Algumas tendências teológicas na América Latina

Decolonizing Collective Action María Del Rosario Acosta López (bio) and Gustavo Quintero (bio) Over the last decade, new forms of collective social and political action have come into view: the Arab Spring in 2010, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, the 2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, to name just a few. Multiple social movements in Latin America, following the tradition that became visible in the 1960s with liberation theology, are reemerging to claim a form of self-government without a State, or a right to land understood as territory vis-à-vis the traditional conception of property, or even a form of state beyond the inherited Western notions of nation and sovereignty. The myriad efforts to consolidate collective struggles reveal the heterogeneous yet consistent power of resistance vis-à-vis a globalized neoliberal reason and its descent into fascism. Alongside these new forms of collective action, new forms of thought arise to urgently delineate the future not as an unstoppable juggernaut, but as a contested space of action and resistance. In those visions of the future, collective action and organization play a pivotal role by creating transnational networks of solidarity. The delineation of the future in these terms begins by confronting the expectations and anxieties of the current moment. It simultaneously elicits and demands new frameworks that allow for a rethinking of time itself. From that perspective, new modes of collective action subvert the relationship between the past, the present, and possible futures. Indeed, these collectivities call for a different future while simultaneously disrupting the present and drawing on influences from the past, making the past speak to us to forge what Édouard Glissant described as "a prophetic vision of the past," while allowing the future to become the site of the production of another, contested, form of history. In short, these new forms of collective action introduce new regimes of temporality. [End Page 4] This special issue of Diacritics—"Collective Temporalities: Decolonial Perspectives"—draws a cultural map of how collective action disrupts the established order while shaping possible futures and new horizons of expectation. Our invitation to the authors was to theorize the possible connections between collective action and new regimes of temporality from a decolonial perspective. The cartography of hopes and desires that results from this challenge delineates a different conception of the political character of action, while reinterpreting the role that time plays in the very conception of the political as collectivity and collectivity as a political choice. As the reader will see, the authors have largely chosen to address Latin America as a privileged site of their explorations of the time of the political. This should not be surprising, given how deeply ingrained in the histories of Latin America are the consequences of the ideology of progress imposed from the global North. As Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez suggests, writing about José Martí, "a notion of shared collectivity" comes "perhaps from a shared experience of domination."1 And yet, the authors raise questions and explore perspectives that are by no means limited to Latin America. The contributors open broader transnational discussions concerning structures of domination, combative identities, and histories of debt. They highlight theoretical and practical points of contact between the temporalities of collective movements in Ferguson, Colombia, Oakland, Puerto Rico, the US-Mexico border, among other geographies. This transnational network urges us to reckon with experiences of collective mobilization as the very basis to create new approaches to time. To assemble six interventions on collective temporalities means to raise a number of questions: How can one account for a future shared among a collectivity? What futures and what collectives are at stake? What conceptual tools are needed to imagine those futures? In answering these questions, the authors reject the assumption that there is one future or one collective. Their responses reveal numerous possible ways to think about temporalities, and in so doing, they insist upon the fluid character of popular assemblages. We have organized the volume to proceed from theoretical accounts of decolonial temporalities to geopolitical case studies and finally to close with a critical reflection on the very conception of the collective at the heart...

If we understand Practical Theology as the theoretical reflection of religious praxis in the context of Latin America from the paradigm of decoloniality, what would be its method? The reflection on the method of Practical Theology in Latin America was in close dialogue with Liberation Theology and its see-judge-act method. This means that doing Practical Theology in this context has always had a strong relationship with the practice of exclusion and socio-political vulnerability. All theology was seen with a second action, since practice and life, especially the context of the poor, was the locus theologicus par excellence. What does this mean from a decolonial perspective? In a decolonial perspective, would the method see-judge-act be the most appropriate? To what extent will seeing the reality be influenced by this paradigm? To what extent would judging from scripture and theological tradition be a way of reinforcing a certain coloniality? In the same way, to what extent action, religious practices, whether the ministry or religious forms in the context of culture and society, can express decoloniality. On the other hand, Latin America has contributed internationally to research practices in the social and human sciences, such as the Participatory Research (Carlos Rodrigues Brandao and Paulo Freire) and Participatory Action Research (Orlando Fals Borda). This paper therefore problematizes this question: which method will serve Practical Theology in Latin America from a decolonial perspective?

