (the living forest), a concept integral to the
defense of Nature and Sumak Kawsay or Buen Vivir. The communiqué cir-
culated before their arrival to Quito, Ecuador’s capital, described the reason
for their march: “As women we feel from the deepness of our wombs, the
228 Chapter 11

threats of extractivism; we consider as urgent the need to open debate in

this critical moment generated with regard to Yasuní-ITT and to come out
in defense of our nourishing mother (Mother Forest or Mother Nature) that
gives birth, raises and protects her children without distinction to ethnicity or
social class.”30
The Amazonian women’s petitions to meet with then-President Correa were
denied. Rather than return home, they decided to extend their time in Quito,
calling for the national solidarity of all women to the cause, and convoking
from the Arbolito Park––a central meeting place in the last several decades
for Indigenous mobilizations––women, youth, and the masses to enter into
dialogue with them and assume this women-led struggle for Life and Nature.
By so doing, these women used the urban space as an educational forum,
building understandings of their struggles, life-visions, and realities while, at
the same time, positioning and linking these life-visions and struggles to the
broader project of Buen Vivir as a shared project and new “interversal” that
endeavors to move beyond capitalist exploitation and accumulation. The fact
that they did this as women broke the mold of contemporary male-dominated
Amazonian-Indigenous politics in which men, more often than not, assume
both public and organizational leadership, decision-making, and voice.
However, it also brought to attention what is increasingly evident throughout
the region, and that is women’s insurgent leadership in today’s struggles for
territory, Nature and Life. It is an insurgency that confronts the coloniality of
power, of being, of existence, and of gender all intertwined, an insurgency
of decolonial prospect, politic, and action that the so-called “progressive”
state and much of the traditional Left (including white/whitened and western/
westernized feminists) are still unable and unwilling to recognize or fathom.

“BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR LIFE, YOU COULD DIE”

The 2013 action ushered in a women-conceived and women-led insurgent

practice that has continued to evolve and grow. Yet with it, persecution
also expanded.
The words “be careful with your life, you could die” (“cuidado con tu
vida puedes morir”) were posted on Alicia Cahuiya’s house shortly after
the 2013 march, alongside her dead dog. Alicia, founder and president of
the Waorani Women’s Association, had, for months, fought off threats and
pressure by male leaders to accept the government’s plan for oil extraction in
her birthplace of Yasuni. She had refused––and continues to refuse––to bend
to the continued questioning, intimidation, persecution, and aggression of
government officials. Alicia is not alone in this struggle against persecution.
In fact, when police stopped the bus of women returning to the Amazon after
 Catherine Walsh 229

the 2013 march and asked which one was Alicia, all the women present cried
out “I am Alicia.” The next day the death threat was found on Alicia’s door.
Alicia is one of five women defenders of nature who presented their tes-
timonies in a hearing in Washington, D.C. in October 2015, denouncing the
actions of the Correa government against them. The testimonies were part
of a petition by Earth Rights International and the previously mentioned
Ecuadorian NGO Acción Ecológica.31
In her testimony, Alicia recounts how she returned to her territory at the
age of 16, leaving a missionary boarding school to follow her grandmother’s
wise counsel: to defend the territory where she was born. “I returned to find
a highway built on top of the cemetery where my grandparents are buried. I
began to work to defend my grandparents’ rights, to defend our territory.”32
She recalls the work with the National Huaorani Organization (ONHAE)
at the beginning of her militancy, including the march of men, women, and
children to Quito in the late 1990s to denounce oil exploitation.

[After the march,] the men leaders signed agreements with the oil companies
and divided our peoples. They want development, while those who live inside
the jungle already have all we need.

ONHAE was run by men; men made the decisions and women could not. . . . It
is for this reason that I fought for our own women’s organization to administer
our territory. That’s how the Waorani Women’s Association (AMWAE) was
made. I listened to the voices of my ancestors telling me “enough with oil
companies, because they are contaminating and reducing our territories.” The
ancestors left their voices in me.33

In 2013, Alicia was elected vice president of the Waorani Amazon Nation.34
“They asked me my position. I responded: to continue to defend our territory
as a woman’s struggle. . . . They said I had to continue to struggle so that
new oil exploration would not occur.” However, this is when the persecution
by the Correa government began full force, she explained, when the threats
of prison, when the vigilance, and when the death threats became everyday
occurrences. It is also when the men in the organization began to insist that
she accept the exploration and extraction of oil. This complicity makes the
strategies of persecution and intimidation more complex. It is also one of
the ways the government works to discredit leaders, particularly when those
leaders are women.35
Gloria Ushigua, who also gave her testimony at the October 2015
Washington hearing, is another case in point. As with Alicia, the persecution
of Gloria began in 2013. In December of that year, and after a November
mobilization in front of the Ministry of Hydrocarbons in Quito, the
230 Chapter 11

government began its systematic attack. “Five days after the mobilization,
the government launched a two-week television campaign to discredit me.
The campaign showed my photo in my native dress with a caption saying
that I dressed like a clown. They used the photo to discredit my work and to
intimidate me.”36
After the campaign, the persecution took on force. The government contin-
ued to threaten, harass, and intimidate Gloria and her family members, and to
make her the target of various forms of aggression and violence. In 2013, she
was judicially accused of terrorism, sabotage and obstruction of a public way
(related to the hydrocarbon mobilization), charges still in force in mid-2018.
In 2015, police broke into her home spraying tear gas in her face, affecting
the other women and children present, and physically and verbally abusing
her. Her office was broken into and her computer destroyed.37

In her 2015 testimony, Gloria explained the significance of her struggle, which
is a struggle of women defenders of territory and life.

Our territory is our ancestral heritage that the ancestors left for Indigenous
human life. Land is for the future of our children. I am a defender because
I defend my territory and my culture; water is life for all beings that live on
earth. One of the differences between women and men is that men sell the land
more quickly, but we women are defenders and protectors of the land, of terri-
tory and life.

In order to reproduce and take care of nature, we Amazonian Indigenous peoples

live very different from those who live in cites. We have our own architecture
and the cosmovision of our ancestors to look beyond. Our men were territo-
rial defenders and were treated badly. And now we women are in front of the
defense asking that our rights, territory, and forest be respected.

Oil exploitation stays underground; neither the oil nor the air of Sapara territory
are for sale.38

Gloria, Alicia, and other Amazonian women leaders once again made the
news in another mobilization in March 2016, this one confronting the govern-
ment’s concession and sale to Andes Petroleum, a Chinese oil consortium, of
two large blocks of the southern Amazon. This concession extends into the
territories of the Sapara, Kichwa, and Waorani peoples, and the previously
protected Yasuni Park, including the designated “intangible zone” where the
Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples live in voluntary isolation. It includes 40%
of Sapara territory. It also includes part of Sarayaku, the Kichwa community
that in 2012 won litigation in the Inter-American Human Rights Court against
the Ecuadorian state’s attempt of oil exploration and extraction.39 Sarayaku
 Catherine Walsh 231

is widely known for its resistance against the state, not only the present state
but also its predecessors. Women have been important protagonists in these
struggles.
The 2016 march brought women from all these communities together.
Photos circulated in the social media showed images of women with babies
on their backs, navigating the rivers in the midst of the midday heat to
come together in the provincial capital of Puyo to march in celebration of
International Women’s Day, but, most especially, to denounce Correa’s agree-
ment with the Chinese consortium. “Our territory is threatened by transna-
tional Chinese companies. Our nation and our families see our rights violated
in the loss and contamination of this territory. We are ready to protect, defend,
and die for our rainforest, families and nation,” said a representative of the
Sapara Women’s Association.40
Two months after this march, Gloria’s sister-in-law was brutally assassi-
nated while working in a garden that she shares with Gloria. The assumption
is that Gloria was the target.
In response to these cumulative violences and aggressions, the initia-
tive Women, Territories, and Environment of the Latin American and
Caribbean Urgent Action Fund (made up of organizations and activists from
Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile,
Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina), along with other environmental,
Indigenous and Black women’s organizations, released a public statement
in June 2016 in defense of and in solidarity with Gloria, her family, and
the Sapara Women’s Organization. The statement called for investigation
into the perpetuated aggressions and removal of the still-pending criminal
charges against her. It demanded that the government desist in criminalizing
Indigenous leaders for defending nature and human rights. It called for the
establishment of mechanisms of protection and vigilance for Gloria and all
others at risk for defending nature and life, and the nullification of illegal
and illegitimate oil concessions that violate the Constitution, its principles of
buen vivir, and nature’s rights. Moreover, it linked the case of Gloria to other
defenders of territory and nature:

As Latin American women defenders of territory, nature and life, we reject the
imposition of oil exploitation and extractive projects, which infringe upon the
self-determination of peoples and which violate our bodies and our lives. We
demand justice and an end to criminalization, assassinations, and all types of
aggression against defenders, men and women, of water, land, and life in Latin
America and the world.41

Of course, the cases of Alicia and Gloria are not isolated, nor are Amazonian
women leaders the only targets. In Ecuador, mestiza women actively involved
232 Chapter 11

in both supporting these Amazonian women’s struggles and in other related

struggles against extractivisms, free trade, and women’s and Indigenous
rights have also been the targets of intimidation, aggression, and persecu-
tion. Margoth Escobar, Paulina Muñoz, and Esperanza Martinez are three of
many. Their testimonies, similarly presented in Washington and documented
by Plan V, detail the violences that they continue to confront as women insur-
gents resisting the extractivist, developmentalist, and anti-poverty policies of
Correa´s ten-year regime.42

WALKING THE WORD: CHASKI-WARMI ABYA YALA

We, Indigenous women of the Amazonian forests, the rivers, the highlands, and
the mountains of Abya Yala, have traveled our territories. In these lands, we
recognize and encounter ourselves. We are part of Pachamama (Mother Earth);
because of the way we relate with her, we feel climate change from the experi-
ence and everyday relation of living with our territories. . . . We feel the crisis
caused by extractivist policies and models, of oil and mining, the contamination
of water and the atmosphere, and the destruction of forests and of the plant cover
of Pachamama, all of which has produced grave effects in our lives.43

The above words form part of the Declaration presented by the Indigenous
women messengers of Abya Yala (Chasqui Warmikuna or Chaski-Warmi) to
the COP22 meeting on Climate Change held in Morocco in November 2016.
The Declaration was signed by Blanca Chancosa, then Vice-President of
the Ecuadorian regional highland Indigenous organization ECUARUNARI;
Nancy Santi of the Amazonian Kichwa Peoples; Marta Cecilia Ventura,
Maya Quiche and part of the National Indigenous and Peasant Coordinator
(Guatemala); Cecilia Flores of the Aymara peoples of Chile; Gladis Panchi
of the Embera peoples of Colombia; Silvia Lupo of the Leco peoples of
Bolivia; Alicia Cahuiya, vice president of the Waorani peoples’ organization
in Ecuador; Carmen Lozano, women’s coordinator in ECUARUNARI; and
Ivonne Ramos, coordinator of Saramanta Warmikiuna (Ecuador). It is the
message of the many who struggle daily against national and global policies
that cause the destruction of Nature.
Of course, it is no coincidence that women are at the forefront of this
struggle. Indigenous women, as the Declaration sustains, lead the defense of
territory. They live domestic violence, the social, environmental, and political
violence of states, and the violence of the impoverishment of the conditions
of life, all constitutive of extractivism and its results, and component parts of
coloniality in all its dimensions, most especially gender. “The violence against
Pachamama extends in a direct way to Indigenous women,” the Declaration
 Catherine Walsh 233

argues, “reflected in the criminalization, imprisonment, assassination, cap-

ture, persecution, of the women and men custodians of Pachamama.” In this
sense, “from our experience, we can make visible the fact that climate change
is not an abstract concept but something palpable in health, in the change of
agricultural cycles, in increased work for women, and in the violence against
Pachamama or Mother Earth.”44
Despite government rhetoric about the need to address climate change,
states continue to implement and give incentives for the development of
extractivist policies and programs in Indigenous territories and ancestral
lands. States and governments of both the Right and the so-called Left are at
the center of the problem, the Declaration contends.

