Tracing how colonialism created extractive relationships with land and people, leaving Global South nations responsible for climate impacts of Northern industrialization.
Sor Juana lived under Spanish colonialism that enriched Europe through American extraction. This historical context illuminates current climate injustice: industrialized nations built wealth through centuries of fossil fuel consumption and colonial resource extraction, while bearing minimal climate consequences. Developing nations, denied by colonialism from autonomous development paths, now face climate impacts and are pressured toward carbon austerity while Global North maintains high consumption. The concept of climate debt recognizes this historical responsibility. Colonial ecology examines how colonizers' relationship to nature—seeing it as infinite resource for extraction rather than living system requiring reciprocity—continues shaping climate crisis. Sor Juana's colonial context, her mestiza identity navigating Spanish domination, provides framework for understanding how climate justice requires reparations, not charity. Global North must acknowledge that its climate comfort was built on colonialism and extraction, and owes Global South both reparations and support for autonomous climate solutions. This analysis rejects false universalism that pretends all nations equally responsible for crisis originating in specific historical and economic systems.
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