Decolonial reflexivity and Latin American universities

A dialogue between decolonial and critical realist theories

Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela, Ronald Barnett

Introduction

In this chapter, we examine the decolonisation of the university both broadly and, specifically, in relation to Latin America. We examine a matrix of colonial power that dominates higher education in the region and, building on that analysis, we identify constraints and ‘enablements’ (Archer, 2003, p. 5) for decolonising the university. In so doing, we connect two theoretical lenses: those of critical realism and decolonial theories.

Critical realism has been employed to address issues of colonialism and social transformation, particularly within the South African context (Lotz-Sisitka, 2022). Much of this work has focused on students' capacity for agency in pursuing educational projects (Ellery & Baxen, 2015), the constraints on academic development (Behari-Leak, 2017; Leibowitz et al., 2012; Vorster & Quinn, 2017), teaching and learning practices (Boughey & McKenna, 2017; Case, 2015; Luckett, 2016; Rink et al., 2020) and social justice issues (Ntshoe, 2020). While these studies largely engage with colonialism through situated empirical analyses, this chapter adopts a decolonial perspective, examining colonialism not as a historical legacy, but as an ongoing matrix of power that shapes beliefs, practices, and experiences within Latin American universities. Adopting a more explicitly theoretical approach, this chapter aims to identify the underlying mechanisms that perpetuate colonialism and articulate a set of analytical principles for reconsidering institutional transformation in the region.

Universities in former colonised countries in the Americas have sustained a legacy of colonial power based on a matrix of race and labour divisions (Quijano, 2000). This powerful matrix is particularly evident in Latin America, a region characterised by stark inequities and discrimination towards indigenous and black peoples (World Bank, 2022). In Latin American higher education, these populations are under-represented (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2025), are particularly recruited by less selective universities and programmes, and obtain lower salaries (Schmelkes, 2014). Also, Indigenous knowledges and ancestral practices have been systematically neglected in the university curriculum although, to some extent, this is beginning to change in the region (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2021; Mato, 2016).

There have been attempts across Latin America to facilitate access to universities for these underrepresented groups and to preserve and value indigenous knowledges and traditions (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2025). However, there are restraints and challenges faced by universities, their academics, and students in moving in these directions, not least those emanating from governments and their policies.

In its first two sections to follow, we synthesise the key ideas of critical realism as proposed by Roy Bhaskar and Margaret Archer, the two most well-known exponents of critical realism (CR)^[1]. Next, we connect CR ideas with decolonial theories that point to the matrix of colonial power shaping many spheres of life in Latin America and, specifically, in universities. Drawing on the modes of reflexivity identified by Archer, we go on to propose a concept of ‘decolonial reflexivity’. This concept brings into view a horizon for interrogating the presence/absence of colonial narratives and practices in universities, and so may help to activate powers that might even help in decolonial approaches.

Critical realism: the intransitive/transitive distinction and the stratification of the social world

Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science and knowledge production and the nature of causation, agency, structures, and relations. Its founder was Roy Bhaskar, who – within his extensive oeuvre – was concerned over the role of the social sciences as a form of knowledge (e.g., Bhaskar, 2007; 2010; 2013).

One of the most important ideas proposed by Bhaskar (2007) was that while knowledge is a social product generated by those who produce it (the knowers), this knowledge is about things that are real and independent of the knowers. Bhaskar distinguished between intransitive and transitive objects of knowledge. Intransitive objects of knowledge (also called the ontological world of being) are those that are independent of the knowers while transitive objects of knowledge are the ideas, theories and propositions produced by the knowers (also called the world of knowing). From this distinction it follows that, for Bhaskar, scientific theories, tools and methods are transitive objects that are produced to understand or explain intransitive objects (Bhaskar, 2007) As a result, while human beings as knowers can make claims and produce knowledge about intransitive objects, those claims are not equivalent to the real world.

Human beings’ claims about the world contribute to what Bhaskar called ‘judgmental rationality’ (Bhaskar, 2010:150), which allows the possibility of adopting the most suitable arguments or theories about the world among possible explanations. Explanations about the real world might be changed, improved, replaced or reinterpreted over time while intransitive objects do not so easily change.

