Decoloniality: Theory and Methodology

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Cláudio Carvalhaes

The author describes the work of decoloniality within Christianity and proposes a methodology for this process, drawing on anthropophagy, perspectivism, carnival and social movements from Latin America. To take on the theological decoloniality option, one needs to re-consider the sources, foundations and practices of an universal Christianity and re-read it from local communities, its instances of power, presences and absences. Influenced by the indigenous people of Rio Grande do Sul and the Xingu, Indigenous epistemologies, we are called to dream not only about a religion of humans, but also dream of animals, mountains, soil, water, seeds, and nature.

1 Introduction Cláudio Carvalhaes, Associate Professor of Worship at Union Theological Seminary – New York City. His work Welcome to Brazil-il-il-il: a country that lives be- and research centers on liturgy, liberation theologies, de- tween the first and fourth worlds. The first world is colonial studies, performance theories, and ecologies. the few ruthless people who control the power: agri- His upcoming book is on eco-liturgical liberation theolo- business, bankers, and landowners. The second gy. His recent books are Liturgies from Below: Prayers world is the voraciously greedy upper class, corrupt from People at the Ends of the World (Abingdon Press, 2020) and Praying With Every Heart – Orienting Our Lives politicians, TV owners, social media, and religious to the Wholeness of the World (Cascade Books, 2021). leaders. The third world is a prejudiced middle class that hates poor people while dreaming of being rich. And the fourth world is the vast majority of its in- habitants: all poor, white, indigenous, black, almost Catholic church with neo-Pentecostal churches. black, all very poor. Their shared agenda is “family, tradition, and prop- Welcome to Brazil: the country of high colonial- erty”, and they support the most radically conserva- ity where imported “cordial racism” is a potent tive forms of living and repressive policies. Welcome weapon of domination that has been hidden for to a country where stratified mainline Protestants years and is now on public display. The very nice range from neo-Calvinism and its vicious ethics of Brazil we all once thought existed has recently suppression and control, to a small number of shown its true face and it is much scarier than many churches and pastors offering a counternarrative, of us Brazilians ever imagined. standing outside the game because they are a very Welcome to a terribly Christian, imperialist, reli- small presence, without much power. gious Brazil: formed by the union of a right-wing Welcome to a country of religious diversity with a variety of Afro-religions who suffer from a certain Christianity that has historically specialized in an- 1 This article was presented as a performance-lecture with nihilating anything sacred to Afro-religions, de- movements and many layered symbols, some of them you can see in the pictures. Also people watched the 2019 stroying temples and threatening the lives of their samba music from Estação Primeira de Mangueira: leaders. História Pra Ninar Gente Grande (https://www.youtube. The current president of Brazil-il-il was elected com/watch?v=F9nRZt86zbc) during the lecture. based on his approval of torture and promises to

Valburga Schmiedt Streck, Júlio Cézar Adam, Cláudio Carvalhaes, eds. 2021. (De)coloniality and religious 13 practices: liberating hope. IAPT.CS 2: 13–21 Doi: 10.25785/iapt.cs.v2i0.206 ORCID-ID: 0000-0003-4098-0376 IAPT – 2/2021 typoscript [FP] – 09.06.2021 – Seite 14 – 2. Satzlauf

