Introduction

This chapter seeks to elaborate the challenges that science communication has faced, and continues to face, in Mexico from the perspective of the legacy of colonialism, specifically the condition that decolonial theorists have called ‘coloniality of knowledge’ (Castro-Gómez, 2000; Quijano, 2000a). These challenges are situated in three complementary dimensions: first, in epistemic coloniality; secondly, in institutional frameworks; and thirdly, in the realms of scientific knowledge and social epistemology. The central premise is that the coloniality of knowledge has determined what kind of knowledge is considered valid and legitimate and therefore worthy of being transmitted and disseminated in institutionalised contexts in the country in the period since its independence in the 19th century to the present day, and that this has implications for the public communication of science. The outline also draws on the premises of the framework of epistemic injustice to examine the role that science communication plays in reproducing practices passed down from the coloniality of knowledge. The chapter concludes by signposting critical recommendations and transformative pathways for a radical reorientation of science communication in Mexico through foregrounding social issues as the point of departure and then explicitly incorporating them into the dialogue, vision, knowledge, and voices of those actors whose knowledge has been historically and systematically excluded.

Modern European science arrived in Mexico as part of a system of knowledge that was considered valid, legitimate, and superior to other ways of knowing. Science communication emerged as a practice passed down from European nations, one that naturalised the validity of scientific knowledge and dismissed the knowledge developed by the original inhabitants as well as their frames of reference and interpretative resources. The argument here is not whether Mexican scientists and communicators have engaged in these practices deliberately; rather, they have been immersed in a system of thinking that validates this hierarchy of knowledge. The intention in this chapter is not to raise doubts about the relevance of scientific knowledge but to question the processes of epistemic imposition and violence, the lack of dialogue, and the delegitimisation of other forms of knowledge, and to challenge what these processes produce as social reality. In brief, the implications these processes have for the way knowledge is generated and worldviews are fashioned in the national sociohistorical context. These worldviews constitute and configure conditions that put certain social groups at a disadvantage in situations of social conflict.