Effects of the Catholic Church on the knowledge of autochthonous peoples

Decolonial notes

Abstract

This article aims to understand some of the effects produced by the “entrance” of the Catholic Church in the knowledge of the peoples of the former European colonies, based on criticisms directed at it by authors and authors within the so-called “decolonial thought”. In the proposed outline, the question is: if decolonial thinking brings something new in its critique, what does it have to say about the effects of the indoctrination of the Catholic Church on the knowledge of the peoples who were here and of forced immigrants from the transatlantic? It is by questioning the action in the territory of the Catholic Church that we seek the effects of indoctrination on the popular, autochthonous bodies of knowledge. To accomplish our intent, we have a narrative review, in a qualitative rather than a comparative way. We chose 5 authors whose gazes arched from the decolonial perspective: Frantz Fanon, Lélia Gonzalez, Abdias Nascimento, Ramón Grosfoguel and María Lugones. In order to present some of the main criticisms of these authors, we have separated each one by blocks, limiting ourselves to their thoughts. This procedure was adopted to facilitate the understanding of the thought of a particular author or author, focusing on him/her. Finally, we point out some general considerations of the hypotheses about the effects of Catholic indoctrination on the knowledge of indigenous peoples.