descolonizar

To decolonize — end colonial rule over a territory, and, in the extended sense central to modern Latin American and postcolonial thought, to dismantle the lingering structures of colonial power in knowledge, culture, and institutions (descolonizar el saber). Common in both history and contemporary political/academic discourse.

• El proceso para descolonizar África se aceleró tras 1960. — The process to decolonize Africa accelerated after 1960.
• El movimiento busca descolonizar los planes de estudio. — The movement seeks to decolonize school curricula.
• Descolonizar no es solo un proceso político, sino también cultural. — Decolonizing isn't just a political process, but a cultural one too.

In academic Spanish it often means more than ending formal colonial rule — don't assume descolonizar always refers to 20th-century independence movements; it's frequently used for present-day cultural/epistemic critique.

• politics Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina — The framework behind the influential Latin American call to 'descolonizar el saber' (decolonize knowledge) traces to Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano's theory of the 'colonialidad del poder' (coloniality of power), developed from the 1990s and foundational to the modernity/coloniality school of decolonial thought.