Critical accounting research in Mesoamerica: Accountable to whom?

This commentary is a response to a recent article by Gómez-Villegas and Larrinaga: an article that uses some of our previously published research to argue that the [further] opening of the Latin American critical accounting research communities will lead to a renewed colonization of local knowledges. Our commentary concurs that there is a very real risk that academic publishing processes will exacerbate the colonization of academic knowledge production in the South. At the same time, we suggest that Gómez-Villegas and Larrinaga’s focus on the research activities of individual scholars is misplaced since it is the commercial activities of large, academic publishers that are driving these colonization processes. Furthermore, we propose that the authors’ analysis perpetuates a Ladino version of internal colonialism where indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities are simultaneously erased yet represented as ignorant and unable to think. We conclude by affirming Rigoberta Menchú’s statement that the only way to confront injustice and advocate for positive social change is to work collectively and to fight against all forms of neocolonial practices.