Liberation Theology in Brazil: Some History, Names and Themes Cláudio Carvalhaes and Fábio Py Liberation Theology is not just one theology among many others. No! Liberation Theology, as we understand it, is a matter of survival, of life and death. It is a place where faith, discourse of God, and real life meet in order to protect and expand the possibilities of life, in the eco‐biodiversity of the planet and in the possibility of justice for the poor. We didn't choose Liberation Theology; we were chosen by it, and it is because of Liberation Theology that we are here today. To take away Liberation Theology is to mute our voices; we become tongue‐tied, inarticulate, dumb. We are among the third generation of liberation theologians in Latin America. We attended Protestant churches, had a more conservative upbringing, and through social resistance and seminary formation, we were introduced to Liberation Theology. Our beginning text was Gustavo Gutierrez, a Catholic theologian, and we struggled to understand the book. But it led to a time of discovery and excitement! Rubem Alves, Richard Shaul, Julio de Santana, Jaci Maraschin, Leonardo Boff, Milton Schwantes, among many others, influenced us during the height of Liberation Theology. Priests and pastors were giving rise to the movement through churches and Base Communities, gaining consciousness about their social situation and how God Was calling them to a new day! Many women engaged in theological work as well and were beginning to shift the map of the theological production. Great theological material was produced, Liberation Theology pulsed everywhere, and socio‐political transformations spread all across Latin America. It is not our task here to give a long historical account of the processes and movements of Liberation Theology in Latin America, but rather to highlight the work of a few Latin American liberation theologians, namely Rubem Alves, Ivone Gebara, Milton Schwantes and Nancy Cardoso. Liberation Theology concerned itself with the poor and in that way engaged the black people of Latin America. But we failed to include black theologians and Liberation Theology as a whole neglected race in their work. We will begin by highlighting the ways in which liberation theologies started in Latin America with a few notes about its major tenets. Then, we will present a small part of the work of these four theologians mentioned above. We will finish with some words about what is left undone. Liberation Theology was not the creation of one theologian. Gustavo Gutierrez did not begin the movement; it was the work of the people, through grassroots movements calling for justice, in collaboration with priests and theologians, that deeply shaped Liberation Theology in Latin America. Moreover, Liberation Theology is best understood not only by looking at published books, but also by looking at the movement of the church. In the 1950s and 1960s, Latin America experienced extensive influence and control by the United States. In the midst of McCarthyism, the United States was afraid that Russia would take over other countries besides Cuba. The CIA supported radical conservative groups seized power in many countries in Central and South America: Chile, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and so on. The School of the Americas was an ongoing colonizing institution that supported the CIA's desire to take over the Latin American continent. SOA trained local people to kill their own people and promised money and protection for those who cooperated. The massacre in El Salvador, the killing of Oscar Romero and the priests of Universidad Catolica, the military coup in Brazil and Argentina can be explained by the deadly power and influence of the United States in Latin American countries. Liberation Theology came out of the struggle against external domination and socioeconomic oppression. To see the beginning of Liberation Theology in Latin America, we must go to the conferences of CELAM, the Latin America Episcopate Conference of Medellín in Colômbia, where in 1968 the cries of the people in Latin America began to be heard. This was the birth of a movement that, pushed by the Second Vatican Council, connected with the people through base communities. The church expanded into a new movement, with the help of the...