At the same time that national and global policies portend to address climate
change, they promote extractive policies that increase the local and global cli-
mate crisis, and promote false solutions. They neither recognize nor consider
the historical role that we Indigenous people have had with Nature, particularly
Indigenous women, nor do they take into account our concrete contributions
in the search for solutions that come from knowledge of the territory that we
inhabit and our cosmovisions based in ancestral wisdoms.45

Through this Declaration, the Chaski-Warmi Indigenous women’s col-

lective makes clear that climate change is not just about environment; more
crucially, it is about existence itself. Their words announce and articulate
lived knowledges, actions, and activisms that exhort a decolonial feminism of
sorts, a feminism––if we can use that word––that is not about specific wom-
en’s issues having to do with sex and reproduction only or with the supposed
domestic-public/economic separation.46 It is a women-led insurgency of and
for life. Such insurgency certainly prompts reflections about the significance,
character, and composition of decolonial struggle in Abya Yala today, and, in
particular, about the ways Indigenous women are challenging the traditional
tenets of feminism and approaches toward the coloniality of gender. Brought
to the fore here is the essence for these women of decolonial and decoloniz-
ing work understood as not only about the restitution and of what coloniality
has taken but also, and possibly more crucially, about the co-creation in the
present of conditions of re-existence defined communally, integrally, and in
their terms.
While the Declaration presents a series of proposals to both the region’s
governments and the United Nations––all of which, not surprisingly, have
gone unconsidered––it also offers proposals to the women of Abya Yala.
These latter proposals include, among others, the need to organize, join forces,
and come together in Chaski-Warmi Abya Yala to defend Mother Nature and
walk the word in order “to be able to reach spaces of community-based,
234 Chapter 11

national and international decision making with a more profound knowledge

of our realities and our cosmovision as Indigenous women.” The Declaration,
in this sense, is not just a statement of Chaski-Warmi, but also a call to and
for its strengthening and growth.
Chaski-Warmi, “Women Messengers” or more broadly “Women Messengers
in Defense of Mother Nature,” began in 2015 as a kind of walking method-
ology/pedagogy among Indigenous women. Chaski-Warmi’s project––in
Ecuador but also in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, and Guatemala––is to listen to
what community-based Indigenous women have to say about their struggles
in defense of Nature, about the effects of extractivism and climate change at
the local level, and about the traditional practices of women and communities
to confront these effects and to create alternatives to survive.
The first experience in Ecuador was Yaku Chaski Warmikuna (Women
Messengers of the Water or River). During eight days in July 2015, a group
of Amazonian Kichwa and Waorani women traveled the Bobonaza river basin
in order “to help make aware and spread the word about extractivist conflicts
that affect our communities, to work as women for territorial defense, and
to promote the strategy to leave oil underground as the only real solution to
climate change.”47 They carried messages against oil companies’ strategies
of aggression and land grabbing and alerted about the cooptation, buying
off, and even assassination of community leaders. With these messages
they helped construct, articulate, and support resistance and the demands
for self-governance and self-determination, while at the same time making
evident the contradictions between the Constitution (with its recognition of
collective rights and nature’s rights, and its call for buen vivir) and govern-
ment sponsored extractivism. “The defense of territory by women against
extractivism is a strategy that contributes to the Indigenous efforts being
woven in the Province, most especially the efforts against the Ecuadorian
government’s 11th Oil Round (2015) that persecutes, harasses, and violates
all community efforts to defend human rights, and the rights of nature and
territory,” the press statement published on their web said. “We categorically
reject and denounce all extractivist proposals and actions in our territory,
which for us constitutes a unique, indivisible and millennial heritage inherited
from our ancestors.”48
Yamila Gutierrez Callisaya, Aymaran Bolivian and part of the May 2017
Chaski-Warmi experience in Ecuador’s southern Amazon region focused
specifically on mining, describes how the project––most especially in the
Ecuadorian context––works to recuperate “from below” the idea and role
of the messenger (chaski) historically present throughout Abya Yala.49
“Its objective,” says Gutierrez, “is to build a process of dialogue among
Indigenous women, convened by Indigenous women, about the problematic
of extractivism, a problem that affects us as women.” The experience of
 Catherine Walsh 235

Chaski-Warmi makes visible and gives presence to the thought and the politi-
cal role of Indigenous women; “it is a dialogue among equals, in our own
languages, and in and from our own territory, community, and place. Herein
lies its value.”50
As the Chaski or messenger who before the existence of cell phones and
WhatsApp carried messages from community to community, here women
messengers––tied to regional and national Indigenous organizations––listen
to, carry, communicate, and walk women’s territorially grounded words from
river to river, from mountain to mountain, from community to community.
Such experience serves to generate reflection, discussion, and debate between
and among Indigenous women about the local and lived consequences of
mining and oil, agroindustry, and other extractivisms, and about concrete
practices and strategies of resistance, existence, and defense of Mother
Nature or Mother Earth. In so doing, it helps plant seeds of awareness and
concern, alerting populations about the death that is extractivism, then carry-
ing this message from place to place. But, as Gutierrez argues, it also serves
to inform the Indigenous organizations themselves, strengthening contact
between the organization and their community base, and giving concretion,
substance, and form to the organization’s actions, struggles, and demands
with respect to government policy.
Chaski-Warmi, in this sense, is a methodology/pedagogy constructed
desde lo propio—an Indigenous women’s methodology/pedagogy in which
the political, territorial, spiritual, cosmogonic, cultural, affective, epistemic,
existential, and organizational are all intertwined. While the methodology/
pedagogy does not exclude men, it is women-centered and focused. In
rural communities and in Indigenous organizations where men continue to
be the most visible actors, protagonists, and spokespeople, Chaski-Warmi
underscores and articulates women’s force, thought, and voice, Gutierrez
maintains. Furthermore, it builds women’s own sense of capacity in contexts
where women often devalue themselves and other women, thus helping to
weave new communal and collective links and relations.51
Chaski-warmi, along with the other examples detailed here, make evi-
dent what Katy Machoa calls the flowering of women’s rebellion, but also
the women-led and women-conceived insurgencies that both challenge the
policies, practice, and project of Ecuador’s “progressive” state, and construct
forms of resistance, re-existence and co-existence for territory and life.
236 Chapter 11

ON FEMINISMS, PLURIVERSALS, AND

THE DECOLONIAL AS OTHERWISE

Can all of the above be considered as part and parcel of a kind of feminism–
–a feminism-otherwise? When I asked Yamila this question, she was adamant
in her reply.

For me, feminism remains a Western, anthropocentric, and individualist posture

or position. It seems to suggest a disassociation or an unlinking from something,
a setting off from the integral whole, from the activity of existence, of life,
which is shared among all beings, including with the ancestors. The person is
not just a person, the person is not a person alone, nor is her thought separate
from the integral sphere of territory, beings, the cosmos, etc. As Indigenous
women we have, feel, and create a connection and relation. We also know,
recognize, and struggle against the machismo and male privilege present in our
families, communities, and ayllus. Chaski-Warmi strengthens our connection
and relation, and it helps build our collective power and force, a power and
force that does not exclude others but that is women-focused, women-centered,
and women-inspired. Feminism is not the word we use, nor does its concept and
standpoint––born and constructed outside of our contexts––adequately reflect
our project. While some Indigenous women, like Lorena Cabnal and Julieta
Paredes, refer to communitarian feminisms, this reference is not widely shared.
Our actions and thought, including the methodology here of Chaski-Warmi,
have their own significance that do not necessarily need to be named as femi-
nism or understood in feminist terms.52

From a related but somewhat different perspective, the Kichwa law-

yer, intellectual, and historical leader Nina Pacari (also part of the 2017
Chaski-Warmi experience) underscores the importance of recuperating the
visibility, presence, and participation of women “from our own parameters,
vision, and community codes, but with much more horizontal perspectives,
including with respect to the exercise of power”:

While machismo is a Western notion, Indigenous communities are not

self-enclosed. Machismo exists. It is a factor present in and within the move-
ment, and in and within communities, their contexts, processes, and practice.
The increased presence and visibility of women today is a result of these
debates that began [in Ecuador] in the 90s. Today our work is not just about
the presence of women. More crucially, it is about the active role of women in
decision-making. It is about recuperating the fundamentals and philosophical
principles of the ayllu, not just as a stance against machismo but also as a way
to build solidarity, complementarity, and a different logic, practice, and exercise
of authority and power.53
 Catherine Walsh 237

Within this prospective frame of thought, Pacari opens a reflection on femi-

nisms and the gender-based notion of woman.

