Operating within the framework of postcolonial studies and decolonial theory, this important work starts from the assumption that the violence exercised by European colonialism was not only physical and economic, but also ‘epistemic’. Santiago Castro-Gómez argues that toward the end of the eighteenth century, this epistemic violence of the Spanish Empire assumed a specific form: zero-point hubris. The ‘many forms of knowing’ were integrated into a chronological hierarchy in which scientific-enlightened knowledge appears at the highest point on the cognitive scale, while all other epistemes are seen as constituting its past. Enlightened criollo thinkers did not hesitate to situate the Black, Indigenous, and mestizo peoples of New Granada in the lowest position on this cognitive scale. Castro-Gómez argues that in the colonial periphery of the Spanish Americas, Enlightenment constituted not only the position of epistemic distance separating science from all other knowledges, but also the position of ethnic distance separating the criollos from the ‘castes’. Epistemic violence—and not only physical violence—is thereby found at the very origin of Colombian nationality.

La actitud competitiva e individualista de la "sociedad capitalista del conocimiento" ha generado y sigue generando una carrera loca en la apertura de programas doctorales en Colombia y América Latina. Estos programas, en su generalidad, están ofreciendo más de lo mismo en el sentido de repetir los modelos extranjeros con una visión colonialista de mantener el status quo. Consideramos que el libro "La formación doctoral en América Latina... ¿más de lo mismo?, ¿una cuestión pendiente?" aspira a desvelar los entresijos de esta formación y proponer otras visiones que intentan ofrecer respuestas posibles a los numerosos interrogantes que nos planteamos para la región. Invitamos a los lectores a participar del desafío.

This collection of “calaveras,” folk poetry in the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead celebrations, satirizes public figures, reminding them that their time on earth is limited despite their fame. In addition to the replicas of the “calaveras” originally published in newspapers and magazines, this volume includes background information about this particular poetic genre, biographical information and interviews with Don Moisés and analysis of the poetry. No one escaped Espino’s eye, including Richard Nixon, Fidel Castro and Muhammad Ali! Compiled and edited by University of Texas at San Antonio professor Ellen Clark, this ebook contains Espino’s complete collection.

A new collection from one of Latin America's most dynamic radical thinkers—in the tradition of Frantz Fanon and Eduardo Galeano. Constructing Worlds Otherwise sets itself against the recolonization of Latin America by one-dimensional, ethnocentric perspectives that permeate the North American left and block fundamental social change in the Global South. In a provocative mix of polemic and on-the-ground analysis, Raúl Zibechi argues that it is time for radicals in the Global North to learn from the people their governments have colonized and oppressed for centuries. Through a survey of the most marginalized voices across Latin America—feminists, the Indigenous, people of African descent, and inhabitants of urban favelas and shantytowns—he introduces the Anglo world to a range of critical perspectives and new forms of struggle. For Zibechi, real change comes from “societies in movement,” the people already fighting for their survival using egalitarian and traditional models of world-building, without the state, without official representatives, and without vanguards of political experts. His book contributes to global geographies of autonomous and anti-state thinking, with Zibechi placing his work in conversation with the ideological theorist of Kurdish resistance, Abdullah Öcalan, for a rich and dynamic survey of global movements of decolonization. Now more urgent than ever, this translation by George Ygarza Quispe comes at a time when the global left—struggling to expand its vision in a time of climate chaos and rising authoritarianism—finds itself at an impasse, desperate to animate and renew its critical imaginary.