LA COLONIALIDAD DEL SER Y DEL SABER: LA MITOLOGIZACIÓN DEL DESARROLLO EN AMÉRICA LATINA

Abstract

This article describes the concept of coloniality ofbeing and knowledge as a process by which amanner of hegemonic thought was built andconsolidated, which became widespread in thecolonial societies. The article poses the relationbetween coloniality and development as a historiccontinuum which reproduces, in the post-colonialsocieties, the values and beliefs of the WesternModernity. These values and beliefs make part ofthe modern world view which classified thecolonized subjects as the othernesses of colonists,othernesses which were silenced from and by thehegemonic speeches of power-knowledge ofModernity. This classification of the others was“improved” thanks to the help of the theoreticalapparatus of the XVIII century Enlightenment andthe social sciences of the XIX century. Therefore,concepts like civilization, progress and development were since then the paradigms that articulated the implementation of the modernproject in peripheral societies like Latin America. The reasoning of the hypothesis is based on theories of subordination/postcoloniality and on empirical data of the World Values Survey and on the Latin American Barometer