Mapping Gender within Colonial Difference. Feminization and racism in the Iberian invasion of Abya Yala

Abstract

Aníbal Quijano's work marked a turning point in the studies on racism by placing its origins in the Iberian invasion of Abya Yala and conceptualizing it as an abysmal line that divided global society between humans and subhumans. Based on this proposal, various voices within decolonial thought have analyzed how the association of Indigenous peoples with the figures of the idolater and the barbarian played a central role in the denial of their full humanity. This text examines how the representation of the Other-Colonized as effeminate and sodomite also contributed to positioning native communities below the line of Being. It is argued that the feminization of the Indigenous person was one of the mechanisms used by the colonial enterprise to push colonized subjects into the same sub-Being zone that late medieval patriarchy had previously assigned to European women. Thus, this article is part of the tradition of decolonial feminisms with the purpose of contributing to placing gender at the center of the analysis of the construction of colonial difference.