On its second day, the Decolonial School of Caracas continued on October 27 the first telematic chapter called Decolonial Criticism in times of pandemic, in order to keep generating critical-constructive debates among the participants that make up this activity.
The anthropologist from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), José Romero Lossaco, began his participation by stating the need to raise debates about the current situation based on decolonialism, and the great divergence that still exists in international geopolitics. The global history of the South in the year 1492, is fundamental within this context to understand the transcendence of the current world system.
During his presentation, he made a count of the economic powers at a global level throughout history, and the bifurcation that has existed throughout the decades, since “Europe has always acted with the aim of wanting to position itself as the most important continent to the world.”
The also researcher at the Center for the Study of Transformations of the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), said that the image that we have today of Western civilization is, on the one hand, a “long process of construction of the interior of the imaginary modern-colonial world-system, from the transition of the Mediterranean, as a center, to the formation of the commercial circuit of the Atlantic, as well as its exteriority.”
Production and decolonial consciousness
He added that the Neolithic Revolution was the first radical transformation of the way of life of humanity, which went from nomad to sedentary, when a productive economy based on agriculture and livestock took shape.
“To undertake the workforce from the field, as a sign of the Neolithic Revolution and the decolonial, it is necessary that the institutions support with the resources that strengthen the productive projects as a political-symbolic response to the capitalist state that seeks to drown us in times of difficulty.”
Modern-colonial system against COVID-19
On the other hand, the decolonial and feminist activist Karina Ochoa Muñoz also joined the debate by providing a reflective message through an account of the current civilizational crisis and the impact that COVID-19 has had in the world.
The Mexican activist assured that the European masses after decades silenced the voices of those who suffered as slaves, and this global pandemic “today acts as a judge to continue exposing the weaknesses and lies that proliferate those who are part of colonialism.”
“Let’s not see what we are going through as something negative, this virus tells us that modernity has not been able to develop mechanisms of human emancipation and the way in which they operate in the different areas of reality, with the fact that people die every day due to the lack of supplies and the few sanitary structures. This system has an effect that is sustained by death, so we must recognize that COVID-19 is not something anomalous within this, and only in this way will we be able to face this and improve with effective approaches to protect our peoples.”