Advanced Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Thought: Critical-Emancipatory Perspectives
3th Cohort | Virtual Modality
ACADEMIC COORDINATION
Felix Valdés García (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba) and Yohanka León del Río (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba)
PROFESSORS
Pablo Guadarrama Gonzalez (National University, Colombia/UCLV, Cuba), Félix Valdés García (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba), Yohanka León del Río (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba), Nelson Maldonado Torres (University of Connecticut, United States), Yodenis Guirola Valdés (Sciences Po Law School, Paris, France), Patricia González San Martín (UPLA, Valparaíso, Chile), Carmen Castillo Echeverría (Paris France), Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas (UNAM, Mexico), Carlos Angarita Sarmiento (Pontifical Javeriana University, Bogotá, Colombia), Frantz Voltaire (CIDHICA, Montreal, Haiti-Canada), Camila Valdés León (Casa de las Américas, Cuba), Lino Moran Beltrán (University of Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela) and Michael Lowy (CNR, France)
Virtual format | September to December 2025
Home:10 / 09 / 2025 | Registration: 09/05/2025 al 09/09/2025
Debates surrounding critical thinking in the context of emancipation are unavoidable in Latin American Studies. Intellectuals, challenging the weight of the hegemonic Western tradition, have questioned the assumptions upon which knowledge rests, proposing approaches and concepts that aim for emancipation and the overcoming of epistemic dependency. They offer alternative ways of narrating history, of considering economic and political relations, cultural values, and modes of knowing. Revealing these ideas, their critical value, and their liberating function constitute the main objective of this course, which will present an alternative perspective to the modern-liberal tradition—indebted to the Eurocentric viewpoint and the linear, disciplinary narrative that flows from Western academies to those of the Global South.
This introductory Postgraduate Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Emancipatory Critical Thought is the result of research and teaching conducted by members of various CLACSO Working Groups dedicated to the recovery, research, and dissemination of Latin American thought. This work has been presented in online seminars, at various International Postgraduate Schools, and in the anthologies of contemporary critical thought coordinated and published by CLACSO. The authors of these anthologies are part of the faculty of this diploma program.
Our America, as José Martí described it, shares a diversity of spaces with physical and cultural differences, as well as a common past marked by colonial subordination, capitalist socio-economic destructuring, and spiritual dependence on the hegemonic centers of Western power. Overcoming these conditions of dependence, achieving liberation, concerns not only the political, economic, and legal spheres, but also domination in the spiritual realm and in the very foundations of knowledge upon which our representations are based. In this sense, epistemic independence, liberation from notions presented as universal and from the dynamics of knowledge construction, constitute one of the tasks undertaken by critical and emancipatory thought in Our America.
Throughout history, many of the ideas developed in colonial empires, which were intended to be reproduced in the subordinate world and thereby discipline the colonized subjects, became challenges to the imposed order. Some concepts considered universal broadened their scope upon crossing the Atlantic. A paradigmatic example of the critique of the model of domination was that put forth by the Dominicans in Santo Domingo and Cuba, particularly by Bartolomé de las Casas—the first outspoken critic of the Spanish colonial project. Similarly, as Leopoldo Zea stated, the European Enlightenment came to the aid of the American independence movements of the 19th century, and the aura of classical positivism served the renewal of the young nation-states. Today, concepts such as “Blackness,” “transculturation,” “mestizaje,” the theoretical variations surrounding the current concept of “decoloniality,” the critiques of capitalism’s multiple systems of domination, the challenges from feminism, and the critiques offered by theology and Marxism have proven to be genuine theoretical tools that allow for a theoretical and philosophical understanding of our world. These constitute a legitimate expression of thought committed to emancipation, independence, and overcoming the mechanisms of hegemonic domination.
The Third World condition, the peripheral capitalism, and the patriarchal and racist perspectives imposed in this region have made this body of thought a rich source that demands attention among Latin American scholars. In this sense, the purpose is to present and discuss the history of regional thought, stripped of traditional logics of reading and linear, mimicked exposition, in order to avoid reproducing Eurocentric practices. The aim is not to imitate the modern-Enlightenment expository logic, nor the narratives that originate from the West as the "place of enunciation" and transform its experience and concepts into infallible and stark universals.
