Resistance in the Digital Future: The Role of Women in Social Movements Toward Decolonization

     The Decolonization and “Decolonize Your Mind” movements within the Latin American community in the US, are enabled primarily by young self-identified women of color through social media activism as they deconstruct... [ view full abstract ]

     The Decolonization and “Decolonize Your Mind” movements within the Latin American community in the US, are enabled primarily by young self-identified women of color through social media activism as they deconstruct and challenge systems of oppression, gender, race, class and seek to empower women through self care and self love tactics. Through critical race theory and various explorations of Latin American identity, I hope to explore how the decolonization movement connects with past and indigenous identities resulting in new perspectives of gender, race, class and sexuality. I will evaluate how this concept of an indigenous past and reconnecting with indigenous roots can be both counterproductive and progressive, though not simultaneously. I focus on colonization in Latin America and the US to address how this moment is being undone by youth in the US. Colonization in this sense is the erasure of indigenous identities through genocide, forced religion, disease, and assimilation. Thus, the movement towards decolonization centers the experience of indigenous people and becomes a way of life that embodies the unlearning of oppressive behavior and dismantling hierarchies, systems of oppression, and ideologies developed during colonization.

     The concept of liberation of oppression as a means of liberation all people is at the root of the Decolonization Movement; it acknowledges identity politics and solidarity, but works to dismantle root causes of oppression through unity and acknowledging an interdependence between all beings.