AfroLatinx Females: Coloniality, Gender, and Transformation

ABSTRACT The intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class increases AfroLatinx females’ vulnerability to oppression. This article provides an analysis of AfroLatinx females’ realities from a coloniality of power, knowledge, and gender perspectives. Many AfroLatinx females struggle with postcolonization traumas, as well as with a colonial mentality. Decolonial liberation, womanism and mujerismo, and indigenous healing approaches are presented to facilitate AfroLatinx females’ transformation. Specifically, a decolonial integrative healing approach is introduced, geared to enhance AfroLatinx females’ psychological wellness and buen vivir, the Aymara worldview of living a life of fullness. This approach involves an amalgamation of liberation psychology, womanism/mujerismo, and indigenous healing into psychoanalytic theory and practice. Notwithstanding the harmful effects of postcolonial and current sociopolitical traumas, many AfroLatinx females resist, combat, and transform. Anchored in a new consciousness, numerous AfroLatinx females develop a revolutionary ethno–racial–gender identity, one that sustains their struggle for social justice.