The purpose will be to reveal other ways of reading the legacies of the native peoples, the work of indigenous intellectuals, the developments of Marxism, of critical currents such as the philosophy and theology of liberation, the critique of coloniality in its different expressions, the race-class-gender problem, the analyses of feminism, the examination of critical thought from the Caribbean, always in relation to and starting from the real and historical conditions, of the past and present of the continent.
The complex reality of Our America, that space which, as José Martí said, stretches from the Rio Grande to Patagonia, including the sorrowful islands of the sea, has generated disruptive and undisciplined forms of knowledge, other ways of thinking about our world that transcend imitation and the dynamics of traditional academia. It is urgent in the debate on these issues to de-philosophize philosophy, to broaden our perspective, to recognize the necessity and usefulness of concepts that guarantee the understanding of concrete historical experiences and confront theoretical dependence and Western academic dynamics.
GENERAL OBJECTIVES
- To distinguish the critical capacity of Latin American and Caribbean thought, as a work committed to human emancipation.
- To offer a general overview of the work of critical-emancipatory thought in the Caribbean and Latin America based on the study of different currents, theoretical perspectives and intellectual movements.
- To make visible the concepts, theoretical proposals and positions given by Latin American critical intellectuals throughout history as a way of recognizing their cognitive, evaluative and transformative practical value.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
- Note the historical trajectory of Latin American and Caribbean thought, beyond the visible expressions in academic life.
- To argue the critical perspectives given by Latin American and Caribbean thought movements such as Latin American Liberation Philosophy, Liberation Theology, the Decolonial Turn and Subaltern Studies, Feminist Critical Thought, and the epistemic transcendence of Popular Education, based on the work of the most prominent intellectuals.
- To highlight the place and contributions of Latin American and “Third World” Marxism in the analysis of the realities of Latin America and the Caribbean.
- To reveal the real conditions that have favored theoretical criticism and practical commitment based on the analysis of real processes in the political, economic and intellectual life of our America.
- To assess the current state of emancipatory critical thinking in the insular and continental American space.
The Higher Diploma in Latin American and Caribbean Thought: Critical-Emancipatory Perspectives is aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students; teachers at all levels; activists and members of trade union organizations, social movements and political parties; public officials; members and managers of non-governmental organizations and professionals interested in the subject.
The program consists of 5 modules of 3 weekly classes each, taught consecutively and linked together.
Total workload of 128 hours.
The modules that comprise the Higher Diploma are:
Class 1: The European invasion of the “New World” and the establishment of the dominant perspective. To de-discipline philosophy, to de-philosophize philosophy.
Teachers: Felix Valdés García / Raúl Fornet Betancourt
Conceptual summary of the class:
1492 and the beginning of the imposition of the dominant perspective in the field of knowledge. The conquest and colonization, the Indo-Caribbean and Amerindian world, and the first counter-project to the colonization project. A critique of Eurocentrism and European ethnocentrism. The problem of the nature of philosophical knowledge and its expression in the Global South. De-philosophizing philosophy, de-disciplining philosophy in order to reconsider the critical work of philosophical thought in Our America.
Class 2: Latin American thought: the course of its history
Teacher: Pablo Guadarrama Gonzalez
Conceptual summary of the class
The question of the authenticity and originality of Latin American philosophy. Practical humanism and the interrelations between ideologies and philosophies in Latin America. From Juan Bautista Alberdi and his ideas on an American philosophy to José Martí and the project of reconstructing Latin American thought in Our America. Positivism sui generis and the anti-positivist reaction in Latin America. Studies on the 'History of Ideas'. The Leopoldo Zea – Augusto Salazar Bondy debate. Current trends and perspectives in Latin American academic philosophy.
3 Class: Caribbean thought. Academic indiscipline
Teacher: Felix Valdés García
Conceptual summary of the class
Possibilities for the theoretical understanding of other concrete historical realities: the case of the Caribbean islands. Peculiarity of philosophy in the Antilles region. Problematic cores (inversion of the historical narrative, revolution, the problem of Blackness, race and racism, Antillean identity, epistemic Caribbeanization). Concepts of Caribbean thought (Blackness, transculturation, colonized, mimesis of the colonized, creolization-creolity, Antillean identity). Caribbean intellectuals and theoretical-practical critiques.
