ABSTRACT
The multiple histories of the region known today as Latin America are permeated by a series of colonial and neocolonial operations taking place since the 16th century and even before that. The processes of formation of the nation-states in the (former) colonies of Latin America are the result of successive and complex processes of colonial expansion that began many centuries ago and have had long-lasting effects on the region’s historical and cultural processes. In turn, the modern colonialist discourse walks hand in hand with a discourse of development that is, to paraphrase Lugones and Mignolo, “the clear face” of capitalist modernity. Colonial relations are constitutive of Western modernity – founded on a rhetoric of salvation, progress, “civilisation,” and development – just as decoloniality emerges at the same time as the modern westernizing project but works against it in indigenous and Afro-Caribbean thought.
