The image below is a powerful metaphor for 500 years of the colonial system and global inequality

The image below is a powerful metaphor for 500 years of the colonial system and global inequality.

It depicts Europe and North America at the top of the map, accumulating mountains of gold, while Latin America and Africa appear as excavated, hollowed-out, and degraded territories, filled with craters.

The central message is clear:

➡️ Much of the wealth of the Global North was built through the systematic extraction of resources, labor, and lives from the Global South.

For centuries, gold, silver, diamonds, sugar, cotton, rubber, and other resources were taken from Latin America and Africa and concentrated in European colonial powers—a process that later continued in new forms through imperialism and neocolonialism.

Meanwhile:

exploited continents were left with severe environmental liabilities,

societies shaped by deep structural inequality,

dependent and vulnerable economies.

In a single image, the illustration captures half a millennium of colonization, plunder, slavery, exploitation, and wealth concentration.

📍 This is not natural poverty. It is historical impoverishment.