Class 4: Latin American Liberation Philosophy: The Work of Enrique Dussel
Teacher: Pablo Guadarrama
Conceptual summary of the class:
Liberation philosophy as a perspective of Latin American philosophical thought and a heterogeneous continental intellectual movement. Its emergence in the late 1960s and the theoretical and historical conditions that motivated the shift toward an emancipatory critical philosophy. Its fundamental theoretical positions. The Morelia Declaration (1975). Main authors linked to philosophical critique: Horacio Cerutti, Arturo A. Roig, Francisco Miró Quesada, Abelardo Villegas, Leopoldo Zea. The debates surrounding situated thought that does not ignore the situation from which it emerges and the discussions concerning the very definition of philosophy, the questioning of its methods, the critical reading of classical European philosophers, and the accumulated body of Latin American thought. The intellectual work of Enrique Dussel and his ongoing critical dialogue with traditional, Eurocentric philosophy. Dussel's critique of Eurocentrism and his interpretation of the trajectory of philosophy as a decolonizing act.
5 Class: Liberation theology, critique of religion and fundamentalisms
Teacher: Carlos Angarita Sarmiento
Conceptual summary of the class
Liberation Theology (LT) can be interpreted from within LT itself, from an ecclesiastical perspective, or through a socio-scientific or philosophical examination. This analysis adopts the latter approach, based on the understanding that non-religious reflection can account for the degree of secularization that LT also addressed.
As an interpretive option, we follow Franz Hinkelammert's understanding of Liberation Theology, based on an interdisciplinary dialogue he established with Marx's philosophy: it demonstrates the convergence between the theory of fetishism and anti-idolatrous critique. This concordance leads to the conclusion that a critique of religion is necessary as the basis for any analysis of reality.
Furthermore, the critique of religion today demands an investigation into the trajectory of fundamentalisms that increasingly shape religion (both ecclesiastical and secular) within the current era of neoliberal globalization. The future of Liberation Theology and all critical thought depends largely on its capacity to conduct such a critique and to reveal the prevailing trend of the fundamentalist religious matrix.
Class 6: Latin American critical social thought. The work of Franz Hinkelammert
Teacher: Yohanka León del Río
Conceptual summary of the class
Latin American Critical Social Thought and Human Emancipation. A Critical Program in Latin American Thought. The Vindication of Utopia and Anti-Capitalist Emancipatory Movements. Themes, Trends, and Main Authors of Latin American Critical Thought. Franz Hinkelammert's Anti-Neoliberal Critique. The Development of His Main Ideas.
7 Class: Genealogy of the decolonial turn
Teacher: Nelson Maldonado Torres
Conceptual summary of the class
This course explores the formation of the decolonial turn from the Haitian Revolution to the celebration of the fifth centenary of the 'discovery' of the Americas. It examines the contributions to decolonial thought of figures such as the Haitian decolonial historian Jean Casimir, Sylvia Wynter, María Lugones, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Catherine Walsh.
8 Class: Decolonial, Black, and grassroots feminism: The women's movement in Latin America and the Caribbean
Teacher: Yohanka León del Río
Conceptual summary of the class
Latin American and Caribbean feminism: A critique of the metanarrative of modernity and the naturalization of patriarchy. The complexities of power relations and the interrelations produced in specific contexts, times, and places around sex, race, and class. The Marxist feminist debate on human emancipation and its theoretical and practical challenges. The proposals of popular, decolonial, and community feminism, and their relationship to Marxism and socialism. The Black woman of the Antilles confronting the patriarchal legacy of colonial roots, found in communities resulting from the plantation system, a socio-economic system that favored enslaved male labor while reinforcing the roles of white patriarchal domination. Analysis of critical texts by Rhoda Reddock, Cecilia Green, Alissa Trotz, and Violet Eudine Barriteau.
9 Class: Critical thinking and pedagogy. The work of Paulo Freire
Teacher: Lino Morán Beltrán
Conceptual summary of the class
The work of Paulo Freire, its epistemic and practical significance for emancipatory Latin American pedagogical practices. Popular education develops and critiques traditional education. Theoretical foundations of liberating popular education that contribute to decolonial thought and pedagogy. Popular education, decolonization, and decolonial thought. The liberating work and action of Latin American pedagogy and the theoretical paths of decolonial thought in its critique of Western civilization, Eurocentrism, its scientific rationality, and its historical inevitability.
