This course will explore how the entanglement of racialization processes, colonialism, and imperial formations have shaped Latin American societies across history. Through a global historical perspective, we will see how the European state formation process, the Inquisition, and the Afro-European trade in the Atlantic world were instrumental in the emergence of racial caste systems, the eradication of indigenous populations, and the installation of plantation slavery in the Americas. From then on, we will analyze how race & empire have historically impacted specific socio-political Latin American historical events. Among them, the Haitian Revolution, the settler colonial practices of Mexico & Argentina, the "whitening" and pigmentocracy policies of Brazil, the segregation of pre-Revolutionary Cuba, the "color democracy" of mid-20th century populisms in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, the influence of negritude, African liberation movements, feminism, Black Marxism, and Maoism during the 60s and 70s, the indigenous "reawakening" in the 80s, the violence of Operation Condor, and the rise of intersectional social movements in the last 20 years. Lastly, we will also look at the historical role of empire(s) in the trade of commodities, such as cacao, coffee, sugar, grains, beef, oil, copper and others, and how they have been integral to Latin America's place in global markets; in the traffic of illicit drugs and the securitization of borders, and in how colonial conquests, trade, and foreign involvements in the spread of pathogens such as smallpox, syphilis, cholera, hiv, and zika, as well as global climate change.