The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology

In 1971, Gustavo Gutierrez published his Teologia de la liberaci6n, which was translated into English two years later. The publication of this book marked the birth of the liberation theology movement (albeit one that had been gestating for a decade or more). While many of Gutierrez's ideas were formulated in his time abroad in Europe, and based on lessons from Vatican II, his tome spoke to the reality of Latin American life. His humble upbringing and steadfast commitment to minister to the poor gave him the basis to create Latin America's first indigenous theology. The book was grand in scope, tackling not only important theological issues, but incorporating modern social scientific theories and methodologies to produce a spiritual philosophy grounded in praxis (i.e., day-to-day practice). His words rang loudly throughout the Western hemisphere and created one of the most dynamic grassroots movements the Catholic Church had seen in quite some time. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, liberation theology promised to reinvigorate a Catholicism grown ritualistic and moribund over the centuries. While earlier movements had attempted to do the same (e.g., Catholic Action), these were usually controlled by the hierarchy. Liberation theology, and the associated Christian base community movement, offered a more democratic version of Catholic revivalism. Not surprisingly, scholars quickly ran to study this surprising new phenomenon. Prior to the 1 970s, the reigning notion of religion in academia was one of conservatism and declining influence, the fruits of the inevitable process of secularization. Now the role of religion in politics and society had to be rethought. Far from being inimical to progressive ideas, this new theology often showed itself in alliance with revolutionary movements throughout the region. Scholarship on revolutionary movements in Latin America could hardly be done without considering the role that liberation theology was playing-either by providing a new philosophical foundation from which to launch an assault on the ancien regime, or by filling the ranks of revolutionary groups with clergy and lay Catholics. Scholarship on Latin American religion witnessed a golden age during this period. But the liberation theology movement was not easily confined to Latin America. As the articles by Mitchell, Nadeau, and Poethig reveal, liberationist ideas quickly found homes in Asia and Africa. And while the ideas advanced by Gutierrez and his followers seemed best suited for the world, a receptive audience awaited them in the United States and Europe as well. Liberation theology quickly became cosmopolitan. It has now been more than a quarter century since a Teologia de la liberacion was published. Looking back, it is easy to conclude that the movement this book spawned has yet to live up to its great expectations. The mid-1980s witnessed a concerted attempt by the Vatican to reign in some of the more outspoken liberationists, especially those challenging authoritative relations within the Catholic hierarchy. John Paul II distanced himself from the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, which had claimed to be influenced strongly by liberation theology, and publicly chastised high-profile clergy participating in this government. It also became apparent by the late 1 980s that many of the grassroots organizations inspired by liberation theology the Christian base communities did not multiply at the expected rate (see Daudelin and Hewitt 1995).1 The decline of the Soviet model of development and an inability to clearly articulate a third way also slowed liberation theology's momentum. Finally, by 1990 it had become apparent to

This chapter explores the emergence of liberation theology in Latin America in the 1960s and assesses its successes and failures in the next four decades. It emerged from Christian communities, first in Brail and then spread throughout Latin America. This theology is a combination of action and reflection that argues that Christianity should free people rather than oppress them. This action and reflection is based on faith, scripture, tradition, reason and experience. Liberation theology emerged from communities trying to survive in economic, political, ecological, racial and other forms of poverty. I outline the political and economic situations in three Latin American countries where it emerged and coalesced: Brazil, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Brazil is both the richest country but also the one with the largest social gap. It was the locus from where liberation theology emerged and has remained strong. It emerged more slowly in El Salvador and Nicaragua, but played a large role in the political situations. Next, I explore the response of the Roman Catholic Church. By 1990 many in the global North assumed that liberation theology was dead. Socialism and communism were deemed to have failed after the fall of the Berlin Wall as liberationists had often supported socialist economic policies. Furthermore, the Catholic Church condemned liberation theology. However, it is vibrant again in parts of Latin America today. I explore its re-emergence this century. Liberation theology did not die; it moved from its intense focus on the political and economic repression to addressing the wider scope of oppression including issues of race, gender and sexuality among others.

CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY IN LATIN-AMERICA - A BROAD ORIENTATION. The article does not pretend to be a specialist review of liberation theology (LT) in Latin America, but rather to introduce the novice in this field to the most salient points of its manifestation in this region. The following aspects are treated: the social-political development in Latin-America, without which a correct perception of the origins of LT cannot be formed; the position and involvement of the church in the lives of the people in the past and present; a characterization, summary of the important points of critique, and evaluation of one important aspect of LT, viz its inclination towards being revelation and not mere theology. Apart from a select bibliography for the interested reader, divided in primary and secondary sources, a list of the most prominent LT theologians is provided.