Woman is not 100% woman. She is part of an equilibrium man-woman; there

are other codes at work with regards to personality and spirituality in both
women and men and this has repercussions in a general sense in the ways that
we conceive sex and sexuality, making our societies more open in ways that
even traverse the gendered binary of men-women. For this reason, feminist
movements cannot approach indigenous and non-indigenous women using the
same codes; our codes are other and feminism needs to recognize this diversity
not just of women, but also of culturally lived logics, philosophies, and codes.54

As I have argued elsewhere (Walsh, 2015; 2016), gender constructions

in Andean and Amazonian societies (as well as in Mesoamerica) have been
understood (particularly before the European invasion but also beyond) as
dynamic, fluid, open, and non-hierarchical.55 They have been based less on
anatomical distinctions and more on performance, with what people do, and
their ways of being in the world, ways in constant movement, shift, modifi-
cation and fluid equilibrium.56 Here, “gender” is probably not the best word;
the relational duality of the feminine-masculine (which includes what I have
described as the androgynous creative force and whole) opens up other cos-
mogonic, spiritual, and existence-based conceptions and practices that disturb
polarity, its antagonistic dichotomy, and its totalizing rationality constructed
in and through gender.
This, of course, is not to essentialize Indigenous difference, nor is it to
negate machismo and patriarchy, and its violences, practices, and struc-
tures that have deepened with extractivism. Recalled is the analysis of the
Peruvian peasant leader Lourdes Huanca from FEMUCARINAP, made in
the context of the meeting of the Network of Women Defenders of Social and
Environmental Rights held in Quito in October 2013: “For us, extractivism
is rape and invasion,” said Huanca, a violation that takes place on “the terri-
tory of our bodies.” Women are the most affected by extractivism in terms of
sexual violence and abuse, but also in health, in economic and social spheres,
family instability, and territorial displacements. Nevertheless, there is also an
additional problem, Huanca explained, and that is the way that the extractive
industry affects community dynamics, relations, and structures, reinforcing
male-dominated culture and behaviors. And it is the way that community men
are using the Andean principles of duality and parity as conceptual tools that
play into male superiority—“of the power of the testicles”—justifying men’s
exertion of force over female bodies as nature. For Huanca, this is the context
and reason for women-led resistance, rebellion, and defense.57
238 Chapter 11

Huanca’s affirmation brings to the fore the problem today of male domi-
nated conceptions and interpretations of Andean cosmology, and the use of
these conceptions and interpretations as tools of domination over women.
In so doing, she brings to mind the ongoing debate about historical and
present-day structures and practices of patriarchy within Indigenous cultures
and communities.58 While much could be said about the distinct postures
and positions in this debate, that is not my interest here. My interest instead
is with present-day women-led struggles of resistance, re-existence, and
co-existence (de)spite state—struggles, that as the Amazonian and Andean
women in this text make clear, carry the collective memories of the rebel-
lion of their female ancestors against coloniality and, with it, patriarchy, in
its different manifestations and forms (collective memories of rebellion for
territory and life). For some, these insurgent struggles––not just of Andean
and Amazonian women, but more broadly of Indigenous, Black, and peasant
women today––are in essence decolonial feminist struggles, with or without
the necessity of adjectives or labels.
Betty Ruth Lozano, for example, argues for the increasing association
today of decolonial feminisms with the struggle and political proposal of life.
Thinking from and with the cultural, social, spiritual, and existence-based
practices of struggle of blackwomen (her way of emphasizing the insepa-
rability of being a woman and being Black) in the territory-region of the
Colombian Pacific, Lozano makes clear the relation for her of decolonial
feminisms and insurgency. Insurgency here refers to those processes and
possibilities of collective analysis, collective theorization, and collective
practice––all intertwined––that help engender an otherwise of relational
being, thinking, feeling, doing, and living in a place marked by the extremes
of violence, racism, and patriarchy in today’s matrix of global capitalism/
modernity/coloniality. In this context, “blackwomen are not just impotent
victims, they also exercise power beyond resistance and survival; they are
insurgents,” Lozano contends.59 Of course, “feminism” is not always the
term that women use to describe, define, or orient their insurgent actions.
For Lozano (self-described as an Afro-Colombian decolonial feminist), the
non-naming of feminism is part of the decolonial feminisms––the “feminisms
otherwise”––that are “constructed in the struggles for the defense and repro-
duction of nature, territory, and collective rights . . . in the transformation of
conditions of life.”60
The issue here is not with the politics of naming. Rather, it is with the ways
that Black and Indigenous women in Abya Yala are thinking, conceiving,
constructing, and leading resistances, rebellions, and resurgent and insurgent
actions that challenge state, move away from capitalism and its savage proj-
ect, and move toward de-patriarchalizations, decolonizations, and the recreat-
ing of communal practices of leadership, governance, and autonomy (despite
 Catherine Walsh 239

state). In their insurgent thought-actions, territorial defense, and push for

re-existence (this understood as the struggle and project of dignity and life)
and co-existence (existence “with”), these women are enabling more complex
analyses and articulations of gender, race, sexuality, patriarchy, capitalism,
and the continual reconfigurations of the modern/colonial matrices of power.
Moreover, they are revealing the lived significance of an “otherwise” that is
decolonial praxis.
Whether or not “feminism” is the referent is not the point. With or without
the label, these women’s insurgent praxis engenders important considerations
about the pluriversals and interversals of which decolonial feminisms are a
necessary and fundamental part. In ways radically distinct from the postures
and standpoints of feminisms in the West and in many of Latin America’s
westernized and whitened cities, here the project is one of relation; the rela-
tion rooted in territory-and-as-life. That is, the relation of knowledges, wis-
doms, beings, and the cosmos, in and as Nature. It is a relation that works
to dismantle and disarticulate the matrices of power, their hierarchical and
dichotomous binaries (including of gender and sexuality), and their modern/
colonial rationalities and foundations, thus engendering and enabling the
“otherwise” as a radically distinct prospect of resistance, re-existence, and
co-existence, a radically distinct prospect of life.
In closing, I once again recall the poignant words of Katy Machoa: “We
continue and we will continue cultivating life, flowering rebellion so that the
new era––the pachakutik—does not come upon us by surprise.”61 These words
bring forth those of another Indigenous woman intellectual-activist (and
writer, artist, and musician): Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Mississaugua
Nishnaabeg from Abya Yala’s north or Turtle Island. As Simpson cries out:
“Rebellion is on her way.”62

NOTES

1. Katy Machoa was the director of women’s issues in the National Governing
Council of the National Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador-CONAIE
from 2014–2017. This epigraph was taken from the text “El florecimiento de
la rebeldía” (The flowering of rebellion), presented in the photographic exhibit
“Mujeres en la lucha social ecuatoriana” (Women in the Ecuadorian Social Struggle),
organized by El Colectivo Desde el Margen, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar,
Quito, November 21–25, 2017.
2. Breny Mendoza, “La epistemología del sur, la colonialidad del género y el femi-
nismo latinoamericano,” in Aproximaciones críticas a las prácticas teórico-políticas
del feminisimo latinoamericano, ed. Yuderkys Espinoa Miñoso (Buenos Aires: En la
frontera, 2010).
240 Chapter 11

3. I use the term re-existence here following the Afro-descendant decolonial thinker
and artist Adolfo Albán Achinte. That is as: “The mechanisms that human groups
implement as a strategy of questioning and making visible the practices of racializa-
tion, exclusion and marginalization, procuring the redefining and re-signifying of life
in conditions of dignity and self-determination, while at the same time confronting the
bio-politic that controls, dominates, and commodifies subjects and nature” (my trans-
lation). See: Adolfo Albán Achinte, “¿Interculturalidad sin decolonialidad? Colo-
nialidades circulantes y prácticas de re-existencia,” in Diversidad, interculturalidad
y construcción de ciudad, ed. Wilmer Villa and Arturo Grueso (Bogotá: Universidad
Pedagógica Nacional/Alcaldía Mayor, 2008), 85–86.
4. Juan García Salazar and Catherine Walsh, Pensar sembrando/Sembrar pensando
con el Abuelo Zenón (Quito: Cátedra de Estudios Afro-Andinos, Universidad Andina
Simón Bolívar and Ediciones Abya Yala, 2017), 30 (my translation).
5. María Lugones, “The Coloniality of Gender,” World & Knowledges Otherwise
2, no. 2 (Spring 2008), https:​//​globalstudies​.trinity​.duke​.edu​/sites​/globalstudies​.trinity​
.duke​.edu​/files​/file​-attachments​/v2d2​_Lugones​.pdf.
6. Andrés Ortiz Lemos, “Lo que la sociedad mestiza puede aprender de las mujeres
indígenas, según Nina Pacari,” Plan V, published June 2017, https:​//​www​.planv​.com​
.ec​/historias​/sociedad​/lo​-que​-la​-sociedad​-mestiza​-puede​-aprender​-mujeres​-indigenas​
-segun​-nina​-pacari (my translation; henceforth, all quotes that appear in this chapter
from this article are my translations).
7. Personal conversation, Popayan, Colombia, May 2017 (my translation).
8. Ortiz Lemos, “Lo que la sociedad mestiza puede aprender.”
9. This is not to suggest that Indigenous women are the only ones fighting against
the extractivist policy-project and for territory and life. However, both for reasons of
space and because Indigenous women are affording the most organized and visible
insurgency today against and despite the Ecuadorian state, this is the focus and atten-
tion here.
10. “In its most general sense, buen vivir denotes, organizes, and constructs a sys-
tem of knowledge and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on
the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence—that is, on the necessary inter-
relation of beings, knowledges, logics, and rationalities of thought, action, existemce,
and living. This notion is part and parcel of the cosnmovision, cosmology, or philoso-
phy of the Indigenous peoples of Abya Yala but also, and in somewhat different ways,
of the descendants of the African diaspora.” Catherine Walsh, “Development as Buen
Vivir. Institutional Arrangements and (De)Colonial Entanglements,” in Construct-
ing the Pluriverse. The Geopolitics of Knowledge, ed. Bernd Reiter (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2018), 188.
11. Inti Cartuche Vacacela, “El conflicto entre la CONAIE y la Revolu-
ción Ciudadana,” Revista Digital La Linea de Fuego, published March 2015,
https:​//​lalineadefuego​.info​/2015​/03​/31​/el​-conflicto​-entre​-la​-conaie​-y​-la​-revolucion​
-ciudadana​-por​-inti​-cartuche​-vacacela​/.
12. “Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador,” Political Database of the Ameri-
cas, Georgetown University, published October 2008, https:​//​pdba​.georgetown​.edu​/
Constitutions​/Ecuador​/english08​ html.
 Catherine Walsh 241