For Bhaskar (2013), powers reside in the world at different levels, social reality being stratified in the real, the actual, and the empirical domains. The real alludes to social structures that are independent of human knowledge, even though some of them are continually (re)produced through human activity. This real generates events and effects in the actual that might be observable (or not) for human beings. In other words, intransitive objects (the real) might exercise causal powers on the knowers without them knowing or being aware of it. In the empirical domain, human beings may perceive and experience the events produced in the actual. In short, the empirical domain refers to the surface appearance of the social world which is the result of mechanisms operating at both the real and the actual domains, largely unknown yet real.

Archer’s theory: fundamental concepts

Another influential exponent of critical realism is Margaret Archer who suggests that the social world can be understood only if human beings comprehend the structures (the real) that generate events (the actual) (Archer, 1996). Moreover, Archer (2007) argues that our knowledge about the world is situated and depends on who we are and where we come from. In other words, knowledge produced by human beings about social reality is itself socially shaped.

Archer was particularly interested in social phenomena as both cause and product of a dialectic interrelation between structures, cultures and agents, which she called the morphogenetic approach (Archer, 1995). It is through these recurrent interactions that social reality changes or persists. Structures, cultures and agents are interdependent but, at the same time, they are intrinsically different (Archer, 2007) and they operate on different timescales. Structures precede agents and so agents do not create structures. Structures are pre-established and provide an initial context that variously constrains and/or enables agents. For their part, agents are born in a specific social context, with a specific language and set of beliefs and organisations that they did not create.

However, agents are not at the mercy of these social structures but have their own capacities and powers in reproducing or transforming social structures. In turn, these unchanged/changed structures provide a context of action for agents. As a result, agency is always a matter of reworking – either reproducing or transforming - social heritage (Archer, 2003). An agent may occupy a specific role and, with it, may acquire a vested set of interests. Agency is both constrained and enabled, that is, agency has prohibitions but also possibilities: penalties prompt compliance with a role, and yet benefits may also derive from this structural setting. Far from roles being completely patterned or determined, their occupants personify these roles in different ways (Archer, 2009). One of the most important differentiating powers of agents is their intention and ability to frame projects for themselves and design strategies to carry them out (succeeding or not) (Archer, 2003).

Archer (2003) differentiates between primary and corporate agency. Primary agency is located in a specific sociocultural system into which individuals are born and of which they do not immediately have opinions. Corporate agency, in contrast, is composed of autonomously formed and self-conscious interest groups, promotion groups, and/or social movements. Agents so acting corporately will interact strategically with other agents so as to pursue their interests.

Archer (2003) also elaborated on ways in which individuals may exercise their agency through internal deliberations that predispose them to action. Under the same structural conditions, some may be impelled to act as a consequence of an internal deliberation or dialogue around their concerns and projects. Archer termed this internal deliberation process one of reflexivity (2007, 2003) and identified four modes of internal conversations or forms of reflexivity: (i) communicative reflectivity, where deliberations are shared with significant others before deciding on a course of action; (ii) autonomous reflexivity, which involves an agent initiating an action, mainly on the basis of solitary internal dialogues; (iii) meta-reflexivity, which is present among agents who deliberate about their own internal conversations and practise self-critique; and finally (iv) fractured reflexivity refers to an inability to articulate internal conversations. This last form of reflexivity focuses on personal anguish and resiles from action rather than proceeding towards it.

Connecting decolonial thought with critical realism

Decolonial thought conceptualises colonialism not as a completed historical period but as an ongoing matrix of power that organises knowledge production, social hierarchies and institutional practices, while foregrounding the epistemic and political agency of colonised and racialised subjects (Grosfoguel, 2007; Quijano 2000, 1993).

During colonial times, the superiority of the coloniser (European, man, white) was imposed upon the colonised (Indigenous non-white people) who were considered to be inferior (Quijano, 2000). Such a race hierarchy (white/non-white) was connected with labour divisions (Grosfoguel, 2007; Quijano 2000, 1993) so producing a matrix of colonial power. Those who conquered and later owned lands in Latin America, and who exercised the most prominent social roles, were Spanish or Portuguese (Lockhart and Schwartz, 1983) and, later, their descendants and new European immigrants (Moya, 2006). They were also part of the political elites, as well as an emergent class of successful merchants (Tunnermann, 2003). At the bottom of the social system were Black people (usually as slaves) or Indigenous peoples (usually as serfs whose work was attached to the lands of their masters or low-paid jobs). Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nations in Latin America underwent many independence processes. Notably, these processes were led by powerful elites (Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018). This matrix of colonial power has had a continuing effect, with race and labour divisions lasting into the present century in reproducing the deep social inequities that characterise the region (Grosfoguel, 2007; Quijano, 2000).

