In this paper, we engage in the debate proposed in the special issue ‘the politics of ecocide’ arguing that ecocide and genocide are outcomes of the coloniality/modernity project, having raciality as a device that classifies peoples, knowledges, and beings and separates humans from nature, giving place to predatory capitalism to spread. To this end, the first section outlines the case of herbicides to address the origins of the concept of ecocide and compare it to the ‘drip’ ecocide promoted over the decades in Brazil. The second section relates the concept of ecocide to decolonial theory and ecology. The third section, in light of the connections between genocide-epistemicide-ecocide from the perspective of coloniality/modernity, addresses the limitations and contradictions of believing in the ability of modern penal rationality and its associated institutions rooted in values of white, male, and human supremacy.