A contribution to the Another World-Decolonizing Project from a Latin American perspective that acknowledges the contemporary relevance of colonial legacies within State Nations

DANIEL MATO

Hangzhou

Simposio; Preparatory Conference of the Bandung School at the China Academy of Art; 2016

China Academy of Art

We have been invited to work towards "revitalizing the notion of the ´third world´ as an incomplete intellectual project linking Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America". As its statement tells, the Project seeks to connect ´with the larger visions for social and political transformations´, and it holds the long term vision to move towards a grounded global intellectual movement. It also states that our mission is to transform existing modes of thought, intellectual, popular or otherwise, exemplified by the so-called modern education system, where our modes of knowledge, mind and worldview have been shaped immensely to the effect of "We are all foreigners", foreign to our histories and even living communities; our lively and sophisticated worldviews have been reduced to Mr. Democracy and Mr. Science, two normative claims overriding the real historical complexity and local conditions and historical contexts. 61 years after Bandung I would say that in order to revitalize the notion of the Thirld World, and to Decolonize the Earth, certainly request us to move beyond the State centered vision. I do not think we have to abandon the inter-States conflicts of colonial nature that was the spirit of Bandung Conference, but that we also have to look at intra-States differences, relations of power, and dramatic disadvantaged conditions in which particular peoples have to maintain and to reproduce social life within States. I will from now on focus specifically on the case of Latin American states, which I am conscious it has its own characteristics, different from those in Africa and Asia. As a way to rapidly call our attention on the situation of indigenous and Afro descendant peoples in Latin America I would borrow the notion of "domestic Colonialism" established by Mexican intellectual Pablo Gonzalez Casanova.