I was invited on the Untold Histories of the Atlantic World podcast to discuss “The School of Salamanca in Early Latin American Revolutionary Projects.” This is the area of research I’m most passionate about—uncovering the Hispanic intellectual roots of liberty in the Americas. Drawing on my work, I challenged the dominant “Black Legend” narrative and the idea that Latin American independence was merely a reflection of the French Enlightenment. Instead, we explored how thinkers like Suárez and Vitoria grounded early republican ideas in a tradition of natural law that was both deeply Western and uniquely Hispanic—revealing Latin America not as a periphery, but as a co-author of the West itself.