Struggles For Liberation In Abya Yala

Presents struggles for liberation in the Americas from the perspectives of structural victims Struggles for Liberation in Abya Yala explores the ways people occupying different positionalities respond to various catastrophes while discussing how collective processes of struggle make new meanings and create new forms of relationality and subjectivity. Bringing together contributions by a diverse panel of well-established voices and rising scholars, this provocative volume challenges readers to resist, take direct collective action, organize, protest, and give proper uptake to social movements that fight against injustice and life-threatening conditions. Operating primarily within the context of “Abya Yala” — the term deployed by indigenous peoples to refer to the US, Latin America, and the Caribbean — the volume demonstrates and advances the explanatory and normative power of Philosophy of Liberation and the Decolonial Turn through theoretical analysis of current social changes unfolding in the Americas. Throughout the book, academic scholars and on-the-ground activists illustrate the reach, impact, and implications of radical social transformations that support victims of the system. Offering perspectives from the people who have chosen to rebel and act in solidarity against the system that oppresses them, Struggles for Liberation in Abya Yala: Addresses different struggles for social justice in the US, México and Latin America Draws from philosophical tradition with influence in Africana philosophy, feminism, critical race theory, ethics, and political philosophy Tasks readers to fight for reparations, stand in solidarity with marginalized and indigenous peoples, and abolish dispossession Critiques the capitalist and colonial relationships that facilitate the exploitation of large segments of the population Promotes social mobilization through education and the decolonization of Westernized university and educational practices An urgent call to action for all those seeking to fundamentally change the world, Struggles for Liberation in Abya Yala is a must-read for undergraduate and graduate students, educators and university lecturers, academic researchers and scholars, social and political activists, policymakers, journalists and media professionals, and general readers who are committed to liberation.

This is a collection of eleven chapters and an introduction that develop key arguments in decolonial feminism, particularly, the coloniality of gender, the critique of white and Eurocentric feminisms, the imbrication between gender, race, and colonialism, feminicides, and the coloniality of democracy and public institutions. The introduction addresses the path of decolonial feminism: from a new approach to understanding the relationship between gender as a category, race, and colonialism that combined U.S. Third World feminism and scholarship on coloniality and decoloniality to its exponential growth in the hands of activists and engaged scholars from Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, much of the literature on decolonial feminism in Latin America and the Caribbean remains unknown in the U.S. This anthology seeks to start remedying this problem with seven translations of work originally written in Spanish, and three essays originally written in English that address the fundamental concepts of decolonial feminism as well as its contributions to important contemporary political and intellectual debates.

Harmonizing Latina Visions and Voices: Cultural Explorations ofEntornos discursively challenges the erasures, stigma, and silences imposed on women by functioning as a harmonizing choir, a collection of voices to testify on mujerismo, its vision, and its promise for (our) future. This collection puts “on the record” a pathway toward liberation that pushes back against white supremacist projects unleashed by academia, our families, official narratives of the State, and immigration. This book does not seek to equate the experiences of all Latinas or envision a one-size-fits-all response. We harmonize these diverse voices, understanding that these stories, poems, and essays are invoking different spaces, times, and experiences. We offer them as an intergenerational, intellectual, and spiritual dialogue. As a practice, this work centers and contextualizes how women’s resistance is articulated and expressed. The stories reflected in the chapters that follow are often matricentric, transnational, and queer. Some recurring themes center on the policing, policies, and legislations that govern Latina’s bodies and the entornos (social/environmental worlds) in which they move, are detained, or embodied.

This book draws on participatory ethnographic research to understand how rural Colombian women work to dismantle the coloniality of power. It critically examines the ways in which colonial feminisms have homogenized the "category of woman,” ignoring the intersecting relationship of class, race, and gender, thereby excluding the voices of “subaltern women” and upholding existing power structures. Supplementing that analysis are testimonials from rural Colombian women who speak about their struggles for sovereignty and against territorial, sexual, and racialized violence enacted upon their land and their bodies. By documenting the stories of rural women and centering their voices, this book seeks to dismantle the coloniality of power and gender, and narrate and imagine decolonial feminist worlds. Scholars in gender studies, rural studies, and post-colonial studies will find this work of interest.

The eminent scholar Lewis R. Gordon offers a probing meditation on freedom, justice, and decolonization. What is there to be understood and done when it is evident that the search for justice, which dominates social and political philosophy of the North, is an insufficient approach for the achievements of dignity, freedom, liberation, and revolution? Gordon takes the reader on a journey as he interrogates a trail from colonized philosophy to re-imagining liberation and revolution to critical challenges raised by Afropessimism, theodicy, and looming catastrophe. He offers not forecast and foreclosure but instead an urgent call for dignifying and urgent acts of political commitment. Such movements take the form of examining what philosophy means in Africana philosophy, liberation in decolonial thought, and the decolonization of justice and normative life. Gordon issues a critique of the obstacles to cultivating emancipatory politics, challenging reductionist forms of thought that proffer harm and suffering as conditions of political appearance and the valorization of nonhuman being. He asserts instead emancipatory considerations for occluded forms of life and the irreplaceability of existence in the face of catastrophe and ruin, and he concludes, through a discussion with the Circassian philosopher and decolonial theorist, Madina Tlostanova, with the project of shifting the geography of reason.

An essential resource on interpretations of the Bible from scholars around the world. This substantially revised edition has been expanded to include sixteen new essays and a new section on postcolonial readings of scripture. It also contains a new introduction and an afterword by the editor, calling attention to new developments in biblical interpretation.

Looking beyond prominent figures or major ecclesial events, Liberation Theology and the Others offers a fresh historical perspective on Latin American liberation theology. Thirteen case studies, from Mexico to Uruguay, depict a vivid picture of religious and lay activism that shaped the profile of the Latin American Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century. Stressing the transnational character of Catholic activism and its intersections with prevalent discourses of citizenship, ethnicity or development, scholars from Latin America, the US, and Europe, analyze how pastoral renewal was debated and embraced in multiple local and culturally diverse contexts. Contributors explore the connections between Latin American liberation theology and anthropology in Peru, armed revolutionaries in highland Guatemala, and the implementation of neoliberalism in Bolivia. They identify conceptions of the popular church, indigenous religiosity, women’s leadership, and student activism that circulated among Latin American religious and lay activists between the 1960s and the 1980s. By revisiting the multifaceted and oftentimes contingent nature of church reforms, this edited volume provides fascinating new insights into one of the most controversial religious movements of the 20th century.

From the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square to the Tea Party in the United States to the campaign to elect indigenous leader Evo Morales in Bolivia, modern populist movements command international attention and compel political and social change. When citizens demand "power to the people," they evoke corrupt politicians, imperialists, or oligarchies that have appropriated power from its legitimate owners. These stereotypical narratives belie the vague and often contradictory definitions of the concept of "the people" and the many motives of those who use populism as a political tool. In The Promise and Perils of Populism, Carlos de la Torre assembles a group of international scholars to explore the ambiguous meanings and profound implications of grassroots movements across the globe. These trenchant essays explore how fragile political institutions allow populists to achieve power, while strong institutions confine them to the margins of political systems. Their comparative case studies illuminate how Latin American, African, and Thai populists have sought to empower marginalized groups of people, while similar groups in Australia, Europe, and the United States often exclude people whom they consider to possess different cultural values. While analyzing insurrections in Latin America, advocacy groups in the United States, Europe, and Australia, and populist parties in Asia and Africa, the contributors also pose questions and agendas for further research. This volume on contemporary populism from a comparative perspective could not be more timely, and scholars from a variety of disciplines will find it an invaluable contribution to the literature.