Liberation Theology’s seminal text, Teología de la liberación (1971- A Theology of Liberation), was written by Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian priest and renowned theologian. This article describes Gustavo Gutiérrez's theology of liberation with a Christian theological-humanist study approach. As one of the modern Christian thinkers, Gutiérrez's role in fighting against injustice, oppression, poverty, and the Western colonialist capitalist system in Latin America is enormous. Gutiérrez inspires the Third World Countries to struggle against the stubbornness and greed of arrogant people. He appeared as a propagandist who fueled the spirits of marginalized groups in Latin America in the early 1970s. This article uses a qualitative method with a literature review of the theology of liberation a la Gustavo Gutiérrez. This article shows that Gutiérrez succeeded in building a revolutionary Christian ideology with a foundation of liberation theology to elevate and sustain egalitarianism among human beings. But 'there is no ivory that isn’t cracked', Gutiérrez did hermeneutics that were out of context. The article will also consider and criticize liberation theology in terms of its hermeneutical approach. The author also makes a comparison between liberation theology and Western theology, the mainstream that preceded it.

This is an important book, despite the deceptive and somewhat disingenuous title. Not, as it might seem, a survey of the latest theologies of social change from Latin America, this collection represents rather an attack on such theologies by members of the religious right in the United States. Some of the authors stand close to the seats of power; like Ernest Lefever and his Ethics and Public Policy Center, or Jeane Kirkpatrick, former United States ambassador to the United Nations. Others the editor himself, or Michael Novak and Richard Neuhaus have made a name for themselves as religious apologists for United States business and foreign policy. So, for anyone who wants to study the ideology of the right-wing (Catholic) counterattack on Latin American liberation movements, this is the book to read. The text is divided into three parts. Part i, entitled 'Liberation Theology in America/ is an extended introduction by the editor, full of slanted statements and putdowns. Liberation theology is the result of a feeling of cultural inferiority on the part of Latin Americans (pp 18, 26, 63, etc) and attempts to change the classical orientation of Catholic theology by shifting the emphasis on salvation from the future life to this world. The liberationists are naive because they criticize the United States, but never Cuba, China, or the ussr (pp 41-2, 55, 70-8, etc). Schall argues that liberation theology is ... itself a cause of continued underdevelopment, that its eventual growth and success would institutionalize in Latin America a life of low-level so-

Liberation Theology and Liberation Christianity continue to inspire social movements across Latin America. Following Michel Lowy’s analytical and historical distinction between Liberation Christianity (emerging in the 1950s) and Liberation Theology (emerging in the 1970s), this paper seeks to problematize the historical projects of democracy and human rights, particularly in relation to the praxis of Liberation Christianity and the reflection of Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology emerged across Latin America during a period of dictatorship and called for liberation. It had neither democracy nor human rights as its central historical project, but rather liberation. Furthermore, Liberation Christianity, which includes the legacy of Camilo Torres, now seeks to ‘defend democracy’ and ‘uphold human rights’ in its ongoing struggles despite the fact that the democratic project has clearly failed the majority of Latin Americans. Both redemocratization and ‘pink tide’ governments were not driven by liberation. At the beginning of the first Workers’ Party government in Brazil, Frei Betto – a leading liberation theologian – famously quipped ‘we have won an election, not made a revolution’. In dialogue with Ivan Petrella, this article suggests that Liberation Theology needs to ‘go beyond’ broad narratives of democracy and human rights to re-establish a historical project of liberation linked to what the Brazilian philosopher, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, calls institutional imagination.

This conversation between Peter McLaren and Petar Jandrić brings about some of the most recent and deepest of McLaren’s insights into the relationship between revolutionary critical pedagogy and liberation theology, and outlines the main directions of development of McLaren’s thought during and after Pedagogy of Insurrection. In the conversation, McLaren reveals his personal and theoretical path to liberation theology. He argues for the relevance of liberation theology for contemporary social struggles, links it with social sciences, and addresses some recent critiques of Pedagogy of Insurrection. McLaren identifies the idolatry of money as the central point of convergence between liberation theology and Marxism. Developing this thought further, he asserts that Jesus was a communist. McLaren analyses the revolutionary praxis of liberation theology in Latin America, and concludes that the struggle needs to avoid violence and endure without losing tenderness. He analyzes the international politics of liberation theology and shows that liberation theology was demonized by the US administration because it works for the poor. McLaren then expands experiences from Latin America towards a global ethics of solidarity, criticizes Church positions on various matters, and insists on a critical approach to Church dogmas. He explores theoretical and practical dissonances between Marxism and Christianity, and expands them towards a more general dichotomy between the material and the spiritual. He explores the Christian eschaton – the arrival of the Kingdom of God – and links it to Marx’s prophecy of the future socialist society. Finally, he explores ecumenical opportunities of liberation theology and firmly links it with the arrival of the socialist society.

