“The ‘idea’ of America and of ‘Latin’ America emerged and has been maintained in the field of forces in which knowledge and wealth are unevenly distributed, and where the colonial difference has been silenced by the trumpeting and celebration of cultural differences.”
–Mignolo 2005, 44. I know you are writing on this today, SMT.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I need to read more of Mignolo.
I always liked his work but also took it for granted. I am coming to realize he’s da man, solves a whole lot of problems. Shocking.
Where to start?
Maybe The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Quotation above is from The Idea of Latin America which is a manifesto, summing up from his earlier things. Darker Side of the Renaissance is a kind of touchstone and you know, it is from 1492 that the discourse of Latin American exceptionalism starts. I have not read Darker Side of Western Modernity but it would be the version for modernists.
Or, The Idea of Latin America, where this quotation comes from. It’s a manifesto more than a research book, and he is basically talking for a general audience on things he has worked up in yet greater scholarly detail before and since; but it does demolish the standard exceptionalist arguments, for sure, and raises questions about specificity instead.