Cláudio Carvalhaes arm the population, exterminate Indigenous people, nizing movement that is still alive today, the civiliz- slaughter the Black population, rule over women, ing and conquering forms of European renaissance abandon children, leave the LGBTQ community and modernity. We are the result and the embodi- openly exposed to patriarchal structures of violence, ment of European thought gone universal. We are and deliver the Brazilian economy to the Chicago black, white, brown, yellow and red, but almost all neoliberal school of Milton Friedman. Welcome to a Black because of the “denigrating” processes creat- living nightmare, one that has always been here for ed by Europe: to de-nigrate, that is, to make all all of the oppressed communities! Brazil’s president non-Europeans, niggers, Blacks. In meeting the is a worse version of the USA’s Trump and a similar barbarous Muslims and Jews of Europe and then version of the Philippines’ Duterte. the almost-human Indigenous peoples of the In spite of all the above, we do have many en- Americas, and the almost-Black humans of Africa, chanting attributes. We are a land of beautiful inter- European thought developed its entire framework sections and unique differences! A country of many of mirror images and created an imperialist civili- passages. If you ever read Clarice Lispector or Gui- zation process of exclusion that fashioned ways of marães Rosa, listened to Caetano Veloso or Gilberto assigning differences and offering identities and Gil, saw the Grupo Corpo and felt the soul of the similarities from unique ways of thinking, acting, people of Bahia, or have been immersed in the end- perceiving, believing, feeling and even defining less wisdom of our Indigenous people, you will see what human being was supposed to be. When Eu- the eternal brilliance of this country. In spite of ropeans told us what was right, they also told us many historical attempts of domination by brutal what was wrong. and ignorant groups of white settlers and renters of The construction of Western Europe occurred the nation, our plurality is an antidote to fascism through the extensive control of the global slave through our varied earthly landscape, the people’s trade market by trans-Atlantic voyages, used to miscegenation in confused hybridities, untamed re- plunder the non-European world with its religious ligious mixtures, social complexities, rich episte- logic, “civilizing” mission, and distribution of dis- mologies, and fusions of feelings and thinking. We eases. Colonialism, a consequence of imperialism, carry the vast intricacies of Native worldviews; we was formed by multiple arms of civilizing domina- are the expanded systems of the African Orixas, the tion: economics, politics, extraction, slavery, law, Africanization of the Tai Chi, the wild and outra- health, and religion. geous malemolence (fluidity, improperness) that The force of this new dominant condition of makes peoples of white orientations furious, we are geo-political imposition makes European thought the fullness of guiltlessness, and the soaring of sen- (organized from abstract fictions) become a univer- sual delightful bodies in fusions. Here philosophers sal theory and practice. From their villages, Europe- make songs and singers write compendiums of so- an thinkers have become universal necessities. For cial histories. We live from reversed anthropologies, example: people’s counter-theologies, invented spiritualities, Kant’s reason and categorical imperatives would transverse liberation theologies and practices from also become reason and categorical imperatives in the people below. We both are and are not the the New World; church, anti-church ministries, unhinged pastoral The theological-Christian perspective of Hegel’s ministry, and creativity beyond the pale. history, clearly a European history, now becomes So even before welcoming you to colonial Brazil, universal, and the (Christian European) Spirit of we should welcome you from Abya Ayala, the name history is the absolute spirit that becomes an over- given to the Americas by the Kuna-Tule people. powering force over any other spirit; From São Leopoldo, and all the regions here, we The hierarchical structuring of Western thought must honor the life of the Arachás, Carijós, was presented by Heidegger through the division Caigangues, and other ancestral first nations. between humanity and the rest: animals and plants. “Man” has language while animals do not. By reject- ing other forms of communication as language, an- Decoloniality imals are assigned to a lower category while humans are consequently above other creatures; When we speak of decoloniality, we speak of ways Descartes’s “proof of existence” through think- to detach and unlearn from the imperialist-colo- ing as a condition of being, fundamentally individ-