The stratified model of the social world proposed by Bhaskar helps in understanding this matrix of colonial power, for it can be understood as part of the real. The conquest of the Americas in the fifteenth century produced a social structure that exercised causal powers during colonial times such that those who were considered inferior were subjugated and their cultural practices, languages and religions were prohibited and eradicated. This matrix of power, which was first imposed by military force, formed a structure that shaped cultures, practices and modes of relationships that not only became deeply embedded but was reinforced over subsequent centuries. It was real and exercised powers towards the actual (culture, language and imaginaries) and the immediate empirical domain (peoples’ experiences) with or without people’s awareness. Moreover, it was largely uncontested, and there was little space to alter this set of laminated structures.

Universities in Latin America have not been immune from these structures of colonial power. To some extent, the colonial university – as we term it - has been invisible within the university system, it having evolved over centuries. Universities, actors, and policies have exhibited a blankness towards these colonial structures, for the latter acted politically and ideologically, to discourage insight, let alone acts of resistance. An absence of critical reflexivity was an essential part of the structures themselves.

The colonial legacy shaped the foundations of the first universities in Latin America, which were established in the sixteenth century in close connection with the Spanish and Portuguese crowns and the Catholic Church (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2026, 2021). These institutions largely mirrored medieval European universities in their organisational forms, practices and epistemic orientations (Jiménez, 2007). Later, in the nineteenth century, Latin American universities followed a Napoleonic model of university inspired by the ideal of nation-building (Brunner, 2008). These colonial foundations and later French ideals impregnated universities in the region with an idea of the university as a space for systematic knowledge and learning. In this regime, especially as it has played out in Latin American universities, Indigenous knowledges, languages and practices have been largely disregarded (Mato, 2016).

More recently, universities in the region followed a model drawn from the USA especially, but also the United Kingdom and Australia (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2026; 2022; 2021). This model has been termed a ‘world-class university’, and has become globally dominant, being heavily reliant on international rankings, metrics and competition for prestige (Ordorika and Lloyd, 2015). Drawing on such models, higher education systems in Latin America have adopted policies and mechanisms that reinforce a particular culture of evaluation, accountability and competition, especially through accreditation processes and quality audits (Patel and North, 2022).

Until the 1980s, universities in Latin America were dominated by socio-economic and cultural elites, as well as including newly formed economic and commercial groups, whose economic prosperity and contemporary influence and power can be traced back to colonial times (Tunnermann 2003). It was not until recently that the poorest peoples (many of them with Indigenous, Black heritage or ‘mestizos’ backgrounds) have been able to access universities in the region through affirmative actions (Mato, 2016). However, these minority groups usually experience difficulties in completing their studies and in graduating (Schmelkes, 2014), and tend to pursue lower-paid careers (Silva et al, 2020).

In sum, the matrix of colonial power that was formed in Latin America became a powerful set of deep structures (the real, in Bhaskar’s words) that has been operating in, and has continuing effects on, the actual and the empirical domain. This matrix of power, which has been shaping social relationships, institutions, cultural practices and subjectivities in the region, including in universities, has remained uncontested for centuries and only recently has an awareness of it emerged.

Dismantling the matrix of colonial power in Latin American universities

Drawing on Archerian theory, we now focus on the role that academic agents (academic and non-academic staff and students, and universities as institutions) play in producing representations about colonial power and the extent to which such interpretations act as enablements or constraints in challenging this matrix and, ultimately, might serve to motivate decolonisation processes in Latin American universities.

