EDITED BY
FERNANDO DAVID MÁRQUEZ DUARTE
& VÍCTOR ALEJANDRO ESPINOZA VALLE
This work brings together twelve chapters that address, from a decolonial approach, various aspects of the original history of Abya Yala. Divided into two sections, Theoretical Discussions and Praxis Analyses, they provide a general and critical view of the colonization of Indigenous Peoples that not only explains social or economic subjugation of Latin American people, but also makes it clear that colonization is ontological and epistemological. It is a way of conceiving history and memory as subjugation imposed by those who set themselves up as lords and masters of the land and of the social and cultural heritage of Latin America. Thus, colonization must be conceived as a totality. Therefore, deconstructing the hegemonic vision of history is necessary in order to recognize the ancestral rights of Indigenous communities. The decolonial vision is radical in the sense that it goes beyond the European descendants or mestizo visions from which the explanation of Latin American development was constructed. The book’s contents are developed by specialists committed to a contested vision of history. This book aims to investigate the roots of hegemonic thought and provide theoretical and empirical tools to imagine other readings of Abya Yala.
