The Criminalization of Poverty and the Colonial Legacy: A Dialogue Between Eduardo Galeano and Latin American Critical Criminology

The article analyzes how Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America (1971) contributes to understanding the persistence of colonial structures and their influence on the criminalization of poverty. Based on the dialogue between literature and Latin American critical criminology, it demonstrates that the penal system in the Global South reflects a legacy of exploitation and dependence, acting as a mechanism of social control over marginalized populations. This bibliographic research draws on authors such as Galeano, Dussel, Zaffaroni, Wacquant, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Le Goff, articulating memory, domination, and resistance. It argues that criminal selectivity disproportionately affects poverty and racialized bodies, reproducing colonial hierarchies and violence. In this sense, literature emerges as a political and epistemological tool capable of reconstructing memory, exposing injustice, and proposing decolonial readings of law and punishment. The study concludes that decolonizing Criminal Sciences requires rethinking the role of the penal system and recognizing Latin American literature as a space of resistance and social criticism.