13. Ibid. Article 74.

14. Carlos Larrea, Iniciativa Yasuní-ITT: La Gran Propuesta de un País Pequeño
(Ecuador: United Nations Development Programme, 2007).
15. Secretaria Nacional de Planificación y Desarrollo (SENPLADES), “Boletín de
Prensa No. 395 Iniciativa Yasuni-ITT: Una apuesta ecuatoriana que marca un cambio
de era” (Quito: SENPLADES, 2013), https:​//​www​.planificacion​.gob​.ec​/wp​-content​
/uploads​/downloads​/2013​/02​/BOLET​%c3​%8dN​_395​_YASUN​%c3​%8d​_FANDER​
_08​-02​-13​.pdf.
16. See Joan Martínez-Alier, Nnimmo Bassey and Patrick Bond, “Yasuni-ITT is
dead. Blame President Correa,” Mapping Environmental Justice, August 17, 2013
http:​//​www​.ejolt​.org​/2013​/08​/yasuni​-itt​-is​-dead​-blame​-president​-correa​/.
17. See “Enlace Ciudadano Nro. 354 desde Guayaquil, Guayas,” SECOM Ecuador,
published December 2014, https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=ODXFdqtGsyo, with
particular attention to 1:45:00 to 1:49:50. See also: Francisca Bozzo, “Feminazismo,
hembrismo e ideología de género: Las respuestas del patriarcado a la revolución
feminista,” Errancia 17 (April 2018), https:​//​www​.iztacala​.unam​ mx​/errancia​/v17​/
PDFS​_1​/LITORALES​%203​%20FEMINAZISMO​.pdf. (my translation; henceforth,
all quotes that appear from this article are my translation).
18. Alberto Acosta, “El uso de la justicia como mecanismo de terror,” El Uni-
verso, published February 2011, https:​//​www​.eluniverso​.com​/2011​/02​/08​/1​/1363​/uso​
-justicia​-como​-mecanismo​-terror​ html (my translation).
19. “Rafael Correa defiende contrato para la explotación minera,” El Universo,
published March 2012, https:​//​www​.eluniverso​.com​/2012​/03​/10​/1​/1355​/rafael​-correa​
-defiende​-contrato​-explotacion​-minera​ html.
20. In 2009 the government unsuccessfully attempted to close the NGO because
of its frontal positions against extractivism and the destruction of territory/nature.
In December 2016, the government began procedures of dissolution again, this time
using the presidential Decree 739, which authorized mechanisms of control over
the activities of civil society organizations, repeating the strategy used with another
activist NGO, the Pachamama Foundation. In its notification to Acción Ecológica, the
government gave as reasons the fact that “the organization, through its publications
in social networks, has made manifest its support of the actions of the Shuar com-
munity [against the occupation of 41,760 hectares of ancestral land by Explorcobres,
a subsidiary of the Chinese Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group], making affirmations
about the grave impact to the environment and ecosystem caused by the extractive
activities . . . , promoting social mobilization and the support of confrontations, and
in consequence generating a grave affectation and social commotion in Ecuadorian
society.” While the government succeeded with Pachamama, it was unable to do
the same with Acción Ecológica due to the outburst of national and international
support and pressure. See: “Ecuador: Decisión arbitraria de disolución de la ONG
Acción Ecológica,” Acción Ecológica, published December 2016, https:​ //​
www​
.accionecologica​.org​/ecuador​-decision​-arbitraria​-de​-disolucion​-de​-la​-ong​-accion​
-ecologica​/.
21. Cartuche Vacacela, “El conflicto entre la CONAIE y la Revolución Ciudadana”
(my translation).
242 Chapter 11

22. Ibid. (my translation).

23. Alberto Acosto and John Cajas, “La deuda eterna contrataca,” La Línea de
Fuego, published July 2017, https:​//​lalineadefuego​.info​/2017​/07​/27​/la​-deuda​-eterna​
-contrataca​-por​-alberto​-acosta​-john​-cajas​-guijarro​/.
24. Machoa, “El florecimiento de la rebeldía” (my translation).
25. Ibid. (my translation).
26. Comments by Machoa in my course “Contemporary Feminist Theory, State,
and Interculturality,” November 28, 2017 (my translation).
27. Ibid.
28. Machoa, quoted in Jaime Giménez, “Mujeres indígenas contra petroleras chinas
en Ecuador: ‘Estamos dispuestas a morir por nuestra selva,’” El Diaro, published
March 2016, https:​//​www​.eldiario​.es​/desalambre​/amazonicas​-ecuador​-defienden​
-territorio​-supervivencia​_1​_5863501​.html (my translation).
29. Gloria Ushigua, quoted in ibid. (my translation).
30. Orlan Cazorla and Miriam García Torres, “Mujeres por la vida marchan desde
la Amazonía hasta Quito,” Rebelión, published October 2013, http:​//​www​ rebelion​
.org​/noticia​.php​?id​=175630 (my translation).
31. “Cinco Mujeres Denuncian el Gobierno.” Plan V. Published October 2015.
https:​//​www​.planv​.com​.ec​/historias​/politica​/cinco​-mujeres​-denuncian​-al​-gobierno.
32. Ibid. (my translation; henceforth, all translations from this document are my
own).
33. Ibid.
34. “Waorani” is the preferred written form today, replacing the previously written
form of “Huaorani.”
35. “Cinco Mujeres Denuncian el Gobierno.”
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. For a summary in English of this case, see Inter-American Court of Human
Rights, Case of The Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku V. Ecuador, accessed
November 25, 2020, https:​//​www​.corteidh​.or​.cr​/docs​/casos​/articulos​/resumen​_245​
_ing​.pdf.
40. Quoted in Jaime Giménez, “Mujeres indígenas contra petroleras chinas en
Ecuador: ‘Estamos dispuestas a morir por nuestra selva,’” El Diaro, published March
2016, https:​//​www​.eldiario​.es​/desalambre​/amazonicas​-ecuador​-defienden​-territorio​
-supervivencia​_1​_5863501​.html (my translation). Also see M. Castillo, J. Félix, C.
Mazabanda, M. Melo, M. Moreno de los Ríos, R. Narváez, B. Páez, and M. Ushigua,
La cultura sapara en Peligro ¿El sueño es posible? La lucha de un pueblo por su
supervivencia frente a la explotación petrolera (Quito: Terra Mater, la Nación Sapara
del Ecuador y NAKU, 2016), https:​//​www​.pachamama​.org​.ec​/wp​-content​/uploads​
/2019​/06​/La​-Cultura​-Sapara​-en​-Peligro​.pdf.
41. Fondo de Acción Urgente por los Derechos de las Mujeres, “Public Com-
muniqué Regarding the Increased Attacks Against Gloria Ushigua and The Sápara
Women’s Association of The Ecuadorean Amazon,” published June 2016, https:​//​
fondoaccionurgente​.org​.co​/site​/assets​/files​/1323​/comunicado​_a​_la​_opinion​_publica​
 Catherine Walsh 243

_ante​_el​_incremento​_de​_los​_ataques​_contra​_gloria​_ushigua​_y​_la​_asociacion​_de​
_mujeres​_sapar​-2​.pdf.
42. “Cinco Mujeres Denuncian el Gobierno.”
43. B. Chancosa, N. Santi, M.C. Ventura, C. Flores, G. Panchi, S. Lupa, A.
Cahuiya, C. Lozano, I. Ramos, “Mujeres indígenas de latinoamerica enfrentan el
cambio climático desde sus procesos de adaptabilidad cultural. Chasaqui warmikuna
del Abya Yala frente al cambio climático ‘Haciendo caminar la palabra,’” document
prepared for the COP22 meeting in Morroco (Quito: Ecuarunari, 2016); Also see
“Chaski Warmi call for climate solutions,” YouTube, published November 2016.
https:​//​www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=LMrEVJ3xw​_s​&feature​=emb​_logo; Herrera,
Carolina. “Mujeres indígenas: defensoras del medio ambiente.” Natural Resources
Defense Council. Published August 2017. https:​//​www​ nrdc​.org​/es​/experts​/carolina​
-herrera​/mujeres​-indigenas​-defensoras​-medio​-ambiente​-america​-latina​#:​​~:​text​=Las​
%20Chaski​%20Warmi​%20del​%20Abyayala​,que​%20trascienden​%20comunidades​
%20y​%20nacionalidades​.​&text​=El​%20di​%C3​%A1logo​%20hizo​%20hincapi​%C3​
%A9​%20espec​%C3​%ADficamente​,el​%20campo​%20del​%20cambio​%20clim​%C3​
%A1tico.
44. Chancosa et. al, 2016.
45. Chancosa et. al, 2016.
46. I thank Maria Lugones for highlighting this point and for her comments which
have helped me clarify some of the arguments here.
47. Braulio HyC, “Yaku Chaski Warmi Kuna: mujeres mensajeras por el petróleo
baja la tierra.” Tegantai. Agencia de Noticias Ecologistas, July 27, 2015 (my transla-
tion). Also see Braulio HyC, (Video) Yakuchaski Warmikuna: Mensajeras del Río
Curaray,” May 23, 2016. http:​//​www​.saramanta​.org​/video​-yakuchaski​-warmikuna​
-mensajeras​-del​-rio​-curaray​/.
48. “Yaku Chaski Warmi kuna finaliza primera etapa,” Press release, Puyo, Pastaza
Province, Ecuador, July 27, 2015 (my translation).
49. For Gutierrez, the Ecuadorian experience stands out precisely because it is
grassroots, “from below,” and intimately connected to the historical and ongoing
political struggle of Indigenous organizations and Indigenous men and women. In
this, the active involvement of the country’s two most important historical Indigenous
women leaders, Blanca Chancosa and Nina Pacari, has been key. In Bolivia, she
argues, Chaski-Warmi has functioned more as a research project in search of “results”
rather than political incidence and transformation.
50. Personal conversation, Quito, June 2, 2017 (my translation).
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ortiz Lemos, “Lo que la sociedad mestiza puede aprender” (my translation).
54. Ibid.
55. Catherine Walsh, “Life, Nature, and Gender Otherwise: Feminist Reflections
and Provocations from the Andes,” in Practising Feminist Political Ecologies. Mov-
ing Beyond the “Green Economy,” ed. Wendy Harcourt and Ingrid Nelson (London:
Zed, 2015);
244 Chapter 11

