Revisiting Maritza Montero’s Work from a Decolonial Perspective

After the emergence of decolonial thought and the so-called “decolonial turn”, in recent years a Community Psychology (CP) defined as decolonial or anticolonial has gained strength. This chapter situates Maritza Montero’s contributions to this perspective. We review the author’s academic production in CP and related areas, finding relevant contributions: her conceptualizations of critique and liberation; an epistemological and ontological proposal elaborated from Latin America; processes and methods for transformation and the notions of empowerment, participation, power and social influence. We also identified absent or limiting factors to enhance a decolonial CP: (1) the absence of sex-gender, ethnic-racial, rural and non-human nature considerations; (2) the relational limits expressed in the duality of agents; (3) the need to include other worldviews to problematize the notion of nation-state, and to incorporate immaterial needs along with material needs.