Introduction to Section Three: Some Years of a Painful Process of Learning to Unlearn

Decolonization processes began soon after colonization started, more than 500 years ago. However, museums as colonial instruments never have been comfortable with the idea of changing discourses by giving voices to the people that their staff have been collecting for centuries.

For those of us working in museums, decolonization is usually an uncomfortable and painful process that involves accepting the limits of our education, which is framed in Western European ideals. I remember my first steps in this process, guided by Jette Sandahl and Fred Wilson. It was one of the most magnificent and painful periods in my career as a museum professional. I had been reading a lot of books before I met them, at the University in Argentina (I am a child of immigrants and refugees from Europe and Middle East), where Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, Amilcar Cabral, were common lecturers after a long and brutal dictatorship. However, in decolonization processes, the most important thing is to unlearn, not only with your brain, but with your whole body. That process started later with Jette and Fred.

Working as a curator in national European museums, it is almost an oxymoron to talk about and implement decolonization practices. We are part of a system where colonial practices seldom are discussed. I am not talking about big political decisions, but rather about those daily practices, simple ones, internalized in our bodies without thinking why we do them in the way we do.

As curators and academics, we must accept that we are not the important agents of these movements. We don’t need to use people, ideas, concepts, and practices to make our personal careers. Instead, we need to learn to unlearn and be hinges between the institutions we are representing and the people who were collected.

Over the last decades, I have been trying to open the stores in which, like a mausoleum, thousands of objects are buried. As a younger curator coming from Latin America, I thought that it could not be too difficult. But the process has been painful. The last five years, I have been working deeply with the Yaqui people in northern Mexico, in Sonora, following their fight to keep land and water, something that for many of us, living in Europe, in safe countries where the ground rights are secured, sounds incredible. However, this is the reality for more than half of the world’s population, especially in countries living in ongoing colonialism. In the years that I have been close to the Yaquis, Raquel Padilla Ramos, our colleague in Mexico, was a victim of femicide. Yaquis have been killed and disappear daily, and the area has one of the highest femicide rates in the world. Mass-graves are common in the area. Drug cartels move freely, alongside military and paramilitary forces.

Colonization has been, and is, many things. Among other things, colonial arrogance is strong. One way of thinking about decolonization could be to learn to be empathic and try from our privileged positions to contribute to make changes.

In this focus issue of Collections, we have been given the opportunity to share global experiences about decolonization and knowledge. Some of the articles were difficult for me to evaluate, not only because of topics, but because they provoke me internally. The authors take positions, not only in their jobs, but also in their individual ways of presenting, changing rules, and utilizing their own rules of writing and researching. It took me some weeks to understand this process, alone and in conversations with the other editors. It was complicated, ergo, it was good. I was expecting to review articles following the most familiar (to me) way of writing, instead I was confronted with different approaches. My first reaction to some was: I cannot understand or accept this! Until other colleagues showed me the beauty of the text, and then I could read again and again, and after some days understood that my prejudices blinded me.

A couple of articles put me in the situation to confront my academic background, where an article must be developed in a certain form, written in a particular voice, and emphasize topics in an accepted “academic” (read: Eurocentric) way. In some cases, my first thought was to refuse them. However, in reflection and conversation with the other editors, I realized the problems were mine, not the authors’. These works show these authors have gone farther in their decolonizing journeys than I have, and probably have stronger experiences of resilience and resistance to daily colonial pressure in their lives, among their communities, friends and loved ones. It is perfectly okay to deconstruct the academic way of writing and arguing and to explore not only a thesis but also feelings. In fact, it must happen.

I hope that this issue of Collections can be a contribution to rethink and reflect and, in the end, encourage museums, curators, and archive professionals to help in the processes of decolonization around the world.