Enacting a Latinx Decolonial Politic of Belonging: Latinx Community Workers’ Experiences Negotiating Identity and Citizenship in Toronto, Canada

• Main Authors: Madelaine Cahuas, Alexandra Arraiz Matute
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brock University 2021-01-01
• Series: Studies in Social Justice
• Subjects: settler colonialism; Latinx identities; citizenship; belonging; decolonization
• Online Access: https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/article/view/2225

This paper explores how women and non-binary Latinx Community Workers (LCWs) in Toronto, Canada, negotiate their identities, citizenship practices and politics in relation to settler colonialism and decolonization. We demonstrate how LCWs enact a Latinx decolonial politic of belonging, an alternative way of practicing citizenship that strives to simultaneously challenge both Canadian and Latin American settler colonialism. This can be seen when LCWs refuse to be recognized on white settler terms as “proud Canadians,” and create community-based learning initiatives that incite conversations among everyday Latinx community members around Canada’s settler colonial history and present, Indigenous worldviews, as well as race and settler colonialism in Latin America. We consider how LCWs’ enactments of a Latinx decolonial politic of belonging serve as small, incomplete, but crucial steps towards decolonization.