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Decoloniality: Theory and Methodology ualized, crushed other ways of being and thinking that hides in the coloniality of the processes of des- not done from the cartesian modes of perception; titution and shows itself clearly but also opaquely in The onto-theological thinking of Marx defines all modern denotative thinking (Mignolo and Indigenous people as the past of history, while also Walsh 2018, 186). This is what Mignolo calls thema - designating whites, from capitalism, as the future of trix of colonial power (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, history; 111). There is no humanity except through the lens of This notion ofmatrix of colonial power was al- European epistemologies. There is no nature except ready at the center of the word colonialism, formed that organized in a hierarchical binary of man-na- by colon, cultus and culture. Alfredo Bosi in his book ture, established by modernity. There is no politics “The Dialectics of Colonization” says that coloniza- except in the expressions of the politics of emanci- tion is the taking of land, culture and “religion” as pation of modernity. There is no God but the God of an ancestral memory, “a totalizing project whose European Christianity. There is no Jesus but the Je- driving forces can always be sought at the level of sus re-read by the Greeks and European theolo- the colon: occupy a new ground, exploit their pos- gians. There is no other knowledge but modern epis- sessions, submit their natives” (Bosi 1992, 15). temology. There is no body but the body erected in With colonization, we lose our vincularidad, our modern functions and definitions. There is no plea- attachment with the land. “Colo” is the cultivation sure, or joy, except those ordained and not ordained of the earth as well as the cultivation of the self. by Freud, Lacan, or Reich. There are no rights but Hence, with the loss of this connection, this funda- modern human rights. There is no understanding of mental link, we create a way of cultivating ourselves religion other than the European. There is no econ- that will always be suspended from the earth. Ac- omy except in the forms erected by the social clashes cordingly disconnected, we live a spirituality des- of Greek-Christian-European democracy. There is perately lacking a grounding place, a lack that gives no beauty but the fine arts of European museum itself to endless false promises of affection or imagi- aesthetics. There are no ontologies other than Mod- nary beliefs. With our de-linked life and uprooted ern Ontology, as defined by rationalism. bodies from the earth, our desires also become uprooted and become that which can hide this broken And for all that, there is so much to criticize of lib- link. With regard to the religious aspect of this eration theologies. de-attachment, colonialism cuts off there-actual - We have become the great epistemological back- ization of our origins made possible by the re-me- yard of Zoo-Europe.2 morialization of the ancestors of the earth. With We must therefore employ an epistemological this colonial cut-off, people who once drew their decolonization, which Anibal Quijano called episte- greater connection from ancestors attached to the mological reconstitution, and offer other interpreta- land, are now lost. As lodgers and paying occupants tions beyond modernity to regain forms of thinking of the land, land which is seen by the Zooropa as and creating knowledge from other places of the Terra Nulius, we search for heaven without under- world. Philosophy, anthropology, history, and fun- standing the earth. We are eschatological masters of damentally, theology are places drenched with mo- time and ontological renters of space. dernity, where space for other interlocutors serves Against this colonial occupation and detach- only as an illustration that further intensifies the ment from the land and history, decoloniality seeks endless light of modernity. From this groundless old forms of vincularidad, other knowledges and ground, Christianity speaks from an incomplete other tastes, other looks, other ways of thinking, and faulty set of ideas which take concrete forms of feeling, acting, living and bonding with the earth. exploration that are always ahistorical and disem- Decoloniality seeks other forms of life and other bodied. forms of love. Catherine Walsh suggests we de-colo- In this epistemological reconstitution we seek nize modern European thoughts by re-linking us to what Walter Mignolo calls the “colonial difference” peripheral thoughts and finding other ways to re-exist, resurface, and re-emerge (Mignolo and Walsh 2018, 6). 2 This is a play on words in Portuguese: the word Europe For Martinique thinker, Franz Fanon, “Decolo- can be pronounced in phrases that when spoken in a rap- nization, which proposes to change the order of the id manner sound like one is saying “zoo-europe.” world, is seen as a program of absolute disorder”

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Cláudio Carvalhaes

(Fanon 1968, 17)… But it is precisely this absolute versal that has always existed which we must repre- disorder that decoloniality asks for. Because it is in sent somehow throughout the world. We will not buy this dis-order that we can find freedom and libera- into denotative epistemes, which always speak con- tion. Walter Mignolo speaks of the necessary disin- cretely from abstract ideas. On the contrary, we speak tegration of the Western power matrix, of the de-an- from the materiality which we live in, the touch, the nexation of the structures of modern coloniality, smell, the pain, the oppression, the feeling, the wind especially forms of understanding, and the use of that blows where we are, the human beings who join political structures as nation-states. the humanity of fish, the feelings of the mountains Thus, all decolonial ways of thinking are forms and the human presence of the jaguar. Then we will of de-linking, de-europeanizing, and promoting the imagine what and who we are. de-annexation of Renaissance and modernity, Let us now think of some decolonial method- which are totalitarian and totalizing forms of ological forms that work within what Enrique Dus- knowledge and forms of life. However, along with sel calls trans-modernity or the fifth age of the this decoupling and detachment, decoloniality is a world, or which Eduardo Viveiros de Castro calls simultaneous process of re-linking and relationality high-modernity. with other marginal, alternative, land-related knowledges within a decolonial plurality. Decoloniality wants to be transversal, border Methodology crossing, celebrating the thoughts that are born from the co-influence of other people who are not only Eu- I wanted to speak in detail about anthropophagism, ropean, entangled in the complication and co-impli- perspectivism and carnival. But since I do not have cation of various thoughts from below that flee from time, I am going to make an amalgam of everything. the totalitarian univocal epistemic thinking of Eu- Tupi, or not tupi that is the question rope. As decolonialists, even as Christians, perhaps, (de Andrade 1928, 47). we should speak no more of an essence of eternal uni-