Class 10: Foundational Latin American Marxism: Aníbal Ponce, Julio Antonio Mella, José Carlos Mariátegui
ProfessorYodenis Guirola Valdés
Conceptual summary of the class
Latin American Foundational Marxism: A historical and philosophical overview of the initial reception of Marx's work and Marxism in Latin America from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Key aspects of its development and its particularities in some of its most significant exponents, focusing on Aníbal Ponce, Julio Antonio Mella, and José C. Mariátegui. An examination of the problem of human emancipation, its relevance and specificities, both in contrast to Marx and European Marxisms of the time, and in relation to what can be considered Latin American foundational Marxism. Theoretical elements in the epistemic, philosophical, political, and ethical spheres, and in the practical sphere regarding strategies and mechanisms for social transformation. Critical and heterodox perspectives. Circumstances, dilemmas, and sociopolitical, militant, editorial, and epistemic conflicts that influenced the development of these ideas. Latin American authors of Marxist affiliation who opted for a differentiated critical reflection tailored to the realities of their contexts: the case of A. Ponce, J. C. Mariátegui, and J.A. Mella. Particular elements, disruptive, undisciplined, counter-hegemonic, and critical character of these thinkers, and the originality, relevance, continuities, and contemporary relevance of their work.
11 Class: Ludovico Silva and the critique of Marxists, Marxologists and Marxists
Teacher: Lino Morán Beltrán
Conceptual summary of the class
Ludovico Silva, one of the Latin American critical Marxists marginalized in academic studies and a paradigmatic case of the theoretical developments of Marxism in Our America. A reevaluation of his work for the present day. Marxism as an instrument for interpreting national and Latin American reality. Ideology as a recurring concern in Silva's work. Ideological surplus value. A critique of the traditional Marxism of Marxists, Marxologists, and Marxists.
Class 12: Latin American Marxisms: from idea to concrete revolutionary praxis
ProfessorYodenis Guirola Valdés
Conceptual summary of the class:
Latin American Marxisms in the critical contrast between theory and concrete revolutionary practice. Key ideas in the development of Latin American Marxist thought are presented and analyzed, outlining their evolution in different significant thinkers, taking into account the contrast between these ideas and their concrete expression in revolutionary practice at different historical moments in Latin America throughout the 20th century to the present. Topics to be addressed include, for example: the notion of the "new man" developed by Aníbal Ponce, its evolution in Ernesto Guevara, and its practical application in educational institutions and their reform in Cuba; the initial Latin American Marxist dilemmas regarding the path to socialism, their evolution in Rodney Arismendi, their contrasts with the insurgency in Central and South America, and their dilemmas in 21st-century socialism; as well as Mariátegui's idea of an Indo-American socialism, its evolution, channeling, or attempt within the political institutions of the MAS government, and Álvaro García Linera's concept of community as a contrast to value. The philosophical concepts discussed are framed and addressed, as appropriate, from their political, economic, ethical, aesthetic, or ontological dimensions. In each case, theory and practice are contrasted, highlighting questions and issues that these contrasts have raised and continue to raise for the development of emancipatory critical thought in the region.
Class 13: Haitian critical thought: from the Revolution to the present
Teachers: Camila Valdés León / Frantz Voltaire
Conceptual summary of the class:
The Haitian Revolution, the problem of Black African slavery, and the crisis of European humanism and the economic rationale of the colonial system. The questioning, through revolutionary action, of the concepts of Western thought that justified slave oppression. 19th-century Haiti and the interrelation between political sovereignty, economic independence, and cultural emancipation within an international context of denial and silencing of the transformative potential of this event in the region, alongside two other major revolutions of the period (the American and the French). Key themes of debate in the 20th century: the racial problem, racism, and the growing awareness among Haitian intellectuals of the particular condition of skin color and national identity. The indigenist generation: the work of Jean Price Mars, Jacques Roumain, and the Revista Indigenista (Indigenist Review). The adoption of an identity-based approach and its impact on a critical study of the revolutionary legacy, on a recognition of new forms of dependency, on the particularities of Haitian cultural identity, and on how its understanding had not become independent of universalist European civilizational models. The militant intellectual generation of the 1940s: René Depestre and Jacques Stéphen Alexis, their exploration of Haitian culture, and their political commitment to social transformation. The establishment of the Duvalier dictatorship and its construction of a racial ideology, justifying brutal state oppression of its citizens. The intellectual dismantling of the mechanisms of this papacy and the understanding of the economic and geopolitical nature of such programmatic manipulation within the Cold War context. Marxist debates in Haitian thought.