Catherine Walsh, “On Gender and Its ‘Otherwise,’” in The Palgrave Handbook of
Gender and Development, ed. Wendy Harcourt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
56. See: Michael Horswell, Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexual-
ity in the Andean Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005); Sylvia Marcos,
Taken from the Lips. Gender and Eros in Mesoamerican Religions (Boston: Brill,
2006); Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun, and Witches. Gender Ideologies and Class in
Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
57. Walsh, “Life, Nature, and Gender Otherwise,” 120.
58. See, for example, Lorena Cabnal, “Acercamiento a la construcción de la pro-
puesta de pensamiento epistémico de las mujeres indígenas feministas comunitarias
de Abya Yala,” Feminismos diversos: El feminismo comunitario, ed. Feminista Siem-
pre (Madrid: Acsur-Las Segovias, 2010); Aura Estela Cumes, “Mujeres indígenas,
patriarcado y colonialismo: un desafía a la segregación comprensiva de las formas de
dominio,” Anuario Hojas de Warmi No.17 (2012); and Julieta Paredes, Hilando fino
desde el feminismo comunitario (Querétaro, Mexico: Colectivo Grietas, 2012). For
perspectives from Turtle Island, see, for example, Leanne Simpson, “Queering Resur-
gence: Taking on Heteropatriarchy in Indigenous Nation-Building,” Mamawipawin:
Indigenous Governance and Community Based Research Space, June 2012, https:​
//​blogs​.cc​.umanitoba​.ca​/mamawipawin​/2012​/06​/01​/queering​-resurgence​-taking​-on​
-heteropatriarchy​-in​-indigenous​-nation​-building​/.
59. Betty Ruth Lozano,“Pedagogías para la vida, la alegría y la re-existencia:
Pedagogías de mujeres negras que curan y vinculan,” in Pedagogías decoloniales:
Prácticas insurgentes de resistir, (re)existir y (re)vivir), Vol. 2, ed. Catherine Walsh
(Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala, 2017), 288–89.
60. Betty Ruth Lozano, “El feminismo no puede ser uno porque las mujeres
somos diversas. Aportes a un feminismo negro decolonial desde la experiencia de las
mujeres negras del Pacífico colombiano,” in Tejiendo de otro modo: Feminismo, epis-
temología y apuestas descoloniales en Abya Yala, eds. Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso,
Diana Gómez and Karina Ochoa (Popayán: Universidad de Cauca, 2014), 348–49
(my translation).
61. Machoa, “El florecimiento de la rebeldía.”
62. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, This Accident of Being Lost: Songs and Stories
(Toronto: House of Anansi, 2017).
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 Index

Page references for figures are Afro-Colombians, xxi–xxii, 47, 155–57,

italicized. 163, 167, 169, 170n11, 238
Afro-descendent women, xxi–xxii, xxvi,
Abya Yala, ix, xvii, xviii, xxiii, 17–18, 7, 34, 50, 76, 97, 119, 135, 145, 149,
101, 103n18, 169n7, 232; colonial 169, 179, 218–20, 225. See also
history of, xiv–xv, 3–5, 8, 16, 19–20, Black women
65–68, 71, 73–74, 83, 84, 85–87, Albán Achinte, Adolfo, 240n3
91, 96, 131–32, 137, 145, 147, 157, Alberdi, Juan Bautista, 27
203; critical engagements with, xx, Amaguaña, Tránsito, 218, 226
xxiv, xv, xxvi, xxvin1, 8, 66–68, Amazon, armed forces in the,
73–74, 79, 134, 135; femicide in, 143, 146, 147
135, 140, 145; military strategy in, Amazonian peoples: Kichwas, 218, 227,
96, 132, 140, 143, 145–48, 153n43; 230, 232, 234, 236; Sápara, the, 227,
movements in. See movements: 230, 231; Waorani, the, 227, 228,
in Abya Yala. See also Amazon, 229, 230, 232, 234, 242n34; women,
armed forces in the, Amazonian 220, 226–28, 230–32, 234, 238
peoples; Americas, the; Brazil; Americas, the, xxv, 6, 7, 9, 10, 48,
Chile; Colombia; Ecuador; Latin 123n23, 157, 169n7, 175
America; Nicaragua androcentrism, 5, 12, 32, 71, 79–80, 84,
Acción Ecológica (Ecological Action) 93, 166, 217–19
(Ecuador), 224, 229, 241n20 animality, xv, 3–5, 9–10, 19, 48, 70–71,
Acosta, Alberto, 222–23 99, 110, 113, 147. See also human
Acosta, Jose de, 3 anthropology of domination, 55–56
Africa: and colonialism, xiv, 3–4, anticolonial and decolonial movements.
44, 48, 74, 138, 156; critical See movements: anticolonial and
engagements with, ix, xx, decolonial
xxiv–xxv, xxvin1, 30, 64–65 archeology, 28, 30
African diaspora, xv, 8, 9, 13, archive, 27, 30–32, 35
17, 240n10 authoritarian regime, 139, 143, 218, 225

267
268 Index

Aymara, the, xxvin1, 3, 17, 18, 55, Castro-Gómez, Santiago, 27–29, 37,
169n7, 232, 234 49, 116; on critical ontology of the
present, 28
Bacon, Francis, xv Cerutti, Horacio, 27
Bell, Charles Napier, 182, 192, 199n71 Chancosa, Blanca, 232, 243n49
Bello, Andrés, 27 Chile, 90, 99, 101, 104n26, 143,
bestialitzation. See animality 231, 232, 234
Bhabha, Homi, 44, 115, 125n38 Christianity: beliefs in, 161, 162, 165,
biomedical systems, 175–76, 179, 190– 170n16, 185; and colonization,
92, 194; in Nicaragua, 177–79, 182, xiv, 9, 49, 65, 217; Moravian, 186,
183–86, 188, 193 198n51; and political ideals, 64,
Black women, ix, x, xv, xvii, xxi, xxii, 68, 69; supposed superiority of, 65,
xxiii, 32, 52–53, 97, 109, 112–13, 68, 123n23
116, 132–35, 136–38, 139, 142–44, “Citizen’s Revolution” (Ecuador), 220,
145–50, 155–57, 163, 165, 167, 208, 221, 222, 225
211, 219, 231, 238 citizenship, 9, 83, 91, 94, 98, 101; and
Blaser, Mario, 38 capitalism, 88, 92, 94, 103nn18, 21;
Bogotá Group, 28 coloniality of, xx, 72, 84–85, 86–87,
Brazil: colonial history of, 138–39, 145; 89, 90–91, 96, 102; and LGBTI
femicide in. See femicide: in Brazil; movements, 84, 94, 98, 102
and militarization, 143–44, 146–47; civilization: and barbarism, 67–69,
and racial democracy, 138. See also 70, 72–74, 96, 117, 125n38, 138,
Amazon, armed forces in the 140, 157, 204; concept of, xx,
buen vivir, 221, 222, 227, 228, 231, 67–69, 71–72, 74, 85; Eurocentric
234, 240n10 discourses on, 64–65, 69–73;
Buenaventura, xxi, 155–56, 159–60, feminist discourses on, 69–71; and
161–62, 163, 164, 168, 170nn11, 13 gender, 69–72, 117, 123n23, 225;
Butler, Judith, 12, 108 and mission of Western modernity,
xiv, 66, 72–73, 144; and political
Cabnal, Lorena, 79, 147, 236 theory, 72–74. See also European or
Cacuango, Dolores, 218, 226 Western Civilization
Cahuiya, Alicia, 228–29, 230, 231, 232 Collins, Patricia Hill, 51–52, 53
Cannadine, David, xx, 67–69 Colombia: armed conflict in, 156, 162,
capitalism of homosexuality, 95–96 164, 166, 168, 169nn4, 7, 170n16;
Caputi, Jane, 132 femicide in. See femicide: in
Caribbean, x, xi, xvi, xxi, xxv, xxviiin6, Colombia; Pacific Region of, 155–
3, 4, 18, 44, 46, 47, 49, 55, 123n23, 56, 157–60, 158, 159, 160–63, 164–
176, 178, 188, 196n17 65, 167, 169, 238; paramilitaries in,
Cariño Trujillo, Carmen, x, xxii, xxiii 160–61, 163, 165, 167, 168, 170n13;
Carrie, Heather, 178 public policies on women and gender
Carrillo, Martina, 219 in, xx, 110, 112, 114, 115, 121n11,
Cartuche Vacacela, Inti, 224 122n12, 164; state discourses of,
Casas, Bartolomé de las, 4 157, 162–63, 164; violence against
Casimir, Jean, 4–5, 18 women in, 156, 160–63, 164–68
 Index 269

colonial attitude, 19. See also community: Black and afro-descendent,

imperial attitude xxii, 149, 156, 160, 163, 164–65,
colonial difference, 7, 8, 12, 14, 20n1, 166–69, 170n16, 193, 218; colonial
38, 53, 55, 79, 109–10, 195 difference and, 10–11, 14–16, 17–18,
colonial wound, xi, 14, 25–26 20, 201; colonialist views of, 37,
colonial/modern gender system, xv, xvi, 163, 166, 212; decolonial, xxii, xxiii,
3, 5–7, 9–10, 19–20, 20n1, 50, 88, 101, 149, 156, 202–3, 207–12, 213,
109, 111, 113, 119, 120, 123n23, 218, 221, 227, 231, 233–35; gender
136–37, 205 dynamics in, 14, 17, 20, 196n17,
coloniality, xvi, xviii–xxiii, 5, 8, 12, 14, 203, 205, 209, 212, 218–20, 226,
18, 20, 28–30, 38, 63, 85–86, 89, 233–38; Indigenous, 3, 17–18, 84,
131–32, 175–76, 190–91, 203–4, 91, 94, 99, 160, 193, 194, 202, 205,
209, 211, 232; logic of, xxi, 91, 94, 207–12, 213, 214nn1, 218–20, 224,
114, 203, 205, 207 227, 230–31, 233–38; international,
coloniality of being, 49, 70 73, 80, 222; and knowledge
coloniality of gender, ix, xiv, xv, production, xiv, 46, 56, 199n63, 208,
xx, xxv–xxvi, xxviin2, 3, 94–95, 210–11, 221, 233–35; non-seminal
132, 149, 153n44, 218, 233; and economic, 8, 13–14; rights of. See
capitalism, 12, 17, 95, 113, 120; rights: collective; violence against,
definition of, xviii, 9–10, 71–72, xv, xxii, 91, 94, 99, 141, 145–46,
87, 109–10; and the mark of the 148, 158, 160–62, 164–65, 166–69,
human, 11, 15–17, 19–20, 20n1, 26, 171n17, 201–3, 208–11, 222, 224,
71, 123n23; and violence against 227, 234, 237; of women, 35, 37,
women, 136–38, 205, 232. See also 38, 46, 218–20, 233–35. See also
colonial/modern gender system Miskitu Community of Raiti
coloniality of knowledge, xvii, 46, Confederation of Indigenous
49, 56; definition of, 53–54, 67; Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE)
and waste of knowledge/wasted (Ecuador), 224, 225, 226, 239n1
knowledges, 84, 89–90, 93, Conzemius, Eduard, 182, 192,
96, 98, 101 193, 199n71
coloniality of power, xv, 12, 53, 70, 73, Correa, Rafael (Ecuador), 217–18, 220,
93, 158, 163, 194, 205; definition 221, 222–29, 231–32
of, 48–49, 67, 87, 132, 137, 175–76; counterhegemonies, x, 26, 49, 93,
resisting, 54, 150, 155, 228, 238 99–101, 135
coloniality/modernity. See modernity/ Crenshaw, Kimberlé, 53, 134
coloniality Critique of Latin American Reason, 27
colonization: and the conquest of Cumes, Aura, x, 55, 147
America, 63–65, 69–71, 74, 76, 79, Curiel, Ochy, x, xviii, xix, 97, 101,
85, 156; European, xiv, 3–4, 48, 104n33, 105n43, 137
121n10, 131, 202–4, 206; histories
of, 66–67, 69–70, 76, 78, 138–39, Dagnino, Evelina, 92
157, 160, 225; and postcolonialism, de Lauretis, Teresa, 108–9
44–46. See also Abya Yala; decolonial coalition, 7, 8, 14, 16, 20n1
United States decolonial critique, xi, xvi, 27
Combahee River Collective, 134
270 Index

