Abstract/Résumé/Resumen
This paper discusses the meaning and scope of decolonizing archives, understanding it not as a terminological revision or a token inclusion of marginalized voices, but as a profound process of confronting the colonial structures that have historically shaped the production, custody, and access to memory. The discussion begins with a theoretical reflection on decolonial studies, distinguishing between the terms decolonial and decolonizing, and drawing on authors such as Quijano, Maldonado-Torres, Fanon, Said, and Spivak to demonstrate how the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being permeates archival institutions. The article argues that archives, far from being neutral, operate as political devices that participate in the production of silences, hierarchies, and ontological erasures. In this context, the critique of technical neutrality, the centrality of the nation-state, and traditional notions of provenance reveals the need to reconfigure the epistemological and ethical foundations of Archival Science. Building on these reflections, the article presents community archives as decolonial practices, understood as forms of resistance and re-existence in which historically marginalized communities assume protagonism in the construction, management, and dissemination of their own memories. Finally, the paper acknowledges existing critiques and tensions surrounding decolonial approaches, while reaffirming their relevance for complexifying and transforming the contemporary archival field.
