The principal racial categories we use today, such as negro, indio, and blanco, were conceived and defined at the very inception of the long-term process of globalization beginning in the long sixteenth century (Forbes, 1993; Quijano, 2000; Chaves, 2009; Maldonado). The process of the sea-change that we call modernity included the emergence of the planetary dominance of capitalism, the rise of European empires and their will to become lords of all the world, and the creation of discourses relating to history, geography, politics, culture and the self, corresponding to such structures of power and knowledge. A major component of the regimes of power and knowledge in the evolving historical totality that we term the modern/colonial capitalist world-system is the hierarchical division of the world into continents and regions that correspond to civilizations, races, and eventually to nations and ethnicities. ${ }^{7}$ With the invention of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe as continents came their equating with the four principal racial classifications: black, Indian, oriental, and white; in turn came the establishment of the idea of Western civilization as superior and dynamic  
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[^0]:    5 I make the distinction between Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean because, even though they are part of the same region, the three Spanish-speaking Antilles (Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico) and the continental Caribbean in Central America and South America are also part of the Caribbean region. For the sake of style, I mostly use the term 'Latin America' to refer to the three subregions it comprises, namely, Central America, North America, South America, and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
6 On early modern colonization and slavery as foundations for the establishment of racial discourses and racist regimes, see Quijano, Rabasa, Trouillot.