In Mexico in the 1970s, Indigenous movements intensified their struggles for autonomy and the legitimisation of their cultures, languages and territories (Dietz, Mateos and Budar, 2020). In the 1990s, the Zapatista movement and its demands for justice and respect for the rights of the Mexican Indigenous peoples became known internationally^[2]. Also, a law was adopted which recognised that Indigenous communities had a right to learn in their own language at all levels of the educational system (Quintero, 2022). Among other initiatives in response to these demands in the 2000s, the Mexican government promoted the creation of intercultural universities (Gunther, Mateos, Budar 2020; Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2025; Mato, 2016). In Mexico, these universities have formed a symbiosis with local Indigenous communities such that these activities include curricular development, service to the community and professional education oriented towards Indigenous communities’ health services, agriculture, tourism and languages (Mato 2016).

In Bolivia, the Indigenous University of Bolivia (UNIBOL) was established in 2008 to address the under-representation of Indigenous students in traditional universities. UNIBOL’s mission is that of:

…unravelling institutional and ideological racism, addressing racialized class inequalities and dismantling the patriarchal logic of colonial rule… [and]… rethinking western knowledge and exploring indigenous linguistic and cultural perspectives. For indigenous peoples, this also means rethinking the territorial and ideological order of the state itself, which was created to control indigenous peoples and lands for resource extraction or labor (Mandepora, 2011, pp. 68-69)

UNIBOL offers programmes that are attuned with the needs of their Indigenous communities, especially those of forest management, veterinary science, and petroleum engineering. However, UNIBOL has faced challenges regarding its own exploitation of Indigenous lands that have caused environmental disasters and that have affected Indigenous communities and territories. UNIBOL has chosen positively to engage with these critiques rather than resisting them (Mandepora, 2011). A key issue here lies in ‘how to transform extractive economies that have led to rural poverty and environmental degradation, while relying upon these activities to generate revenues for state transformation.’ (Mandepora, 2011, p.69). The creation of these intercultural universities in Mexico and Bolivia are only two examples of many (see, for instance, the Autonomous Indigenous Intercultural University in Colombia or the Intercultural University Amawtay Wasi in Ecuador).

A range of initiatives aimed at decolonising universities have been documented across the region. These initiatives operate at different levels of intervention, including: (i) an institutional level, where entire universities are created in response to Indigenous rights, such as intercultural universities in Mexico and UNIBOL in Bolivia; (ii) a programme level, involving the development of degree programmes oriented towards Indigenous groups and their specific needs; and (iii) a pedagogical level, encompassing the design of courses, pedagogical resources and assessment practices aimed at preserving Indigenous knowledges and cultures.

However, the transformative potential of decolonising initiatives is influenced by wider political, legal and institutional factors (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2025). State-recognised, Indigenous-inspired universities often have to navigate tensions between reforms that expand access and representation, and efforts to pursue deeper structural and epistemic transformations. In contrast, grassroots autonomous universities tend to advance more radical epistemic projects, albeit under conditions of financial fragility and limited institutional recognition. From a decolonial perspective, this diversity reflects different levels of critique and intervention, ranging from reforms that leave epistemic hierarchies largely intact, to those that seek to transform knowledge systems and institutional structures more profoundly (Andreotti et al., 2015). These differences can be further understood through a critical realist lens so that political and legal contexts act as enablers or constraints that influence (but do not determine) the scope of decolonial action within higher education. Constitutional recognition of Indigenous rights and supportive legal frameworks can prompt imaginative institutional and epistemic change (Castoriadis, 1987). Their absence, however, often confines decolonial efforts to curricular or pedagogical domains.

In addition, decolonising initiatives across the region are confronted with a variety of ongoing challenges that hinder their growth and longevity (Guzmán-Valenzuela et al., 2025). These include structural constraints such as limited and unstable funding, inadequate infrastructure and a shortage of academic and administrative staff trained in intercultural and Indigenous-centred approaches. Other difficulties relate to student access and retention, such as uneven enrolment patterns, high dropout rates, and limited job prospects for graduates. There are also gaps in the preparation of academic staff in supporting decolonial and intercultural projects (Guzmán-Valenzuela, 2021). Many of these challenges are related to the lack of social recognition or validation. These delegitimation processes may be interpreted precisely as an indication that the matrix of colonial power continues to hold sway. As such, initiatives intended to counter dominant practices and narratives are considered to be inferior to those of traditional universities in Latin America, which, as observed above, draw on a western model of the university (Erdösová, 2011).