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Decoloniality: Theory and Methodology

Anthropophagism is a gift of the Indigenous peoples ophy: as a mythology. He imploded the binary of from Brazil to the world. Anthropophagism or can- savages versus moderns and thus made us all see nibalism was the ritual of eating enemies. When Eu- savagery as the work of the moderns. “I wanted to ropeans arrived in Brazil and came into contact with call attention to the strict dependence of philosophy Tamoios and Tupi-Guaranis, several of the Europe- with its ‘pre-philosophical’ moment, that is, the ans were eaten by these Indigenous peoples. The ritu- non-philosophical, which is its mythical soil, from al of cannibalism was a conjunction of factors, but which all the themes and concepts of Western phi- fundamentally, as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro puts losophy and metaphysics are born and thus orga- it, “what was intended was this alterity as a point of nize its geographical orientation, its locality, undo- view about the Self … a paradoxical movement of re- ing the universality of local myths.” Castro affirms ciprocal self-determination from the point of view of his radical ontological anarchism as a methodologi- the enemy” (de Castro 2015, 233–234). cal position of principle and practice of anthro The anthropophagy of Oswald de Andrade, “in- pology and as an exercise in the permanent decolo- tuited on the Brazilian vocation to incorporate the nization of thought as the self-determination of other, to add and multiply and to transform the lan- Amerindian peoples (de Castro 2015). guages using all the logics, one kind of turns to the For Castro, it took a “deforming projection of other, for a Brazil that was not them” (Wisnik 2012). our dominant intellectual tradition based on the Anthropophagy will read everything: adapting ev- indigenous world,” in order to elevate the condi- erything, creating and re-creating an amalgam of tions of our gross and convenient modern irratio- new thinking, new lives for their communities. In nality to its processes of production of knowledge this way, modernity is not forbidden, but redone, re- and exploitation. He engaged decoloniality with- read, abandoned, eaten and shitted, reinvented in out getting involved in decolonial theory itself by whatever means necessary. In this way, Oswald de practicing bricolage, stealing things from Europe Andrade’s anthropophagy is not about the devour- as a “poacher, one who goes in and steals things ing of the other in order to triumph mercilessly but hidden in the land of others.” Put another way, rather, the addition of the perspective of the other as “I’m only interested in what is not mine” as de An- one’s own perspective. drade says, or to “understand the ideas of others to radicalize it even more,” in the words of Castro (de Castro 2015). Anthropophagy will open the space for If anthropophagism and perspectivism both the coming of perspectivism work with Indigenous thinking, carnival will be the hybrid movement of this Brazilian amalgam work- Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, perhaps one of the ing alongside Black people, as a way of criticizing most important voices of our time, elaborated a modernity and its children: coloniality, the concept deep and visceral analysis of Amazonic Indigenous of race, and slavery. ontologies and made connections with modern Carnival is the theory of decoloniality in prac- thinkers to remove their aura of unique speech. tice. Beyond the “golden showers” and neoliberal Castro does with anthropology what we need to do agendas of exceptionally cruel and ignorant presi- with practical theology. He entered the Indigenous dents, carnival is the knowledge and practice of a world and from there rephrased the forms of an- people who create larger-than-life festivals and re- thropology and put in check its scientific status. As size, re-read, and re-create the country’s life as it an inhabitant of high-modernity, he created a presents itself to us. For Orlando Calheiros, “samba “counter-anthropology – a certain idea of anthro- does not create a political conscience, samba is the pology modified and subverted by Indigenous an- political consciousness already awakened from thropologies presenting an “Amerindian thought” these ‘poor and peripheral’ people… a criticism debugged, generalized, and simplified so that it made through poetry, through music, through an could be confronted polemically with ours” (de Cas- aesthetic. [The singer]) Bezerra da Silva spoke of this tro 2015). aspect explicitly when he affirmed that ‘the favelas To seek the Indigenous perspective was to put get beaten up always and samba is its defense’” (Cal- Eurocentrism itself in perspective with two egalitar- heiros 2019). ian views of life and relations. Just as Castro under- This year the samba school winner in Rio de Ja- stood Indian mythology, he also understood philos- neiro was the famous “First Station of Mangueira.”

