Cumulative Impact and Historical Harm

Sor Juana lived within colonial systems perpetuating centuries of Indigenous dispossession, enslavement, and cultural destruction. Environmental burden similarly reflects accumulated historical harm: communities now bearing pollution often occupy lands stolen from Indigenous peoples, or were deliberately redlined into industrial zones, or face pollution as consequence of centuries of resource extraction from their homelands. This concept rejects treating environmental burden as recent or isolated; it examines cumulative impact—how past and present injustices compound. Applied practice: environmental justice assessments examining historical land dispossession, colonial extraction patterns, slavery's environmental legacy, and how these created present vulnerabilities; reparations addressing both current pollution and historical injustice; land return and sovereignty restoration as environmental justice mechanisms; recognition that remediating environmental burden requires addressing its deep historical roots. Sor Juana's own position within colonial structures models this awareness: understanding present injustice requires understanding centuries of systematic marginalization. Environmental justice demands this historical consciousness.