The rapid proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) across educational systems in the Global South raises urgent questions of teacher agency, knowledge sovereignty, and epistemic justice. The dominant institutional response has centred on teacher ‘competencies’ for AI integration, exemplified by the UNESCO AI Competency Framework for Teachers, which structures teacher development around five aspects and three progression levels. This chapter advances a critical sociological argument: that such competence frameworks can function as mechanisms of epistemic colonialism, subordinating teachers to the extractive logics of Northern technological capital whilst eroding their intellectual sovereignty. Drawing on a critical secondary analysis of 84 policy and academic documents from Latin America (2022–2024), originally compiled through a PRISMA-ScR scoping review, I interrogate the discursive patterns that privilege technical proficiency over critical data literacies and algorithmic justice. Mobilising the frameworks of data colonialism, epistemicide and cognitive justice, techno-solutionist critique, and Latin American decolonial pedagogy, I argue that the ‘AI-ready teacher’ imaginary positions educators as operators of proprietary systems rather than as critical intellectuals, and that ‘sovereign AI’ initiatives such as LatamGPT risk reproducing colonial logics. I conclude by proposing a shift from ‘AI competencies’ towards ‘critical AI sovereignty’, centring epistemic justice, collective resistance, and pedagogical authority.