ALBA: A decolonial delinking performance towards (western) modernity – An alternative to development project

Abstract

Throughout the 20th century, ideological deficiency and disunity of the Third World have resulted in the principles of Bandung and South-South cooperation not fulfilling their historical decolonial objective. This paper seeks to identify The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) as an organization that has developed not only unity amongst its participants in opposing neoliberal (development) logic, but has successfully performed and implemented an alternative decolonial epistemology that seeks to dismantle the colonial matrix sustained by colonial subjects through local and global solidarities. ALBA is analyzed and conceptualized using concepts elaborated by decolonial scholars of the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. As a decolonial delinking performance, ALBA proposes an alternative to development project that embodies the spirit of Bandung and principles of South-South Cooperation thereby counterploting the supposed belief that only (western) knowledge systems lead to economic and social development. This (decolonial performance) is noticed in ALBA’s theoretical framework which establishes an alternative regional development project contra the Washington consensus and more explicitly the ethos of Liberal-Capitalism. The last section highlights the epistemological differences between the BRICS and ALBA with the former being identified as de-westernized delinking, and the latter decolonial delinking.