Land, economy, and the University

However, we are not strangers to a new and distressing anxiety. For at the same time, we not only know a different history—that of an "Other" Latin America—and desire an "Other" World; we also know that, alongside the crisis of its very roots, the colonial/modern/Eurocentric world system is driving our species—homo sapiens—toward an ever-greater depredation of the planet we inhabit. Consequently, we now find ourselves trapped at the confluence of two crises: on the one hand, the crisis of the historical pattern of colonial/modern/Eurocentric power, and on the other, the climate crisis of planet Earth. And this time—unlike analogous historical moments in the past—the stakes may not be solely, or even primarily, the crisis and reorganization of our historical existence, the subversion of a historical pattern of power, or the production and inception of a new historical epoch. This time, what is—or could be—at stake is our very survival as a species, and perhaps even that of other living beings on the planet.

- (Quijano, 2014, p. 12, translation from Spanish to English by Elizabeth Sumida Huaman)^[1]