Rethinking and Decolonizing Theories, Policies, and Practice of Health from the Global South.

This article states the need to decolonize the theories, policies, and practices that dominate health, and reflects on the necessity for a new epistemology built from the Global South. This allows rethinking health with a new categorical framework, which incorporates socially determined health and life, with the optic of reaching the highest conceivable degree of living well/well-living. We put forth that the epistemic bases of epidemiology and the implementation of health systems tend to reproduce a coloniality of power and of established health knowledge. Health systems are viewed as an accumulation of reforms based on theories and policies of the Global North imposed on Latin America and the Caribbean. These systems have been built as bureaucratic, biomedicalized, treatment-oriented, and commercialized health systems that are perceived as external to societies and that reproduce mistreatment, violence, and racism. We make the argument to rethink, remake, and decolonize the theories and practices that govern both epidemiology and health systems, and, from the South, develop strategic processes for building health sovereignty as the vision for the reconstruction of hope and social justice.

[SARS-CoV-2 in Latin America and the Caribbean: The three intersections for critical thinking in health]. / SARS-CoV-2 en América Latina y Caribe: Las tres encrucijadas para el pensamiento crítico en salud.

Thinking about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic implies the study of general and unique dimensions for the historical evolution of Latin America and the Caribbean. From the individual to the collective, from biomedical sciences to social sciences and collective health, from risk groups to exclusive societies and the inequities constituting the colonial, patriarchal, modern capitalist heritage in the State and societies. The objective of this article is to review what are called the three intersections for Latin American critical health thinking. Seeking to analyze and reflect on the assumptions and logic present in the responses to the health emergency with reference to: 1. Critical health theory and its intersections with Latin American critical thinking; 2. The decolonial implications of problematizing the State and public health systems; and 3. The geopolitics of global health security as a roadmap for the global North. They outline approaches on the risks of capitalism's acceleration of the post-pandemic disaster and the alternative ways of addressing creative tensions in the reconstruction of emancipatory processes for regional health sovereignty and Health from the South.

SARS-CoV-2 en América Latina y Caribe: Las tres encrucijadas para el pensamiento crítico en salud / SARS-CoV-2 in Latin America and the Caribbean: The three intersections for critical thinking in health

Resumen Pensar la pandemia de SARS-CoV-2 implica el estudio de dimensiones generales y singulares para el devenir histórico de América Latina y Caribe. De lo individual a lo colectivo, de las ciencias biomédicas a las ciencias sociales y la salud colectiva, de los grupos de riesgos a las sociedades excluyentes y las inequidades constitutivas de la herencia colonial, patriarcal, capitalista moderna en el Estado y las sociedades. El objetivo de este artículo es revisar lo que se denomina las tres encrucijadas para el pensamiento crítico latinoamericano en salud. Buscando analizar y reflexionar sobre los presupuestos y lógicas presentes en la respuesta a la emergencia sanitaria en referencia a: 1. La teoría crítica en salud y sus intersecciones con el pensamiento crítico latinoamericano; 2. las implicancias decoloniales de problematizar el Estado y los sistemas de salud pública, y 3. la geopolítica de la seguridad sanitaria global como hoja de ruta del Norte global. Se esbozan aproximaciones en los riesgos de aceleración del capitalismo del desastre post-pandemia y los caminos alternativos de abordaje de las tensiones creativas en la reconstrucción de procesos emancipatorios para la soberanía sanitaria regional y una Salud desde el Sur.

Abstract Thinking about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic implies the study of general and unique dimensions for the historical evolution of Latin America and the Caribbean. From the individual to the collective, from biomedical sciences to social sciences and collective health, from risk groups to exclusive societies and the inequities constituting the colonial, patriarchal, modern capitalist heritage in the State and societies. The objective of this article is to review what are called the three intersections for Latin American critical health thinking. Seeking to analyze and reflect on the assumptions and logic present in the responses to the health emergency with reference to: 1. Critical health theory and its intersections with Latin American critical thinking; 2. The decolonial implications of problematizing the State and public health systems; and 3. The geopolitics of global health security as a roadmap for the global North. They outline approaches on the risks of capitalism's acceleration of the post-pandemic disaster and the alternative ways of addressing creative tensions in the reconstruction of emancipatory processes for regional health sovereignty and Health from the South.