decolonial feminism, ix–xvi, xxv, 210. See also megaprojects; woman:

xxvin1, xxviin2, 33, 43–44, 47–50, as measure of development
85, 97–98, 100, 101, 102, 109, 132, Díaz, Daniel, 123n18
139–40, 150, 150n1, 220, 233 Dirlik, Arif, 45
decolonial methodology, xix, 5, 7, 14, dispossession, 206; movements against.
16, 20n1, 43–44, 46, 51, 53–54, See movements: women in defense
55–56, 221, 234–36 of land-territories; ongoing, 73, 144,
decolonial movements. See movements: 149, 153n47, 209, 211, 220, 224,
anticolonial and decolonial 233; terra nullius and, 75–76; and
decolonial struggles, xi–xii, xv–xvi, violence against women, 137, 148,
xxii–xxiii, xxvi, 26, 47, 201–3, 207– 153n47, 203, 205, 225, 228, 237
8, 211–13, 220, 228, 233, 238 Dorlin, Elsa, 112
decolonial task, 7–8, 20, 27, 54–56 Du Bois, W. E. B, 33–34; and double
decolonial theories in Latin America, x– consciousness, 33–34, 35
xii, 27, 45, 47, 48–50, 66–67, 175 Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne, 4
decolonial turn, the, xiv, 27, 101 Dussel, Enrique, 38, 48, 66–67
decoloniality, xiv, xv, xix, xxvi,
47–48, 204, 211 Ecuador: Chinese oil consortium and,
decolonization, xviii, xxii, 3, 27, 46, 225, 226–27, 230–31; Constitution
47–48, 56, 111, 202, 208, 220–21, of, 220, 221, 222, 223, 231, 234;
233, 238–39 “progressive” state of, xxiii, 217–18,
Decolonizing Democracy, 78 220, 221–25, 226, 228, 235; state
democracy, xix, xx, 149, 178; in Brazil. violence in, 220, 223–25, 226–27,
See Brazil: and racial democracy; 229–32. See also Amazon, armed
Western ideal of, 63–64, 66–67, forces in the; buen vivir; extractivism
69, 72–73, 79–80, 88, 91. See also Encinas, Diego, 3
rights: LGBTI Enlightenment, 36–37; 48, 64, 69–70;
Dennis, Phillip, 180, 182, 183, 188 anti-, 27; ontological foundations, 28
Descartes, René, xiv epistemic violence: and academia,
deterritorialization, xxii, 161–63, 166, xiii, xx, 46, 54–55, 65, 66–67, 70,
169, 171n17 75, 77, 176–77; against Indigenous
development, xxi–xxiii, 220; in communities, xv, 84, 189–91, 238;
Colombia. See Colombia: Pacific movements in redress of, xix, xxiii,
Region of; discourse, 111, 114, 116, 50, 54–56, 89–90, 93, 98, 101.
117, 122n12, 190, 191, 210, 223–24; See also coloniality of knowledge;
geopolitics of, 64–67, 111, 117, racism: and knowledge production
122n14, 149, 189–90; modern myth epistemology: Black feminist and
of, 38, 116–17; movements against, feminist of color, 27, 34, 52, 101; of
50, 149, 202, 225, 229; and public the borderlands, 155; feminist, xvii,
policy, 110–12, 195n4, 223, 233; 32–33, 97; of ignorance, 77, 87
violence of, 123n18, 132, 144–46, Escobar, Arturo, 14, 111, 114, 157, 232
149, 223–25, 229, 232–33; “Women Escobar, Margoth, 232
in,” discourse, 111–12; and women Espinosa-Miñoso, Yuderkys, x, xvi,
of the Third World, 111–12, 148–49, xviii, xx, xxiv, xxv, xxviiin5, 20n1,
49–50, 56, 97, 101, 104n33, 137, 204
 Index 271

Espinoza, Zoila, 219 212–13; Indigenous. See Indigenous

essentialism, xii, 33, 50–51, 118 feminism; institutionalized, xvii,
Eurocentric Conceptions of World xx, 107; and Islam, 69; in Latin
Politics, 72 America, x, xii, xiv, xvi, xvii, xviii,
Eurocentric modern ontologies, xiv, 11, xix, 25–27, 29, 31–32, 35, 39, 47,
20, 27, 70–71, 175–76 50, 100, 134; lesbo-/lesbian, xxi, 43,
Europe, xiv, xvi, 29–30, 38, 46, 48, 49, 95, 99, 100, 101, 103n18, 104n30,
63, 64–68, 204 150; pluriversal, 220, 236, 238–39;
European or Western civilization, xiv, postcolonial, xix, 44, 46, 50, 126n47;
xix, xx, 38, 64–65, 66–67, 68–71, white and white-Mestizo, x, 32, 34,
72–74, 80, 123n23, 204 54, 101, 113–14, 116, 134–35, 212,
extractivism, xxi, xxiii; government 219–20, 228; women of color, x, xiv,
politics of, 195n4, 202, 218, 220, xviii, 27, 32–34, 47, 50, 101
224, 226, 232–34, 240n9, 241n20; feminist politics, 26, 31, 97, 101
industry of, 153n47, 202, 207, 225, feminist Reason/reason, xviii, 25–26,
231, 232, 235, 237; post-, 222–23. 29–30, 32, 36, 38–39; coloniality of,
See also development; dispossession; xvii, 26, 36, 69–70; Eurocentrism of,
land–territory 26, 29, 53, 69–70; genealogy of, 32
feminist theory, xvii, 32, 37, 134, 212;
Fagoth, Ana, 182 classical, 32; socialist, 33
Fanon, Frantz, 12, 49, 70, 115, Flores, Cecilia, 232
118, 125n33, 140, 204; on Foucault, Michel, 10, 17, 24n52, 28–30,
sociogeny, 17, 24n50 36, 108, 110, 122n13
Fassin, Eric, 94 Freyre, Gilberto, 138
femicide, xxi–xxii, 140, 145, 147–48,
151nn8, 18, 226; in Brazil, 135, García Salazar, Juan, 218
139–40, 144, 148, 149; in Colombia, Gargallo, Francesca, 27, 105n43
156, 162–63, 166–68; definitions gender, 33, 38, 50, 51, 53, 69, 70–71,
of, 132–35, 135–36, 137, 151n5; 76, 79, 84, 87, 91, 150, 180, 237,
lesbicide, 133; in Mexico, 132, 133, 239; coloniality of. See coloniality
135–36, 142, 148, 149, 154n48 of gender; concept of, 5–7, 12, 17,
feminicide. See femicide 19–20, 20n1, 48, 205; equality.
feminism, 25–27, 29–32, 33, 35, 37; See liberation; public policy: on
Black, ix, xiv, xvii, xviii, xix, 27, gender equality; rights: women’s; as
32–34, 43, 47, 50, 51–52, 54, 97, everywhere, 6, 7, 8, 12, 17, 20n1;
134, 137, 210; contains implicit Indigenous constructions of, 15, 237,
prescriptions, 38, 47, 51, 97, 111, 239; and knowledge production, 50,
116, 208, 233, 236; decolonial. See 70, 217–18, 225–26; norms, 107–8,
decolonial feminism; decolonization 110–11, 112, 113, 120, 208; and
of, xviii, 27, 233, 238; genealogy sexuality/sexual identities, xvii, 25,
of, xii–xiii, 35, 44, 49, 96–97; as 29–30, 37, 48, 93–95, 97–98, 223;
global project, xii, xxviin2, 37, system. See colonial/modern gender
39, 210; hegemonic, xi, xv, xvi, system; technology of, xxi, 36,
26, 43, 46–47, 50, 97, 99, 111, 107–9, 110, 112, 119–20; violence,
116–17, 134, 149, 203, 208, 209, xxi, xxii, 64, 99, 186, 197n17, 206,
272 Index

209, 210. See also civilization: coloniality of gender: and the mark
and gender; community: gender of the human
dynamics in; LGBTI movements: Huntington, Samuel, 68–69
and gender; nation-state: and gender;
oppression; practice: around gender imperial attitude, xx, xxiii, 67, 69
and sexuality; sexual/gendered Indigenous cosmologies, xxii, 5, 7, 14,
division of labor; subject: sex- 17–18, 19, 150, 187, 211, 219, 237,
gendered; women 238, 240n10
genealogy of experience, 26, 32, 35, Indigenous feminism, xviii, xix, 43, 47,
97. See also feminist Reason/reason: 54, 97, 210
genealogy of Indigenous knowledge, xix, xxii, 5,
Global North, xiii, 26, 29, 54, 111 7, 10, 17, 55–56, 66, 145, 175–77,
Global South, xiii, xvi, xxiv, xxv, 178–79, 182, 187, 189–90, 191–94,
xxviin2, 26, 34, 54, 110–11, 145 207–8, 210, 218–19, 233–34, 239,
Gómez, Diana, 56, 204 240n10. See also coloniality of
Gonzales, Lélia, 138 knowledge: and waste of knowledge/
González Casanova, Pablo, 117 wasted knowledges
Grosfoguel, Ramón, 45, 66, 204 Indigenous movements. See movements:
Guha, Ranajit, 44 Indigenous
Gutierrez Callisaya, Yamila, 234–35, Indigenous peoples: violence against,
236, 243n49 xiv–xv, xxi, xxii, xxvi, 3–4, 65–66,
73, 75–77, 99, 131–32, 135–38,
Haiti, 4–5, 18 139–43, 145–49, 153n47, 154n48,
Hall, Stuart, xix, 45–46, 54, 118; and 156, 167, 186, 205–6, 209–11, 223,
disengagement, xix, 46, 51, 54–56 228, 231–33; women, x, xi, xv, xix,
Haraway, Donna, 33, 51 xxi, xxii–xxiii, xxv–xxvi, 7, 34,
Harding, Sandra, 33, 51; and bifurcated 53, 55, 97, 109, 112–13, 116, 119,
consciousness, 33 132, 135–38, 139–45, 147–48, 150,
Hartsock, Nancy, 33 154n48, 156, 167, 179, 180–81, 184,
Hegel, Friedrich, 37 186, 192, 195n4, 219–20, 224–28,
hegemonic feminism. See 230–39, 240n9, 243n49. See also
feminism: hegemonic Amazonian peoples; community:
hierarchization, 30, 114, 117, 120, 193 Indigenous; Aymara, the; Mapuche,
history of ideas, 27–28 the; Mexico: Indigenous and
Hobbes, Thomas, xiv, 9, 74, 76 campesina women in; Miskitu
Hobson, John, xx, 64–67, 69, 72, 73, 74 Community of Raiti; San Francisco
hooks, bell, 134–35 Xochicuautla; San Salvador Atenco
Huanca, Lourdes, 237–38 Indigenous women messengers of
human: definitions of the, xiv, 3, 5, Abya Yala (Chasqui Warmikuna
9–10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 30, 37–38, or Chaski-Warmi), 232, 233–35,
48–49, 55, 65, 71, 74, 77, 110, 236, 243n49
123n23, 181–82, 225; /non-human, Institute of Traditional Medicine
xiv, xv, xvii, xviii, 8, 9, 12, 13, and Community Development
15–17, 20, 70–71, 99, 119, 131, (IMTRADEC) (Nicaragua), 177,
137, 139, 147, 204–5, 212. See also 182, 183, 188
 Index 273

