The presente work aims to understand the perpetuation of the discourse of western knowledge on the world, through positivista criminology, with the translation of Lombroso made by Nina Rodrigues, exponente in the country of the Positivist School. From the literature review, we sought to understand, from the perspective of the coloniality of knowledge and being, the invasion and colonization of America as a phenomenon that created racial segregation, constituting the first demarcations of race as we know it. With this idea of building the other, Lombroso started from scientific studies to explain the repressive control of central societies. Positivist criminology started from the ideia of degeneration of individuals and biological inferiority to explain the reasons for criminalization. Taking into account the technique of the center of the world, Latin American countries imported criminology studies to the margins, strenthening the center-margin dependency relationship. In Brazil, the elites needed to create ideological-political mechanisms to mantain power after the abolition of slavery and the establishment of the republic. The racial issue was the central point in this racista project confirmed by the studies of Nina Rodrigues, dividing the races, positioning the black problem and the mestizo as worrying factors for the future of the country. The personification of the criminalizable other influenced the Brazilian sócio-political formation, so that the penal system is responsible for the perpetuation of privileges and historical advantages enjoyed by the descendants of Europeans. The continuity of thinking about the criminalizable other demonstrates the quantum of criminological positivismo we still have.