Anti-colonial reconstruction is a current of disaster response that treats rebuilding as a struggle against colonial dependency, debt, austerity, and externally imposed recovery models [@resistancecaribbean2017; @onsiegessolar2024].
Within emergent disaster response, the term matters because some disasters occur inside already colonized and structurally subordinated territories. In those settings, rebuilding is not only technical repair. It is a struggle over whether communities remain dependent on colonial systems or gain greater material and political autonomy.
The Puerto Rico and Caribbean materials published by Mutual Aid Disaster Relief make this explicit by linking water, solar, and other survival infrastructure to resistance against colonialism and neoliberalism [@resistancecaribbean2017; @onsiegessolar2024].
Related terms
- Self-Determination - a governance principle central to anti-colonial reconstruction
- Subsidiarity - a decision principle that keeps rebuilding close to impacted communities
- Centros de Apoyo Mutuo - a school where anti-colonial reconstruction takes concrete territorial form