. This means, in effect, in the way of the Gospel, for it was there that , Gandhi found the ultimate source of his inspiration. Since then others have attempted to follow this way, such as Martin Luther King and Lech Wal'<rsa. On the basis of their experience and the freedom movements which they inspired, we can speak of a of liberation. This has nothing to do with a theology of liberation in the terms of the well-known developments in Latin America, where the attempt is made to justify the use of violence in the struggle for social and political freedom by appealing to the Gospel. It is rather the theology of liberation of which Pope John Paul 11 spoke during the general audience on 21 February 1979 after his return from Mexico:

Reviewed by: The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives by Macarena Gómez-Barris Tom Perreault Macarena Gómez-Barris The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. xx+188 pp. Illustrations, notes, references and index. $22.75 paper (ISBN: 9780822368977); $84.95 cloth (ISBN 9780822368755); $18.39 ebook (ISBN: 9780822373561). The extractive zone: social ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives, by Macarena Gómez-Barris, is the first release in Duke’s new series, “Dissident Acts,” co-edited by none other than Gómez-Barris herself. Gómez-Barris, the chair of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute (which, on its website, proudly proclaims itself to be “Located in the most innovative part of the most interesting part of the most important city in the world“), has set out to write a book not about resource extraction itself, but about life as shaped by extractive capitalism. Less a place than a zeitgeist, [End Page 277] the “extractive zone” refers to “the colonial paradigm, worldview, and technologies that mark out regions of ’high biodiversity’ in order to reduce life to capitalist resource conversion” (p. xvi). The book’s central goal is to interrogate the Anthropocene as a colonial project and to explore “life otherwise:” “the emergent and heterogeneous forms of living that are not about destruction or mere survival within the extractive zone, but about the creation of emergent alternatives” (p. 4). Methodologically and theoretically, the author deploys a “decolonial queer femme methodology,” which attends to “the resonances of lived embodiment as world-shaping activities” (p. 9). According to the author, this methodological stance is a “porous and undisciplined analysis shaped by the perspectives and critical genealogies that emerge within [resource rich] spaces as a mode of doing research” (p. xvi). Indeed, “undisciplined analysis” is a remarkably apt term for this book. In using the term, I believe the author means not only that her analysis refuses to be confined to a single disciplinary tradition, but also that it sets out to break rules of conventional social science inquiry. The Extractive Zone draws liberally on postcolonialism, feminist thought, queer theory and some currents of post-structuralism, while largely sidestepping historical materialism. Marx makes an occasional appearance but never stays for long and isn’t given much of an opportunity to make a point. Ideas come and go, flitting in and out of view like conceptual butterflies. While reading the book I was continually reminded of the 1987 film “The Princess Bride,” in which Wallace Shawn’s character, Vizzini, repeatedly misuses the word “inconceivable” (using it to describe things that are, in fact, quite easy to conceive of). At one point in the film, Mandy Patinkin’s character, Inigo Montoya, says quizzically, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” So it is with this book’s use of the word “extractive.” In spite of the book’s title, Gómez-Barris refuses to take seriously the enormous literature on resource extraction in Latin America. There is no evidence that she is even aware of the work that geographers have done on the topic, and she ignores most of what anthropologists have written as well. She draws on Michael Taussig’s Shamanism and the Wild Man (Taussig, 1987) and cites June Nash’s classic We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (without really engaging with this monumental work; Nash, 1993). But she somehow misses Fernando Coronil’s essential text The Magical State (Coronil, 1997). In her lengthy discussion of indigeneity, gender and sexuality among cholas in La Paz, she ignores Mary Weismantel’s (2001) crucial work Cholas y Pishtacos: Tales of Race and Sex in the Andes. In discussing extractivismo, she cites but does not engage with the work of Eduardo Gudynas, arguably the most important Latin American author on the topic. The Extractive Zone consists of a preface and seven chapters. An introduction lays out the book’s topic and theoretical orientation, and is followed by five chapters that explore the “extractive zone” as experienced in different regions of Andean South America. These include the politics of oil and indigeneity...

