In school, we may have learned that Simón Bolívar proposed expansion into northeastern Colombia in his quest for regional unification. What we may not have learned is that he blithely suggested that “the savages who live there would be civilized and our possessions increased,” using what we call today explicitly settler colonial terms, Indigenous peoples there perceived Colombian intruders as “Spanish” throughout the 19th century, and the return of Catholic missions at the end of the century followed the logic of state-sponsored religious “Hispanicization.”

In 2018, just before Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil, I wrote about the dire consequences of his presidency for the rainforest and its Indigenous peoples, which I called “environmental fascism.”As we approach the U.S. election and the potential re-election of Donald Trump, we must recognize that a similar threat is now haunting the United States, threatening to set a perilous global agenda.

For three short days this past August, Chicago danced ‘til dawn at the Democratic National Convention, where Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were elected as the party’s 2024 Presidential ticket. It was not the first time that the Windy City had hosted the event, yet it was quite novel in one significant way: the music Democrats put front and center during their festivities.