21. Decolonisation Challenges of the Brazilian/Latin American Geography/ies

The main names selected by Moreira in order to search for this answer are Josué de Castro, Aziz Ab’Saber, Carlos Augusto Monteiro, Bertha Becker and Milton Santos.

While the military dictatorship corresponds to the period between 1964 and 1985, it can be said that the relevance of quantitative Geography in Brazil, especially via IBGE—but also with an important centre at UNESP-Rio Claro (SP)—extended from 1969 to 1978 (Lamego, 2014).

Given the ambivalences of modernity, built on the interplay between autonomy and heteronomy (as the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis said and as analysed in Haesbaert, 2002), perhaps it would be preferable to speak of “colonial capitalist”.

“The locus of enunciation (...) shows the need to think of knowledge as geopolitical” (Mignolo 2003, p. 21).

“Through her own (inseparable) thinking-acting, Anzaldúa (2016, p. 136) synthesises the border condition in the figure of the “new mestiza”, capable of developing “tolerance towards contradictions, (...) ambiguity”, learning “to be Indian in Mexican culture, to be Mexican from an Anglo point of view” and playing “juggling games with cultures”. This “pluralist mode of operation” (2016, p. 136)—which I would call transterritorial – also appears, as we will see later, in the proposal of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, another mestiza, a descendant of Bolivian Aymaras.

This included, for example, the joint organisation (with sociologist Carlos Vainer, from UFRJ) of the IV^th Meeting of the Latin America and Coloniality of Power Professorship in 2013, bringing together some of the great names in this debate such as Anibal Quijano, Alberto Acosta, Catherine Walsh and Edgardo Lander.

In this text, when we identify a “geographer”, we refer to an author’s central contribution linked to issues that are considered geographical, and not to his/her academic-institutional training—if that were the case we would, in addition to a classic author like Josué de Castro, be excluding the most well-known intellectual of Brazilian geography, Milton Santos, whose university education was in Law.

On Manuel Correia de Andrade, based on works such as “A Guerra dos Catanos”, Ferretti says: “Andrade’s analyses of the historical revolts in the Northeast and the abolitionist and quilombola struggles throughout Brazilian history make an important contribution to Spivak’s questions about the voice of the subordinate: Brazilian subordinates spoke through their acts, exercising a centuries-old agency and influence through revolt, construction of community and different levels of negotiation that marked the entire history of Brazil. (...) Crucially, Andrade provided examples of how to engage in critical reflections on subordinate spaces, despite the limitations of colonial archives(...).” (2019, p. 1646).

Seminar “Milton Santos, 20 years—A period, a crisis: globalisation and territorial instability—a critical reading of the situation from Milton Santos”, held from 22–24 June 2021. Presentation available at https://​www.​youtube.​com/​watch?​v=​Z3wCsV3LY8g

In one of his main interviews, Milton Santos reveals that he has a “very complicated relationship with the black world”, due to a life story that has always made a mark on him, beginning with an “education to be a man of the court, a man of a full social life”. Therefore, despite the “blackness present as a result of the physical condition”, he states: “I’m not a militant in anything, be it politics or racialism” (Santos, 2000b, p. 88, translation). However, with his outstanding role as one of our rare black intellectuals with international projection, the influence of his name on Brazilian black movements is growing—as can be seen, for example, in the “rounds of conversation” of the ‘Milton Santos, 20 Years’ Seminar, already mentioned here, whose schedule and links are available at https://​www.​miltonsantos20an​os.​com.​br/​c%C3%B3pia-programa%C3%A7%C3%A3o-1.