interculturality/interculturalidad, state of, 55, 92, 94, 146, 149. See

8, 175, 177, 179, 187, 191, 192, also Abya Yala
193, 195, 221 Latin Americanness, 28, 30. See also
internal colonialism, 26, 34, 117, 219 Latin America: philosophy in
intersectionality, ix, xv, xvii, xix, xxv, Latour, Bruno, 190
53, 70, 97–99, 210; and fusion, León, Manuela, 226
98, 100–102 LGBTI movements, xx, 84, 85, 90–93,
94–96, 102, 103n18, 104n33; and
Jackson, Andrew, 4 gender, 93; and homonationalism,
Jamieson, Mark, 180, 182 96, 104n28; racism of, 93, 95–96;
and state discourse, 90, 92, 94. See
Kant, Immanuel, 10, 36–37, 74 also rights: LGBTI
Keating, Christine, 78–79 liberation, 8, 20, 180, 213; and
Knkoli, Simon, 93, 95–96 citizenship, 89, 90; global
knowledge production, xii, xvi–xvii, program for, xvii, 37, 49, 83, 96;
xix, 32, 34, 36–38, 46, 50, 191–94, interconnected struggles for, 20,
207–8; experience as source for, 88, 91, 93, 211; philosophies of,
xiv, 27, 32–33, 34, 47, 52, 54, 97, 13, 54; as pretext, 78, 89, 114, 224.
221; “from below,” xxvi, 16, 234; See also subject: of liberated gender
situated, 27, 51–52, 155, 176–77, and sexuality
221; and subject-object relation, life and care, reproduction of, xvi, 6, 17,
53–56; Western scientific, xxii, 17, 33, 55, 181, 202, 205, 230, 238
19, 27, 32–33, 116, 177, 189–92, Locke, John, 63, 74, 76
194, 199n63. See also community: López de Gómara, Francisco, 3
and knowledge production; epistemic Lorde, Audre, 15, 86
violence; Indigenous knowledge Lozano, Carmen, 232
Kusch, Rodolfo, 13–14 Lugones, María, ix–x, xi, xxiv–xxv,
xxvin1, xxviin2, 20n1, 47, 53, 56,
la otra de la otra, 26 84, 88, 93, 98, 100, 132, 217; on
Lagarde, Marcela, 133–34, 151n5 category of “woman,” xviii, 109,
Laird, Sloane, 178 112, 114, 120, 136–37; on colonial/
land-territory, 203, 205, 206–7, 211, modern system, 120, 123n23,
213, 214n1. See also movements: 136–37, 153n44, 205; on coloniality
women in defense of land-territory; of gender, xv, 48, 70–71, 87, 109,
nature/Nature; women: defending 137, 205, 218
land, territory, nature, life Lupo, Silvia, 232
Latin America, x, xi, xii, xix, 26, 28, 30,
32, 46, 146, 149, 175, 179, 194, 217, Machoa, Katy, 217, 225, 226–27, 235,
225, 239; discourses of, 28–31, 36, 239, 239n1
94; feminism in. See feminism: in Mackey, Tim, 178
Latin America; history of coloniality, Maese-Cohen, Marcelle, xxviin2
xxi, 28, 30, 44, 79, 85, 94, 140, Maldonado-Torres, Nelson, x, xxiv–xxv,
149, 225; identity of, xix, 28, 149; xxviiin4, 14, 20n1, 49, 67, 70
philosophy in, xvi, xvii, 27–28, male ethos of state, 217, 218
47, 175; and Reason, xxi, 27, 35; Mapuche, the, 3, 99
274 Index

Marcos, Sylvia, 7, 18, 206 modern/colonial gender system. See

marronage, xiii, 4 colonial/modern gender system
Martinez, Esperanza, 232 modernity/coloniality, x, xvi, xvii, xx,
McClintock, Anne, 45 xxviiin3, 7, 17, 45, 85, 86, 98, 163,
megaprojects, 145, 153n43, 160, 162, 203–5, 213, 238; group, 47, 66
163, 167, 202, 223 Mohanty, Chandra, 26, 34, 44, 46, 114,
memory/countermemory, 26, 30, 119, 116, 126n47
186; collective, 31, 193, 218–19, 238 movements: in Abya Yala, xiii, 47,
Mendoza, Breny, x, xix–xx, 88, 55–56, 84, 147, 149–50, 225, 232–
149, 205, 217 35, 238; Afro-descendent, xi, xiv, 47,
mestizaje, 50, 55, 73, 79, 138 50, 104n33, 156, 168–69, 231, 238;
Mestizo-creole, 74, 79, 80; elites, xxiii, anticolonial and decolonial, xi, 32,
121n10, 217 103n18, 150, 168–69, 207, 238–39;
method, xiii, xviii, xix, 6, 26–27, 29, contemporary sociosexual, xi, xx,
50–51; genealogical, 25, 27–29, 30, 83, 93, 97–98, 101, 104n33,
32; oral history, 193–95; positivist 107, 149–50, 221; Indigenous, xi,
Cartesian, 37. See also decolonial xiv, xxii, 47, 99, 141, 220, 221, 223,
methodology; knowledge production 226, 231, 233–35, 238; LGBTI. See
Mexico, ix, xxii, xxviin2, 133, 134, LGBTI movements; New Social,
151n8, 231; and Felipe Calderón, (NSMs), 91, 92; women in defense
133, 141; femicide in. See of land-territory, xxiii, 201–3, 205,
femicide: in Mexico; Indigenous 207–10, 213, 218–20, 225–32,
and campesina women in, xxiii, 232–35, 236–39, 240n9. See also
201–3, 205–13, 215nn16, 20; and “Citizen’s Revolution” (Ecuador);
land ownership, 202, 206–7; and development: movements against;
militarization, 140–42 epistemic violence: movements in
Middle Passage, the, xiv redress of
Mignolo, Walter, x, xxvin1, 14, Muller, Pierre, 107–8; and structure of
66, 153n44 signification, 108–9, 121n6
militarization, xxi, xxii, xxiii, 94, Muñoz, Paulina, 232
96, 137, 161. See also Abya Yala:
military strategy in; Amazon, Nascimento, Abadías do, 138
armed forces in the; Brazil: nation-state, xvi, xx, 5, 16, 48, 67,
and militarization; Colombia: 73–74, 76, 92, 117, 207, 210; and
paramilitaries in; Mexico: and gender, 3, 17, 20, 95–96, 223;
militarization; United States: military hegemonic discourse of, 94–96, 110,
presence of 119, 142, 146, 163, 188–189, 195n4,
Mills, Charles, 75, 76–79 219, 223–24, 233; violence of, xxiii,
misgenação, 138–39 90, 133, 140–44, 146, 151n5, 158,
Miskitu Community of Raiti, 175–77, 166, 176, 219, 224–25, 227, 229–32.
178, 187, 188; cosmovision of, 179, See also practice: state
181–82, 187, 192, 193, 194–95, nature/Nature: destruction of, 163,
199n63; and Grisi Siknis, 179–80, 167, 223, 227, 232, 241n20; as
181–89, 190–92, 194; and magic, exploitable, 9, 37, 204–5, 237,
182, 185, 187, 189, 198n47 240n3; human/, binary, 205, 211,
 Index 275

212; as inseparable and integral, 157, Pedrosa, Álvaro, 157

182, 205, 206, 211, 222, 224, 226, Peña Torres, Ligia, 192
227–28, 230, 233, 239; in Miskitu plantations, 4
cosmology, 182, 187; Mother Earth, political violence, 63–64, 141, 146,
207, 208, 222, 226, 232, 233, 235; 150, 164, 166, 168, 232. See also
Pachamama, 207, 211, 222, 232, Amazon, armed conflict in the;
233, 241n20; relationship with, colonization; femicide; nation-state:
50, 93, 97, 239; state of, 38, 76; violence of; practice: political
as subject of rights, 221–22, 234. postcolonialism, xix, 44–46, 74, 126n47
See also Ecuador: Constitution of; practice, 29–31, 35–36, 38–39;
women: defending land, territory, academic, 51, 55, 193, 221;
nature, life community, xvi, 5, 10, 49, 161, 234,
Nicaragua, xxii, 175–76, 183, 187, 190; 236, 238; decolonial, anticolonial,
medical systems in. See biomedical antiracist, xx, xxv, 10, 43, 47, 49,
systems: in Nicaragua; Ministry of 56, 150, 177, 193, 207, 210, 228,
Health, 175, 176, 177, 182, 183, 235, 238; discursive, 30–31, 36,
185, 186, 188; national discourses 112, 119, 122n12; around gender
on health in, 184–85, 188–89, 194; and sexuality, 18, 30, 108–9, 115,
public policy in, 178, 195n4 119, 120n1, 154n48, 236, 237–38; of
Nichols, Robert, 75, 76–77, 78, 79 healers, 182, 187, 192, 195; localized
North Caribbean Coast Autonomous genealogy of, 28; of modern/colonial
Region (RACCN), 176–78, thought, 8, 51, 193; oppressive, xxi,
183–85, 188 52, 83, 84, 91, 96, 97, 99, 100, 117,
119, 134, 139, 141, 149, 150, 194,
Ochoa Muñoz, Karina, 56, 204 204, 223, 237, 240n3; political, 30,
Olivera, Mercedes, 136 39, 43, 46, 49, 50, 56, 97, 104n33,
oppression, xix, 5, 6, 7, 10, 16, 33–35, 111–12, 117, 122n14, 125n39, 144,
64, 85, 91, 94–96, 97–102, 140, 149, 149, 150, 209; sociocultural, 10,
150, 155, 169, 206, 213; matrix of, 54, 56, 99, 144, 156–57, 163, 168,
34, 50, 52–53, 84, 87, 88, 135, 137, 181–82, 219; state, xxi, 69, 90, 139,
209–10, 212; narratives of shared, 178; theory/, binary, 210, 221; of
109, 134; parochial views of, 95, 97, writing, 31
114, 134, 149, 203, 212, 213. See Pratt, Mary Louise, 11
also practice: oppressive progress, ideal of, 28, 54, 65, 68, 85,
other of the other, the. See la otra 213, 225. See also civilization;
de la otra development; Ecuador:
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́, xxviin2 “progressive” state of
Puar, Jasbir, 96
Pacari, Nina, 218, 220, 236–37, 243n49 public policy: in Colombia. See
pachakutik, the, 226, 239 Colombia: public policies on women
Pacific Eurocentered authority, 176, 191 and gender in; on gender equality,
Palermo, Zulma, 54–55 xix, xxi, 107–9, 110, 112, 113–15,
Paredes, Julieta, 15, 79, 236 116, 117, 118–20; “Integral Policy
Pateman, Carole, 76–77 for Women,” 110, 115, 117; in
Patiño, Germán, 170n11 Nicaragua. See Nicaragua: public
276 Index

