Reflections on the idea of Latin America and its contributions to southern occupational therapies

Abstract

It is presented a reflection about the narratives around Latin American concepts and the categories that emerged from these concepts, making the possibility of different readings about our continent. The objective of this article is analyzing these narratives and identifying what they offer to contribute to Southern Occupational Therapies debate. It is considered that their current deployment is directly related to the discussions about them, which have been taking place for several decades in our region. To this end, a reflexive essay is presented based on social theories, including anticolonial, postcolonial, subaltern, and decolonial studies, among others. We have chosen for debates to contribute to the reflection of Southern Occupational Therapies: The contradictory heterogeneity of Latin America, the coloniality as a transgenerational legacy of colonization, politics of representation in the intellectual world and how they have observed, studied, and represented "otherness" and the internal coloniality, as a starting point for processes of decolonization. It is concluded that the Southern Occupational Therapies have been recognized local-regional narratives and practices, having a great potential to mobilize power relations and asymmetries both locally and globally. The idea of Latin America allows us to identify how the course of the profession has been transformed and new meanings and practices have produced in response to historical contexts and temporalities in this continent.