In the Dependency of ‘Mature Modernity:’ Some Themes for a History of Politics in Latin America

At this point in the work, Enrique Dussel relates the texts and contexts of what he calls a history of Latin American philosophical thought in general, and of regional political philosophical thought in particular, in view of a political philosophy of Latin American liberation. The section begins by showing three theoretical-historical moments where the ambiguity that arises from reflecting on Latin American politics and political philosophy becomes an argumentative strength that accentuates the undeniable connection between these two dimensions. In the first place, the moment of the critique of the conquest was for Dussel the beginning of the ‘anti-discourse’ of Modernity, as such, and therefore, the first chapter of a political philosophy of liberation at the beginning of world globalization. The second moment is situated in 1808, when the arrest of King Ferdinand VII allowed and legitimized the formation of Government Boards in the most important American cities. The third moment began in 1959 with the Cuban Revolution, followed in 1979 with the Sandinista Revolution and in 1994 with the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Although these emancipatory attempts could have been a second emancipation, what they actually mark is the continuity of a certain Eurocentrism with its attending ideological and political systems of oppression.