This essay is an extended inquiry into the dynamics of development and resistance unleashed by the advances of extractivism, a form of capitalism characterized by a multidimensional crisis of global scope. Extractivism takes many forms, but the epicenter of extractivism in its most recent incarnation is Latin America. The region has been the main target of its negative socioecological impacts, but also the setting of the most powerful forces of resistance.

Addressing the existence of a black middle class in Colombia is not only difficult but an apparent contradiction, an oxymoron, because black people are inevitably imagined as poor and "lower class". But are there not other class experiences within this population? In order to respond to the research gap on this social group, this essay examines the configuration of the black middle classes since the late 1930s, based on life histories of members of three generations of families from the Pacific and Caribbean region who identify themselves as part of this class.