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Cláudio Carvalhaes

From his samba-enredo, “Lullabies to Put Adults to Afropacíficas resistances of Colombia3 La Via Cam- Bed,” part of the history of Brazil was recounted by pesina,4 all the washerwomen, seed planters, urban 3,500 samba school components. The carnival artist workers, the National Indigenous Conference in Ec- Leandro Vieira explains the plot of the school: “is a uador and the entire Indigenous struggle spread look at the history of Brazil more interested in the throughout Latin America where its leaders are be- missing pages. The story of Indigenous, Blacks and ing devoured by the system. However, where there is Poor, popular heroes who never found space in the coloniality there is decoloniality. And resistance official books and we never learned about in schools. forms the backbone of our people. Indigenous resis- So, we are giving prominence to those who never had tance and the Black Quilombos have always fought prominence in the history of Brazil. “The opening against colonization by pulsing with life and alter- float said: I want a Brazil that is not in the official -pic native knowledges. Resistance and resilience are the ture.” way of being of our Amerindian people. Inside that float, the official portraits displayed These groups challenge us theologically to do the are central figures in Brazilian (official) history, following: while outside the official car, real Indigenous and To consider the earth as the central grounding Black people. The dancers in front of the car re-pres- place of all living and thinking and the whole eco- ent history in another way. At one point the central logical biome as a correlated living being without figures leave the car, which is the place of promi- hierarchies; nence in history, and while they are out of the car, To consider resistance as the only way of living in the audience realizes that their bodies are tiny, the world; showing how infinitely smaller they are when com- To acknowledge that women are the target of vi- pared to the historical presence of Blacks and Indig- olence from the global-white-military-hetero-patri- enous people in this country. archal-fascist state; At the end of the show, the yellow-green flag of To insist on women as fundamental in the orga- Brazil that reads “Order and Progress” becomes the nization of life and leadership of movements; pink and green flag of the Mangueira School, which To consider the possibility of organizing life reads: “Indigenous, Blacks and Poor!” In the last car, without any European presupposition, be it reli- Mangueira remembers Marielle Franco: a Black gious, political or economic; woman born in the Maré favela, a lesbian, a council To consider the ways in which the “religions” of woman in Rio de Janeiro, who was murdered last Indigenous and African traditions can become a year and whose case has not yet been resolved. As guiding framework to re-link us to the earth and to Eliane Brum states, Marielle “was the embodiment create fruitful and extensive connections with other of a movement that came from the interiors of the forms of life. deep forgotten strength of Brazil. Marielle embodied an uprising that did not die with her but has been massacred in recent years. Marielle represents Theological Decoloniality: An Option a creative uprising that dreams of another Brazil, who wanted to cross the oligarchies cheerfully with Against the annihilation of Black, Indigenous and their bare feet as they did during this Carnival – to- queer people and all “minorities,” and against the wards another way of being Brazilians, in the plu- destruction of the planet, the neo-liberal/neo-Pen- ral” (Brum 2019). tecostal challenge, the looming threat of agribusi- Decoloniality in its deepest expression!

3 “Hacia El Buen Vivir. Desde lo cotidiano-extraordinario The Theory of Decoloniality Extended de la vida comunitaria. Una invitacion para comprender la accion politica, cultural y ecologica de las resistencias As we look at Latin America we see immense move- afroandina y afropacifica Columbiana.”http://bibliote - ments that create new worlds. Like the Indigenous ca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20190118032420/Ubuntu.pd- f?fbclid=IwAR3soZlcitEU9_VkPTA_3FqGpSsN- Zapatista National Armored Movement in Mexico, QFsmBboGmn2-yZi7fsNgA7loz5t5PxA. the MST – Movement of the Landless People, 4 The Peasants Way, An International Organization That the Peripheral Collectives of Brazil, the Cocaleros Works For The Sovereignty Of Food http://viacampesi- of Bolivia (Ochoa 2014), the Afro-Andean and na.org/en/.