Toward a decolonial reflexivity

It is apparent that two forms of conlonialism characterise universities in Latin America, even in single universities: one inherited from colonial times and a newer form of colonialism in which models of university valorised in the Global North are adopted uncritically (Guzmán Valenzuela, 2026, 2022, 2021). This latter form of academic colonialism has established ideas and practices of being a university that are felt to be superior (in tropes such as ‘world-class universities’ or ‘flagship universities’) and, as such, have created a hegemonic model of the university.

In short, universities in the Latin America region are confronted with challenges that come from the past and from the present and are having contemporaneous effects as ‘generative mechanisms’ (Bhaskar and Lawson, 2007, p. 5), which are simultaneously continuing to shape Latin American universities. The question now is in what ways Latin American universities can instantiate processes of de-colonisation that resist, deflect and transform the structural forces that are anchored in the colonial superiority-inferiority axis.

First, there is a need to recognise that knowledges, cultures and practices are not only socially shaped but are also situated, embodied and closely connected with Indigenous lands (Tuck and Yang, 2012) and the violence experienced therein. Accordingly, much as is now occurring in other comparable situations (e.g., New Zealand, Australia, Canada), Latin American universities might publicly and continuously recognise and honour the Indigenous lands on which they sit. Second, and following Anzaldúa (2012) and Fanon (1961), those whose bodies and lands were oppressed and wounded may constitute resources for narratives, change and collective resistance. Transformative change is framed as emerging from Indigenous grassroots processes rather than external imposition, with Indigenous communities reclaiming identity and value through visibility, recognition and resistance to hegemonic forms of oppression (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012). Such processes are central to the construction of more just and equitable societies grounded in diversity and mutual respect.

And third, two sets of Archerian ideas that encountered earlier in this chapter become pertinent. Universities might become corporate agents in collectively recognising the value of the Indigenous heritage of Latin America and the justice in vindicating claims to Indigenous rights. Such a corporate agency in the situation before us here would entail actors within universities putting in hand processes of collective self-learning and actions in favour of Indigenous communities, where such actions would command the assent of those university members (List and Pettit, 2010). However, this corporate agency would go much further, in working with all other agents in the municipality and governments, jointly to advance decolonisation as a strategic goal.

Taking into account the depth and the powers of the structures that are operative, this suggests that an adequate response on the part of Latin American universities has to entail the putting in hand of a programme of communicative reflexivity. Such a programme would be nothing short of the instantiation of collective learning processes involving all the implicated parties, inside and beyond the university to include but to go well beyond the Indigenous communities. This idea of communicative reflexivity requires universities to form collective processes of decolonisation so as to deliberate on, problematise and articulate their goals, interests and challenges. Much of this deliberation has to revolve around the constraints that depress but also around the enablements that allow a recognition of Indigenous educational projects as valid and valued. Such a wide-ranging programme of academic decolonisation amounts - as we would term it – to a process of decolonial reflexivity.

Conclusion

Drawing on critical realism, we have argued that old and new colonial structures lie deep inside Latin American universities and have produced and reinforced colonial practices independently of peoples’ perceptions or even awareness. The absence of human awareness of these colonial structures helps to explain why some universities, academic units and programmes have met with little success in challenging the matrix of colonial power. Although several initiatives in decolonising universities in the region have been instituted, they have remained largely invisible and insufficiently powerful in countering colonial structures.

The concept of decolonial reflexivity proposed here, which combines ideas of corporate agency and communicative reflexivity, provides a framework of general principles for collaborative action among those involved. Based on this extensive programme, the colonial structures within Latin American universities can be challenged and potentially transformed. This could lead to the establishment of new types of university in the region that value, restore and further develop ancestral knowledge and practices. This approach suggests imaginative yet robust ways of conceptualising the university in the twenty-first century.

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Funding

This work was supported by ANID-Chile, Fondecyt Project 1240212.

Notes

1. Sometimes, Archer’s framework is understood as scholarship within ‘social realism’ but the subtleties of this terminology do not need to concern us here. For ease, we shall use the one term ‘critical realism’. ↑

2. See https://nacla.org/news/2022/12/21/spark-hope-ongoing-lessons-zapatista-revolution-25-years↑