States as colonial projects: Unevenness, combination and race through the lens of Abya Yala

Abstract

This article argues for an ‘expanded’ account of the modern state that places race and coloniality at the center of its analysis to enable a conversation between uneven and combined development (UCD) and critical race theories (CRT). Following a decolonial reading of both literatures and adjacent fields, I question UCD’s reproduction of Eurocentric epistemological assumptions through narratives of capitalist ‘modernisation’ that erase Indigenous and racialised peoples from the histories of modern state formation. This leads to an invitation to engage in cross-pollination between traditions by placing the concept of ‘interaction’, as recently developed by UCD scholars, in dialogue with ‘relational’ processes of colonisation and racialisation theorised by CRT and thinkers from Abya Yala. I argue that this combined perspective is better equipped to reflect on conflicts over land, territories, self-determination, and ultimately survival, by speaking of the experience of modern state formation in colonial central Mexico. I look at the formation of Iberian imperial governance in the sixteenth century as a Lettered City, a complex network of bureaucratic and Inquisitorial rule based on the prominence of the written word. In this context, Indigenous Nahua politicians, intellectuals and community leaders transformed and conditioned the state apparatuses by employing precolonial documents and producing many others to secure political and territorial autonomy. I conclude by suggesting that this approach can start a conversation on alternative genealogies of colonialism and state formation that emerge from Indigenous and racialised histories of struggle, negotiation and adaptation.