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Decoloniality: Theory and Methodology ness and fascism, the war against women, there is an Nancy Cardoso, two of the most important Brazil- immense necessity to offer pastoral alternatives and ian theologians who have never been able to teach theological practices that can carry new forms of life in Brazilian patriarchal universities because they and survival. Christianity must offer ways to dis- are radical, living on the shores and peripheries of connect thinking from that which does not offer re- Amerindia. Without the theological and biblical sults in everyday life, in the re-existence of peoples, teachings of Gebara and Cardoso, and many oth- in the resurgence of other forms of experience and ers, there will be no decolonial theology in Latin in the re-emergence of other connections and loyal- America. ties. Fundamentally, Christianity must have a com- A feminist Christianity must be traversed by the mitment to decolonization and an understanding of pastoral presence of Dorothy Stang, a Queer Chris- decoloniality, as Walter Mignolo correctly states: tianity, crossed by the various human sexualities, Christianity in its original forms was a non-Western whose deviant presence of André S. Musskopf nour- religion which became a Western and imperial reli- ishes us with a theological queerness. A Black Chris- gion (Mignolo 2012). tianity as in the works of Ronilso Pacheco. A Chris- It is necessary to make a transubstantiation of tianity complete with the presence of communities Christianity. That is, to eliminate the European sub- where full people live with physical challenges and stance of our faith and transubstantiate it in other social abandon and who are usually expurgated ontologies and practices. For if we eat God at the Eu- from public spaces. charist, in an anthropophagic way, the whole pro- We need a Christianity shaped by African Bra- cess of digestion is itself a sacred process. Transub- zilian religions, Afro-Indigenous religions like Jure- stantiation happens in our body, making its way ma and ancestors connected to the earth. We need from our mouth through the digestive tract and re-readings of Christianity that do not aim at saving through our intestines. Thus, the end of the Eucha- Christianity, but rather, problematize the most basic rist is the defecation of God. Holy Shit! Being taken elements of the Christian faith. Fundamentally we by God, we decolonize the presence of God through need Christianities that start with the process of the process of anthropophagy. Our religious meth- colonization and its land-grabbing. odology is given in the body and not in the spirit. We are in desperate need of a Christianity whose The itinerary? From mouth to ass. We eat, we are Jesus Christ will not be a representation of God eaten, we de-link, dis-connect, re-exist, re-emerge, transformed into an idea, but rather, an earthly always in new fluidities and potentialities. As En- epistemology crossed by other ontologies. Jesus as rique Dussel says, Christianity must return to its humus as we are humus. In this confluence, in this messianic origins before Constantine (Mignolo Christianity of many detours, unexpected associa- 2012). tions and contrary to itself, we will give space to new We need those who show us this form of messi- life movements that can move along with the pace of anic Christianity. Like the work of Camilo Torres life and other forms of life beyond the human. For Restrepo, Oscar Romero, Pedro Casaldáliga, Cardi- our commitment is not with historical Christian nal Arns, Ernesto Cardenal, Hélder Camera. How- traditions, but with the honoring of life present in ever, our history always leads us to speak about the the ministry of Jesus. Christian men who fought, while we speak very lit- Perhaps we need more ontological anarchism to tle of other religions and of women. Therefore, new guide our religious lives (de Castro 2019). Perhaps forms of epistemological decolonization of theology we need a return to the Indigenous world. For with- must come from other religions, from other ontolo- out the Indian gaze, we will be white, almost all gies, from other mythologies, from other world- white, and we will have no world to live in. views, and fundamentally from women. “Brazil, our time has come to listen to Marias, Mahins, Marielles, Malês.” Says Mangueira samba. The Decolonial Wound – The World from A feminist Christianity made with the crossing the Losers’ Viewpoint of non-Christian women like Mother Menininha do Gantois, Luiza Mahin, Tuira Kayapo. The decolonial wound unites us towards decolonial- A feminist Christianity crossed by the presence ity. If in the first movement of liberation theology of theologians who recreate the Christian world we began with the option for the poor in more gen- from the poorest women, like Ivone Gebara and eralized ways, engendered by European thought,