Domination tends to give rise to purely utilitarian and functional territories, without allowing the attainment of a true socially-shared meaning and/or a relationship of identity with the space. Thus, territory must be seen from the perspective not only of a politically-structured dominion or control, but also of an appropriation that incorporates a symbolic ‘identity’ dimension—and, one might say, depending on the group or social class we are referring to—an emotional dimension” (Haesbaert 1997, p. 41, author's italics). “(...) The territory, relationally speaking, (...) results from the differentiated interaction between the multiple dimensions of power, from its more strictly political nature [linked to State power] to its more properly symbolic character, passing through relations within so-called economic power, inseparable from the legal-political sphere” (Haesbaert 2004, p. 93). “We could say that territory, as a relationship of domination and appropriation of society-space, unfolds along a continuum that ranges from a more ‘concrete’ and ‘functiona’ political-economic domination to a more subjective and/or ‘cultural-symbolic’ appropriation” (Haesbaert 2004, p. 95–96).

Latin American territorial struggles have a lot to teach us, but it is obviously not sufficient to take this concept as a simple transposition of its practical use, its ‘native’ construction—because the purpose of its use can also be to confuse, or it manifests itself in an excessively-manifold and mutable manner, making a process of understanding difficult. As Gramsci (2011) stated, fighting both blind passion and sectarianism, “the popular element 'feels', but does not always understand or know; the intellectual element 'knows', but does not always understand and, even less, 'feels’” (p. 202). As intellectuals, even though recognising ours as one among several forms of knowledge (and not as a great “law of history”, as Gramsci sometimes still believed) in what Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls “cognitive justice” or “ecology of knowledge”, it is also necessary to note the specificity of this knowledge, the limits of the (non-) rationality in which it is immersed, and the extent to which it can contribute to the re-reading and/or strengthening of these struggles and the social processes involved in them. Just as the field of ideas about territory is not a simple reflection of the multiple-sphere of concrete actions, these can also be remade in the light of new analytical conceptions about territory. The truth is that the boundaries between categories of analysis, practice and standardisations are always relative and, although endowed with relevant specificity, they are always open to their mutual reconfiguration” (Haesbaert 2021:348–349).

On the relationship between transterritoriality and transculturalism see Haesbaert & Mondardo (2010), and on multi-inter-transterritoriality and interculturality see Haesbaert, 2021 (especially pp. 337–338).

Source: https://​www.​brasildefato.​com.​br/​2018/​04/​26/​a-experiencia-de-uma-sociologia-que-se-tece-por-meio-da-paixao-e-do-coletivo (accessed: 20 April 2019).

Without forgetting that territory also has a strong binding role in the urban peripheries of Latin America, to the point of sociologist-activist Tiaraju d’Andrea affirming that “perhaps territory consciousness is (...) a new form of class consciousness”. With the fragmentation of the “working class”, he notes, poor populations began to search for their reinforcement and a certain unity (in diversity) by identifying with the territory, life and living space, with the positive redefinition of terms such as “periphery”, thus seeking to overcome stigmas and fight for autonomy, as occurs with many cultural groups anchored in the territory. At the same time, however, other heteronomous territorialising subjects arise, such as neo-Pentecostal churches and organised crime (in the case of São Paulo, the PCC), “which also fulfil the role of organising a territory that is socially disaggregated”. Source: https://​outraspalavras.​net/​resgate/​2021/​06/​28/​tiaraju-dandrea-periferia-brasileira-alem-dos-cliches/​ (accessed: 2 July 2021).

As stated by Rodó-Zárate (2021): “There are issues that cannot be explained by capitalism or the relations of production, just as there are issues that cannot be explained by gender or race. (…) Starting from a situated perspective of intersectionality, in which place has a constitutive role, the debate is not whether there is an axis that explains more at a global level, but rather which axes are necessary in order to understand a situation of concrete inequality”. (p. 97).

Rivera Cusicanqui goes as far as proposing the “idea of a ch’ixi world as a possible horizon of emancipatory transformation. By living in the midst of opposing mandates, creating links with the cosmos through allegories, the ch'isi balance, contradictory and at the same time interwoven, of the irreducible differences between men and women (or between Indians and mestizos, etc., etc.) would make another world possible”. [other worlds, I would say] (2018, p. 56).