policy in; and “woman,” 107, 108, rights: access to and exercise of, 72,
112–13, 115–16, 117, 119, 120 76, 83, 84, 85, 91–92, 94, 177–79,
209; and citizenship, xx, 87–89, 90,
Quijano, Aníbal, x, 14, 36, 38, 66, 92; collective, 222, 224, 225, 234,
76–77, 87, 94, 158; and coloniality 238; human, 133, 142, 151n8, 161,
of power, xv, 3, 48, 67, 70, 86, 87, 168, 231, 234; Indigenous peoples,’
131, 137, 175, 204 178, 206, 207, 209, 211–12, 224,
Quilago, 226 225, 230, 232; land, 75, 78, 162,
168, 182, 206–7, 211–12, 226, 230;
race, xv, xvi, 4, 46, 51, 63, 72, 78, 79, LGBTI, 94–96, 98, 99; reproductive,
86, 91, 110, 112, 119, 134, 150; 9, 29, 164; struggles for, xx, xxi,
and coloniality, xiv, 3, 9, 38, 48, 168, 209, 211–12, 224, 229, 230;
66–67, 70, 76, 87–88, 95, 99, 113, subject of, 48, 71, 75, 87, 177, 203,
123nn18, 23, 131, 137, 170n11, 239; 206, 207, 209, 211–12, 221–22, 234;
inattention to, 93–94, 96, 97, 100; usurpation of, 63–64, 67, 71, 78–79,
as interlocking axis, xv, 7, 8, 33, 43, 90, 142, 149, 164, 225, 231, 232;
50, 53, 84, 88, 109, 120, 135, 149; women’s, xx, xxi, 69, 107, 133, 211–
privilege, xvii, 32, 46, 54, 71 12, 232. See also nature/Nature
racialized woman/women, x, xxi, 9, 34, Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia, 55, 56,
52–53, 71, 88, 97, 113, 131, 132, 125n35, 176, 192, 193
134–35, 137, 139, 142–45, 147–48, Rodó, José Enrique, 27
150, 208, 211–12 Rodríguez Moreno, Celenis,
racism, xvi, 24n50, 72, 101, 133, xix, xx, 101
144, 147, 155, 219; differential Rojas Silva, Jeannette, 170n16
experiences of, xv, 50, 52, Rousseau, Jacques, 9, 74
134–35; inattention to, 93–96, 99; Ruíz, Edgardo, 188–89
institutional, 55, 134, 138, 145; and Russell, Diana, 132, 133–34
knowledge production, xiii, 33, 36,
43, 73, 76–77, 199n63; neo-colonial, Said, Edward, 44, 124n25, 125n39
85, 132, 149, 166, 168; systemic, San Francisco Xochicuautla,
xviii, 52, 97–98, 131, 132, 136, 202, 215n16
149, 210, 238 San Salvador Atenco, 202, 208,
Radford, Jill, 133–34 212, 215n20
Ramírez, María Antonia, 206, 215n16 Santi, Nancy, 232
Ramírez, Trinidad, 208, 215n16 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 86,
Ramos, Ivonne, 232 89, 90, 98, 100; and societal
rationalization, 37 fascism, 91–92, 94; and subaltern
Rawls, John, 74 cosmopolitanism, 90, 98, 101
Reason/reason, 35–38; coloniality of, savior complex, 37
xix–xx; Eurocentric, xiv, 35–36, Scott, Joan, 27, 35
38–39, 64–65; Man of, 9, 17, 119, Segato, Rita, 15, 79, 205
123n23; modern Western, 9, 28, 38, sexual dimorphism, xvii, 6, 10, 19,
67, 84, 219–20. See also feminist 20n1, 48, 113
Reason/reason; Latin America:
and Reason
 Index 277

sexual/gendered division of labor, xvii, 132, 204; contemporary, 28; and

xxi, 17, 19, 33, 50, 87–88, 107–9, development, 114, 117, 163;
113, 131, 233 women’s, 217, 219
Shohat, Ella, 45
Sillitoe, Paul, 189–90, 198n52 Third World, xix, 25, 44, 45, 50, 53,
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake, 239 109, 111, 117, 122n14; women, ix,
slavery: in ancient Athens, 64; neo-, 37, 46, 111, 114–16, 126n47
162; racial, xiv, 9, 11, 18, 20, 20n1, Thomson, Sinclair, 125n35
66, 88, 92, 147, 149, 156–57; sexual, Tlostanova, Madina, xxvin1, 14
132, 164; transatlantic slave trade, 3, Towns, Ann, 69–70
4, 131, 138, 147 transculturation, 5, 7, 11, 12, 16–18
Smith, Dorothy, 33 Troncoso, Patricia, 99, 101
social contract theory, xx, 74, 75–79 truth, 28, 35, 37, 38; political economy
sovereignty, 18, 73–74, 75, 76, of, 29–30, 91, 119; production of,
80, 181, 222 xvii, 37, 190
speaking from nowhere, 27, 49 Truth, Sojourner, 11
Spelman, Elizabeth, 8 Tzul Tzul, Gladys, 55
Spillers, Hortense, 9
Spivak, Gayatri, xxviin2, 44, 46 United States (U.S.), x, xxviin2, 134;
standpoint theory, 27, 32–35, academic spaces in, ix, xxv, 29–30,
51, 138, 236 44, 45, 47; colonial history of, 4, 44,
stereotyping, 109, 116, 118–19, 125n38, 69, 74, 77; as imperial actor, xxiii,
126nn45–47, 142, 148, 188 44, 69, 143, 189, 198n52; military
subaltern/subalternity, 26, 33–34, 49, presence of, xxi, 140, 143, 146,
52, 54–55, 87, 96, 114, 117, 175, 153n43; narratives of, 49, 64, 67,
191, 193, 225; woman, 34, 46, 117. 68, 198n52
See also racialized woman/women; Ushigua, Gloria, 227, 229–30, 231
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa: and
subaltern cosmopolitanism; subject: Vazquez, Rolando, 14
racialized Ventura, Marta Cecilia, 232
subject, 34–38, 52; Brazilian, 138; Vespucci, Amerigo, 9
colonial, xviii, 20n1, 26, 78, 123n21,
124n32; extralegal, 84–85, 89, Walsh, Catherine, xxii, xxiii, 14, 179
91–92, 99; feminist, 35, 97, 134, Wedel, Johan, 178
137; fractured, 26, 120; of liberated Wekker, Gloria, 18
gender and sexuality, 38, 94–95, Western modernity, xvi, xx, xxviin2,
112, 115–16, 120; production of 14, 17, 20n1, 25–28, 30, 36–39,
the universal, 36, 39, 97, 109, 111, 43, 47–49, 66, 149, 175; historical
114, 219–20; racialized, 33, 71, 85, temporality of, 14, 25, 38, 49, 66, 79
88, 96, 99, 102, 143, 147, 157, 166, white-Mestizo, xi, 33, 34, 43;
170n11, 188; sex-gendered, 25, 30, elites, xix, 28
93, 120n1; woman, 26, 36–37, 38, white/white-Mestizo feminism. See
107–9, 111–20, 134–35, 136 feminism: hegemonic; feminism:
subjectivity: active, 10; capitalist, white and white-Mestizo
92; coloniality and, 48, 120, 131, Whyte, Kyle, 175–76
278 Index

woman: category of, xv, xviii, 11–12, 206–13, 215nn16, 20, 218, 220,
20, 32, 47, 97, 107, 109, 112, 224–29, 230–31, 232–35, 238–39,
115–17, 120, 135–37, 208, 237; 240n9; Indigenous. See Indigenous
definitions of, 5, 6, 11–12, 15, 17, peoples: women; leadership of,
18, 35, 108–9, 111–12, 115–17, xi, xiii, xxiii, 164, 168, 207, 209,
119–20, 123n23; as measure of 218–20, 224–26, 226–31, 231–35,
development, 69–70, 111, 114–16; 236–38, 243n49; racialized. See
“problem,” 107, 111–12, 119; racialized woman/women; rights. See
racialized. See racialized woman/ rights: women’s; subjectivity. See
women; in state of historical subjectivity: women’s; Third World.
subjection, 36–37; subaltern. See See Third World: women; violence
subaltern/subalternity: woman; against. See Colombia: violence
subject. See subject: woman. See against women in; coloniality of
also public policy; subject: of gender: and violence against women;
liberated gender and sexuality dispossession: and violence against
women: Afro-descendent. See Afro- women; femicide
descendent women; Amazonian. See Wynter, Sylvia, x, 3
Amazonian peoples: women; Black.
See Black women; as community. Yasuní-ITT initiative, the (Ecuador),
See community: of women; control 222–23, 227–28
over, bodies and territories, xxi,
11, 116, 132, 138–40, 142–45, Zapatista Army of National Liberation
147–48, 161, 163, 164, 196n17, 209, (EZLN), 141, 210
223, 231–33, 237; defending land, Zea, Leopoldo, 27
territory, nature, life, xxi, xxii–xxiii, Zibechi, Raúl, 205
55, 143, 147, 150n1, 168, 201–3,