330 BOOK REVIEWS is the power through which the Holy Spirit creates and nurtures the church, which is the source of all authority in the church, and which is the norm for all that the church teaches and practices. Only then will the use and abuse of power within the contemporary church be addressed in theologically sound and healthy ways. Only then will ecclesiastical divisions be healed and the common mission of the church pursued with faithful commitment. Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Chicago, Illinois KURT K. HENDEL The Church in Latin America 1492-1992. Edited by ENRIQUE DussEL. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992. Pp. x + 501. $49.95 (cloth). This volume is the result of an exemplary effort to stimulate the study of the history of Latin American churches, to communicate the results of historical scholarship across national lines, and to bring many persons of diverse tendencies and religious backgrounds together in a unified enterprise. Cooperation at the Latin American level has been made difficult at times due to repression, internal wars, and opposition by conservative church leaders. Heroic efforts by Enrique Dussel and the Commission for the Study of Church History in Latin America brought forth an eleven-volume General History of the Church in Latin America. The present volume benefits from this magnanimous enterprise and includes many contributors to the larger series. The result is a singlevolume history of the churches, Catholic and Protestant, with many strengths and weaknesses. The editor structured the work to provide a chronological survey of the region in its first section, one which is succinct and useful for understanding the distant roots of the Catholic church. The middle section takes up regional histories and generally succeeds in conveying well the history up to the contemporary period. Including the treatment of the church in Chile, however, with that in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay does not work well. Their civic cultures and ecclesiastical histories differ greatly, especially in this century. The final part devotes itself to special topics and becomes less historical than descriptive and evaluative. Here themes such as theology of liberation, Afro-American slavery, and religious orders receive special attention. This section offers much less reliable guidance to Latin American history, in my view. BOOK REVIEWS 331 One of the distinctive marks of the collaboration has been a determined effort (although not uniformally carried out) to recount history from the underside, from the point of view of the poor and oppressed, as well as from the perspective of religious and secular elite members who are thought to make history. This is an admirable and egalitarian ideal, but much basic research from this point of view has not been done. Within this section, Moises Sandoval provides a view of Hispanic Catholicism in the United States. He manages to sustain a view from the grassroots. The chapter, one of the best in the volume, could be required reading for any student of Nor,th American history. A few chapters may be marred by revisionist frameworks. The chapter on Protestantism is one. In my view, Jean Pierre Bastian's ideo· logical simplification does not allow him to give adequate consideration to the contemporary theological iand ecclesiological convictions behind notably diverse Protestant positions. Pentecostals account for 75-90 percent of Protestants in most Latin American countries; yet much of the history of Protestant churches in Latin America, as Bastian has re· counted it, has been irrelevant for explaining Pentecostal growth. This is not a minor consideration, since ,the volume lacks a sense that Pentecostal churches are major religious organizations within Latin America. Similar tendencies mar the work of some Catholic writers who are wedded to the discourse of the " historical process of liberation." Such discourse leads to extravagant characterizations, as by Jose Comblin. He writes in the chapter on the church and human rights: "New democracies are totally unstable. Development has stagnated. There is no future in sight " (pp. 452-453) . Comblin, a highly regiarded theologian , not a social scientist or historian, does not account for the great expansion (more than 2,000) of human rights organizations in Latin America. Many of these groups are tied to the church and came into existence largely...

Recently, the Latin American decolonial perspective has been receiving growing attention, not only in academia, but also in other social, political, and cultural spaces, including in Brazil. Among other debates, decolonial thinkers have brought to light the continuity of coloniality in different dimensions (particularly, even if not only) of Latin American realities, long after the territorial colonization was over. Therefore, by highlighting, debating, and theorizing on the colonialities of power, knowledge and being from a decolonial perspective, scholars have been unmasking the vast, violent, and oppressive consequences of Western, Eurocentric, modern, colonial, capitalist, racist and patriarchal paradigms, which still (even if with adaptations) dominate our multiple realities. Race is at the center of the continuity of coloniality and colonial heritage, imposing ontological and epistemological hierarchies that have caused the never-ending racialization, marginalization and suffering of most Latin Americans for centuries. Still, some debates and dimensions related to race could (and, as I will argue, should) be further explored within the decolonial perspective. In this paper, I would like to present whiteness studies and scholars as potential contributors to these debates in Latin America, further widening the decolonial gates, allowing us to better comprehend and critically analyze the many forms of continued coloniality and their violent, oppressive, and terrible consequences.