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By Val Reynoso
Decolonization means to undo the ideas and systems of oppression that European colonizers imposed on Global South people. As colonized people we have been forced to assimilate into the capitalist-imperialist, white supremacist order as a means of survival, such as through boarding schools, slavery, torture and human trafficking.
We have been categorized through hierarchical systems informed by imperialism and classism, such as the casta system the spanish colonizers imposed on the americas, the caste system in India and the universal bourgeois economic system, which all communicate to us that we need to strive to gain more proximity to whiteness in order to gain more socioeconomic privileges under capitalism.
Imperialism has indoctrinated us with internalized racism, classism and other forms of oppression, that our accomplishments and cultures and ancestral practices that have existed for thousands of years are devoid of beauty and importance because a white person and colonizer did not produce it. That we are a savage people in need of saving by the colonizer who is burdened by doing so.
Our existence and practices have been outlawed and condemned by colonial regimes, it was made illegal to be who we are, we had to lie and say we had proximity to whiteness in order to avoid enslavement and heavy taxes that were imposed on people who werent mixed with white colonizer. so we are taking it back. We are reclaiming who we are and opposing colonialism by all means. Capitalism-imperialism is directly tied to our oppression, genocide and forced assimilation, so as colonized people we are forced to combat that.
Val Reynoso is a Politics and Human Rights undergrad, journalist and Marxist-Leninist activist.
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