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Cláudio Carvalhaes new forms of liberation theology seek forms of who are in the most dangerous conditions and situ- choice for the poor from wounded, oppressed, and ations.5 forgotten bodies. Thus, decoloniality broadens and even challenges the option for the Poor from the decolonial wound. As Mignolo explains: Conclusion – The Ability to Dream Decoloniality becomes a process of recognizing the colonial wounds that are historically true and still open in the I end this talk filled with contradictions and com- everyday experience of most people on the planet… It is a plexities that I cannot solve. I must confess that all I heterogeneous historico-embodied move, it perceives the have been able to hear these days are the Indigenous wound of coloniality hidden under the rhetoric of moder- shamans telling us that very soon the sky will be nity, the rhetoric of salvation. Decoloniality is at once the falling on our heads. That is the end of the world. unveiling of the wound and the possibility of healing (Mi- gnolo 2013). They tell us that we need to learn to dream in other ways. To dream the dreams of forests, rivers and an- The decolonial wound is our poison-remedy! imals. In order to do that we must move away from the anthropocentrism of theology. There is way too much about humans! Enough of that! Any discourse A New Pastoral or practice related to God must be in flux with the earth. That means a decodification of the theologi- Juan Luis Segundo in his book Acción Pastoral Lati- cal systems and an entering into a flow of living noamericana, Sus Motivos Occultos warned us about based on the flying of the birds, the pollination of the church’s lack of mobility to move into the de- the bees, the swimming of the dolphins, the path- mands and challenges made urgent and necessary ways under the soil of the worms, the roots of the throughout the whole continent. The church needs trees, the lives of the plants, the ways of the onça. not only to understand, but to change. Already in The Xama Yanomami Davi Kopenawa in his 1972, he pointed to our fears as the impediment to book The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Sha- necessary change and action. He told us that we man, a must-read for all of us, says this: were afraid of ourselves, of the salvation of the mass- Whites only treat us as ignorant because we are different es and of the gospel, that we would not know what to from them. But their thought is short and obscure; it can- do with ourselves if those changes occurred. not go far and elevate itself, because they want to ignore Fearful of change due to the markers of Empire death. (…) Whites do not dream far like we do. They sleep in the very bones of Christianity, the Catholic and a lot, but they only dream about themselves (Denowski Protestant churches saw their faith weakened, and de Castro, 2017, 2112–2116). which made space for the Pentecostal church to rise. The neo-Pentecostal churches are growing in 5 We need a pastoral work that includes interreligious dia- leaps and bounds in Brazil with a new wing of a logue. In fact, it is necessary to decolonize even ecumen- colonial gospel that has been remodeled according ical thought, which is organized around European no- to the contours and meanings of neoliberalism, tions of religion. We need a pastoral work that articulates filled with highly militarized prejudices and fol- the theologies of liberation, the decolonial discourses lowing the irrationality of extractivism and state and practices of the end-of-world peoples, and work with exceptionalism. new and old reordered rituals. Also, we need to create new forms of decolonial love. The Christian understand- On the other side of this gradient are the incred- ing of love is based on the European literature of the ible works of the Catholic Pastoral Commission of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We love from indi- the Earth, working within the most needed areas of vidualized forms and feelings of love without care for the the country, CIMI, the Indigenous Missionary neighborhood. We need to return to the love of Jesus and Council working closely with Indigenous people, to his Jewish roots that demand love as a place open to and the presence of CEBI: Ecumenical Center For strangers. Perhaps we can learn a new form of love along- Biblical Studies and the protestant work of Júlio side the local Kaigangs, whose culture is based on the Cézar Adam, Valburga Schmiedt Streck and Ronil- production of relationships and not on relationship to production. They can teach us a de-romanticized love, a so Pacheco, creating a decolonial work of practical love whose centrality of the fruit called pinhão brings to- theology without fear. With them and their people, gether a whole community. Thus, it takes both a decolo- a new decolonial and liberating practical theology is nial turn in liberation theology and a liberation theology proclaimed. We must stand in solidarity with those in decolonial turn to help us think in new ways.

