This text addresses the discussion on decoloniality in social studies on Latin America from different research experiences that seek to problematize the concept and show that not all research carried out in the so-called Global South is decolonial. It also presents scenarios in which academic works have justified the reproduction of inequalities in Latin America, as well as the discrimination that affects the region and prevents access to models of social justice.

Jorge Durand is the guest in this interview section of Encartes magazine. Anthropologist and researcher at the University of Guadalajara, where he holds the Chair of Migration, Jorge Durand is a specialist in the United States-Mexico migration dynamics. On this occasion, he describes his incursion into the northern countries of Central America and the new protagonist figure in the region: the uprooted.

The social sciences in Latin America have received numerous impulses for their development from the hegemonic countries. Research expeditions, teacher training, the dissemination of books and magazines provide feedback on the relationship between the center and the periphery. In our region, the social sciences have developed confined within the borders of each country. This can be confirmed by looking at the topics and titles of theses, articles and books produced in Latin American countries. However, lasting links at the horizontal level have been built through the exchange of professors and students and the activities of the congresses, and lately on the pages of electronic journals. In this section of Discrepancies we will explore what role fostering open science has to play in the social science locale.

WThe author develops three specific observations on the religious practices introduced by Pentecostalism in the global balance of inequalities in Latin America with the attempt to point out the complexity and ambiguity of their social performances according to dimensions and contexts of analysis. These are: the ups and downs of Catholicism in the region; the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America; and the characteristics of the implantation of Pentecostalism in the popular sectors and the discussion of its value regarding the reproduction of all kinds of inequalities in contemporary Latin American societies.

CAs part of the interdisciplinary Colloquium proposed by the magazine Encartes, and based on the text by Juan Pablo Pérez Sáinz, this text seeks to complement and broaden the debate on social inequality in Latin America. In order to overcome a strictly economic view on the subject, the author proposes, on the one hand, to incorporate social and cultural dimensions into the analysis, and on the other, to assume inequality as a class experience. Hence his concept of social fragmentation. Initially, the article reviews the most current data on the primary and secondary distribution of income in Latin America over the last 15 years. It is clear that these indicators do not necessarily correspond to the experience of the different social classes that live a growing fragmentation and distancing from their life experiences that imposes the need for an ethnographic approach to inequality. This fragmentation can hardly be understood without an analysis of the social mechanisms and processes of social classification, which legitimize hierarchies and gaps between social classes. The disparity in the distribution of income and wealth is key for the author in the genesis of social fragmentation, hence the centrality that he attributes to the role that the State can play.

The consolidation of conservative projects supported by political and religious actors in Latin America is not a novelty: the continent has seen advances and crises of popular governments, bloody dictatorships, violent speeches and rights expansion processes that are carried out with different intensity and decoupled temporalities in different countries. The ways of naming this trend are the subject of discussion in this section, since the naming itself is a problem: they are expressions made up of diverse sectors socially and even politically, claiming transformations of varying thickness as the context allows them. Based on these ideas, we organized our discussion around three questions, which the authors answered based on the experience of each country.

The arrival of sexual and reproductive rights on the public agenda marked a new moment in the dynamics between law and society in Latin America. But despite important regional and international advances in guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights in recent years, these often provoke tensions between those who favor their recognition and those who oppose them. In the discrepancy of this issue of Inserts, we hope to clarify some of the main points of the debate around this topic so fundamental for the life and health of women, and for social equality in Latin America.