This entry examines the intellectual trajectory of Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni and his contribution to the development of a critical criminological perspective from Latin America. It argues that, since the 1980s, his work has systematically addressed a problem that today occupies a central place in debates on global criminology: the hierarchical, asymmetrical, and dependent relations that structure the production of knowledge about the criminal question between the Global North and the Global South. The entry reconstructs the evolution of this perspective through three formulations devel\oped over more than four decades: marginal criminological realism in the late 1980s, cautious criminology in the 2010s, and the recent proposal of a criminology of the “being-here” (ser-aquí). Despite emerging in different historical times, these approaches share a common objective: to develop a criminological perspective capable of explaining the operation of punitive power in peripheral societies and contributing to limiting its most violent effects. By situating these ideas within contemporary debates on colonialism, knowledge production, and Southern criminology, the entry highlights the relevance of Zaffaroni’s work for current discussions on the decolonisation of criminological knowledge.