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Decoloniality: Theory and Methodology

Fundamentally, decoloniality would be the art of no de Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. 2015. “Conferência com Edu- longer dreaming about ourselves. That’s why I end ardo Viveiros de Castro.” (Video) https://www.youtube. with Gilberto Gil’s song Indio do Xingu (Gil 1991). com/watch?v=neWz33m6dgI&t=4649s. de Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. 2015. Metafísicas canibais: El- ementos para uma antropologia pós-estrutural. São Pau- References lo: CosacNaif. de Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. 2019. “On Models and Exam- “Estação Primeira de Mangueira: História Pra Ninar Gente ples Engineers and Bricoleurs in the Anthropocene.” Grande.” (Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F- Current Anthropology 60: 296–308. 9nRZt86zbc. Fanon, Frantz. 1968. Os Condenados da Terra. Translated “Hacia El Buen Vivir. Desde lo cotidiano-extraordinario de by de José Laurênio de Melo. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização la vida comunitaria. Una invitacion para comprender la Brasileira. accion politica, cultural y ecologica de las resistencias Gil, Gilberto. 1991. “Um Sonho.” In Parabolicamará CD. afroandina y afropacifica Columbiana.” http://bibliote- EUA and Canada: Gege Edições / Preta Music. https:// ca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20190118032420/Ubuntu.pd- www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4Ev-m2hf1U. f?fbclid=IwAR3soZlcitEU9_VkPTA_3FqGpSsN- Mbembe, Achle. 2017. Critique of Black Reason. Durham: QFsmBboGmn2-yZi7fsNgA7loz5t5PxA. Duke University Press. Bosi, Alfredo. 1992. A Dialética da Colonização. São Paulo: Mignolo, Walter D. and Walsh, Catherine E. 2018. On Deco- Companhia das Letras. loniality. Durham: Duke University Press. Brum, Eliane. 2019. “Quem mandou matar Marielle? E por Mignolo, Walter. 2012. “Delinking, Decoloniality & Dew- quê? Bolsonaro, que governa o Brasil pela adminis- esternization: Interview with Walter Mignolo (Part II).” tração do ódio, deveria ser o maior interessado em des- http://criticallegalthinking.com/2012/05/02/delinking- vendar o crime”. El País. March 13, 2019. https://brasil. decoloniality-dewesternization-interview-with-wal- elpais.com/brasil/2019/03/13/opinion/15524850 ter-mignolo-part-ii/. 39_897963.html?fbclid=IwAR1H-pRCJQbpwYRSVOI- Mignolo, Walter. 2013. “Decolonial AestheSis: Colonial pA7Lbr1R_0heqVHDlSu6HHR41CVGlRmD3bj- Wounds/Decolonial Healings.” https://socialtextjour- FUU8k. nal.org/periscope_article/decolonial-aesthesis-colo- Calheiros, Orlando. 2019. “O Apogeu Da Resistência Alegre nial-woundsdecolonial-healings/. E Da Consciência Política Na Passarela Do Samba. En- Ochoa, Ursula Durand. 2014. The Political Empowerment of trevista Especial Com Orlando Calheiros.” http://www. the Cocaleros of Bolivia and Peru. US: Palgrave Macmil- ihu.unisinos.br/587367-o-apogeu-da-resistencia- lan. alegre-e-da-consciencia-politica-na-passarela-do-sam- The Peasants Way. An International Organization That ba-entrevista-especial-com-orlando-calheiros. Works For The Sovereignty Of Food. http://viacampesi- Danowski, Déborah, and de Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. na.org/en/. 2017. The Ends of the World. Maldem: Polity Press. Visnik, Jose Miguel. 2012. “Festival Adaptação – Pré-Balada de Andrade, Oswald. 1928. “Manifesto Antropófago.” Re- Literária + Sarau de Poesia.” (Video) https://www.you- vista de Antropofagia, São Paulo, May 1928: 3. tube.com/watch?v=PHGnEufJ3mI&t=3195s.