Return and Restitution of Cultural Goods: Decoloniality as Compass and Brake

In international diplomacy, the repatriation of cultural assets has often been seen as an element that responds to the pendulum swing between something positive and something negative in terms of foreign policy. In the set of cases of repatriation of goods analysed below, we will seek to verify the real gains in terms of foreign policy for the actors involved or whether the gains occurred mainly within the scope of domestic policy. The Latin American and African contexts and their most important contemporary themes, such as colonial heritage and decolonisation; cultural heritage and (neo)colonialism; asset restitution in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa; indigenous and African heritages; symbolic and political violence; decontextualisation of cultural heritage; inequality and social hierarchy; decolonial strategies in institutions and colonial transitions and regional strategies for protecting cultural heritage, have all fuelled the strength of decolonial discourse and practices within the scope of safeguarding heritage.