Colonialism, Neocolonial, Internal Colonialism, the Postcolonial, Coloniality, and Decoloniality

Abstract

In approaching the meaning and significance of concepts such as colonization, dependency, internal colonialism, and decoloniality in Latin America, it is convenient to identify certain key periods. The first key period is that of “discovery” and colonization (fifteenth-sixteenth centuries), which saw the emergence of a philosophy of colonization and multiple counterhegemonic ideas and efforts that questioned it in various ways. The second key period is that of the wars for independence that began in the nineteenth century, and this led to the emergence of the first Latin American republics. Here, it is important to identify and distinguish at least three different projects of independence: that of what became the United States, that of Haiti, and that of what overwhelmingly came to be known as Latin America. While varied and complicated, this period is mainly characterized by an effort to build nation-states, to secure political and economic autonomy from European empires and the United States, and, particularly in the United States and in Latin America, to guarantee a space in the modern West. The third period is that of the Cold War (1945–1989), when European powers lost much of the geopolitical centrality that they had, the United States became a hegemonic power, and the perceived dialectic between the so-called First and Second Worlds confirmed the place of colonial and formerly colonized territories, including Latin America, in the shadows or, being more realistic perhaps, in the dungeons of modernity.