Class 14: Bolívar Echeverría and his contribution to Latin American critical thought
Teacher: Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas
Conceptual summary of the class
Bolívar Echevarría and his interpretation of Marxism, his reading of The CapitalB. Echeverría's Theory of Culture and his explanation of the Latin American Baroque. Echeverría and his conception of Modernity, and as part of it, his concept of whiteness.
15 Class: Challenges of critical emancipatory Latin American and Caribbean thought
Teacher: Michael Lowy
Conceptual summary of the class
A closing session is proposed featuring the renowned Brazilian-French intellectual Michel Löwy, who will address, from his perspective, the current challenges to thought on a continent experiencing various post-Covid-19 crises, the victories and defeats of progressive left-wing movements in the Luxemburgian sense, and the rise of the far right. He will also offer emancipatory perspectives from an ecosocialist standpoint. In addition to the lecture, a [further activity/workshop/etc.] will be held. closing meeting where the teaching team will conduct a collective evaluation and discuss the guidelines for submitting the final work.
- Pablo Guadarrama Gonzalez (National University, Colombia/UCLV, Cuba)
- Felix Valdés García (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba)
- Yohanka León del Río (Institute of Philosophy, Cuba)
- Nelson Maldonado Torres (University of Connecticut, United States)
- Yodenis Guirola Valdés (Sciences Po Law School, Paris, France)
- Patricia González San Martín (UPLA, Valparaíso, Chile)
- Carmen Castillo Echeverría (Paris, France)
- Carlos Antonio Aguirre Rojas (UNAM, Mexico)
- Carlos Angarita Sarmiento (Pontifical Javeriana University, Bogotá, Colombia)
- Frantz Voltaire (CIDHICA, Montreal, Haiti-Canada)
- Camila Valdés León (Casa de las Américas, Cuba)
- Lino Moran Beltrán (University of Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela)
- Michael Lowy (CNR, France)
| Early registration (until 27/08) | General registration (May 6th to May 03st) | Registration without discount (September 4th to 9th) | Payment in 3 installments | |
| Full or Associate Member Center | $125 | $185 | $240 | USD 315 (3 x USD 105) |
| No Link | $250 | $310 | $370 | USD 540 (3 x USD 180) |
* Residents of Argentina will pay the equivalent in Argentine pesos according to the official exchange rate of the Banco de la Nación Argentina (BNA) on the day of payment.
You must be registered in the CLACSO Single Registration System (SUIC) and enter your username and password. If you are not registered, click here. hereTo access the registration form, you must click the "Register" button on the webpage of the Diploma you are interested in.
Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.
Classes will begin in September and will conclude in December 2025.
All registered participants will receive, on the first day of activities, the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography, and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.
Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available. For inquiries, you can write to [email protected]
You must write an email with the request to [email protected] We will send you the requested certificate as soon as possible.
Exceptional criteria: In exceptional cases and within the first 20 days of starting the Higher Diploma, the student may write to [email protected] Requesting withdrawal and stating the reasons. After the case is evaluated, a response will be sent to the request. If approved, the student may resume the Higher Diploma program if a new cohort is offered the following year. After that period of time has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.
Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity.
Yes, the advanced diploma is certified by CLACSO. The diploma will be sent digitally and is completely free of charge.
Payment can be made in one installment, by credit card or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.
Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.
You can check if you belong to a member center here:
The Advanced Diploma program integrates a dynamic of asynchronous and synchronous classes. Classes are primarily asynchronous. The schedule for synchronous sessions will be communicated by the Diploma coordinator at the beginning of the program, and participation in these sessions is not a prerequisite for passing the program.
Queries: WhatsApp: +54 9 11 3880 – 1388
E-mail: [email protected]
