Governor Ratcliffe crosses the ocean with a single fixed idea: to dig up the gold of the «New World». He lays waste to the land with cannon fire, poisons the earth in his feverish search and, when the peoples who inhabit it get in the way of his greed, he declares them «savages» to be fought. Ratcliffe unites the two harms that green criminology usually looks at separately: the plundering of the planet and the dispossession of the peoples who live off it. In real history, one almost never comes without the other.
// The theoryEcocide has human victims
Environmental justice —one of the three justices of green criminology— holds that ecological harm is not neutral: it falls hardest on the poor, minorities and indigenous peoples. The destruction of a territory does not only kill trees and rivers; it destroys the communities that depend on them and that, almost always, have less power to defend themselves. Ratcliffe embodies the most brutal historical form of that logic: colonial ecocide, in which the extraction of resources and the conquest of peoples are the same operation —digging up the land and subduing those who inhabit it, with the same shovel—.
His most effective weapon is not the musket, but the narrative. To plunder without guilt, Ratcliffe needs the natives not to count as full persons, so he paints them as bloodthirsty «savages» —enemies, not victims—. Green criminology and its postcolonial cousin point to that mechanism: the power that destroys a territory first dehumanizes its guardians, because it is easier to lay waste to the land of someone you have turned into less than human. Labeling the defender of his forest as «criminal» or «savage» is the first step of dispossession —and it still happens, today, with the environmental activists murdered across half the world.
Environmental racism
The concept Ratcliffe illustrates is environmental racism: ecological harm is systematically dumped onto the bodies and territories of those with the least power. In its colonial version, gold justifies genocide; in its contemporary one, the mine, the oil company or the timber justify displacing indigenous communities and criminalizing those who resist. Green criminology thus joins two denunciations that usually go separately —that of harm to nature and that of harm to peoples— and shows that they are the same injustice. Defending the river and defending those who live off the river is, almost always, defending the same thing against the same thing.
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// The subjectThe greedy man who thinks himself a civilizer
Ratcliffe is dangerous not because he knows himself to be evil, but because he believes himself a civilizer. His greed dons the garb of a mission: to bring «progress» to a virgin land, to plant a flag, to serve the crown. That alibi —plunder as civilization, destruction as development— is exactly the one that has shielded both colonial and modern ecocide: no one lays waste to a forest saying «I come to destroy», they all say «I come to develop». Ratcliffe understands neither the land nor its people; he sees only a deposit and some obstacles. And his final failure —there is no gold, he has only sown hatred and death— is the moral that green criminology underlines: extractive logic destroys even when it does not even obtain the loot it promised.
Political economy gave that curse a name: the paradox of plenty or «resource curse». The territories richest in gold, oil or minerals tend to suffer more violence, dispossession and authoritarianism, not less —the wealth beneath the soil attracts the plunderer and finances whoever represses those who protest—. Ratcliffe is not a moral anomaly, but the predictable agent of that logic: where the metal gleams, someone manufactures a «savage» to be pushed away from it. Gold does not curse the land; it curses those who inhabit it.
Gobernador Ratcliffe
// The crackA villain of another era?
The temptation with Ratcliffe is to file him away as a villain of the past: the colonial greed of centuries ago, already overcome. Here green criminology insists on the opposite —the mechanism is still alive, it just changed its clothes: today it is multinationals, not crowns, and «exploitation license», not «the king's flag»—. But the honest nuance is also fitting: not all extraction is genocide, and presenting any development as conquest can paralyze legitimate and necessary decisions. Ratcliffe's strength is not to prove that every miner is a murderer, but to remind us how much human harm has been hidden —and still is hidden— behind the word «resources», and who almost always pays the bill.
Protecting the land is protecting its people
Ratcliffe leaves a lesson that green criminology turns into a program: you cannot separate the protection of the environment from the protection of the peoples who inhabit it. Recognizing indigenous territorial rights, ceasing to criminalize environmental defenders (the most murdered in the world today), and prosecuting colonial and corporate ecocide as the crime it is —against the land and against its people—. The film tells it with songs; the theory, with data and real corpses. The conclusion is the same: whoever comes to plunder the land must, sooner or later, erase whoever defends it —and that is why defending one is defending the other.
Three key takeaways
- Environmental justice (green criminology) shows that ecological harm falls on the poor, minorities and indigenous peoples. Ratcliffe embodies its brutal form: colonial ecocide.
- His key weapon is the narrative: he dehumanizes the natives as «savages» in order to plunder without guilt. The power that destroys a territory first criminalizes its guardians —as with today's environmental activists.
- The crack: he is not a villain of the past (he swapped crowns for multinationals), but not all extraction is genocide. His lesson: protecting the land and protecting its people are the same struggle.
Sources · further reading
- White, R. (2008). Crimes Against Nature. Willan.
- Bullard, R. D. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Westview Press.
- South, N. & Brisman, A. (eds.) (2013). Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. Routledge.
- Global Witness (2023). Standing Firm: informe anual sobre defensores de la tierra y el medioambiente asesinados.
- Le Billon, P. (2012). Wars of Plunder: Conflicts, Profits and the Politics of Resources. Hurst.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Gobernador Ratcliffe?
Gobernador Ratcliffe («Ratcliffe») es un villano de Pocahontas, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. Governor Ratcliffe crosses the ocean with a single idea: to dig up the gold of the «New World».
¿Por qué Gobernador Ratcliffe se convierte en villano?
Pocahontas and green criminology: Governor Ratcliffe digs into the land in search of gold, destroys the environment and, to justify it, turns the peoples who live there into «savages». Ecocide and colonial dispossession are, almost always, the same crime.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Gobernador Ratcliffe?
El caso de Gobernador Ratcliffe se analiza desde la Criminología verde. Green criminology connects ecological harm with environmental justice: the plundering of resources and the dispossession of marginalized populations are often the same process. Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas dramatizes it: his lust for gold lays waste to the land and, to legitimize the violence, he dehumanizes indigenous peoples by turning them into «savages». It is the portrait of colonial ecocide —extraction as conquest— and of how power manufactures the label of «enemy» over those who defend their territory. A double harm, to nature and to the guardians of nature.
