Juridification and illegality in the dispossession process: the defense of territory and the commons in Tocoa, Honduras
Ainhoa Montoya
University of London
Defense of territorial rights through local action, regional spaces and political-legal strategies against extractive industries in Guerrero, Mexico
Yacotzin Bravo
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social
“A moment of respite”: Indigenous and Afro-descendant political-legal strategies for territorial defense in the post-Colombia Agreement
Viviane Weitzner
McGill University
The juridification of the struggles of indigenous peoples: indigenous law and the defense of territory in Guatemala
Rachel Sieder
Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social
Comments 4
Hi everyone
This panel has emerged from discussions within the research project The Juridification of Resource Conflicts: Legal Cultures, Moralities and Environmental Politics in Central America and Mexico, funded by a British Academy Sustainable Development Programme award, supported under the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund.
This project seeks to explore how different forms of knowledge and values enter and shape juridification processes that concern the defense of territory and natural resources by indigenous and peasant populations in the context of disputes and debates over mining.
For further details about the project, you can check the following link: https://ilas.sas.ac.uk/research-projects/resource-conflicts
Rachel Sieder (CIESAS-DF), Yacotzin Bravo (CIESAS-DF) and Ainhoa Montoya (School of Advanced Study, University of London) are part of the project’s research team. Our fourth speaker, Viviane Weitzner (McGill University) has joined us in the discussion.
The panel includes papers placing the emphasis on different aspects of juridification in the context of disputes or debates over mining. To kick off the discussion, we though it is important for us to reflect on the following questions:
1. What kinds of challenges are involved in building broad alliances to defend the territories and livelihoods of peoples affected by mining?
2. How might we most usefully conceptualize violence in contexts of mining extractivism?
3. How does the relationship to territory give way to the incorporation of particular forms of knowledge in juridification processes and what are the potential implications of this incorporation?
4. What are the roles and scope of national law, international human rights law, and autochthonous forms of law in strategies of juridification against mining?
We hope you find the panel interesting and join us in the discussion of these questions as well as additional ones you can think of through the next few days.
Hi all! Thank you for you interesting presentations. I have a question for all the panelists and one for Viviane.
First, through which legal paths is the intervention of police and military forces implemented? For example: declaring a state of emergency (to suppress mobilisation), rendering a livelihood as illegal (in the case of small-scale mining), among others. I wonder if these different paths have different impacts on the exercise of violence in extractive contexts.
Second, Viviane, in your presentation you introduce some categories that were developed within community politics and debates, and that were upscaled to national level legislation. Specifically I’m interested in “ancestral mining”. How representative is this category of broader artisanal and small-scale mining practices across Colombia? How do afro and indigenous communities in the cases you explore adapt ancestrality to more contemporary innovations for mineral extraction?
During my fieldwork in Chocó, “ancestral” was constantly deconstructed and ensembled as “traditional’, so as to reflect on the historical legacies of mining, but also opening the way to improve mining practices through technological enhancement. The constitution of special reserve areas for mining that are defined based on traditionality reinforced this perspective.
Thanks
Gisselle Vila
University of Melbourne
Hi everyone!
Thank you very much for your intersting presentations on these extremely important topics.
I have a question for Ainhoa. I really like the focus of your research and the question about the incorporation of local knowledge into legal processes in this specific case related to environmental concerns. You are speaking of neoliberal elites as operating top-down and influencing judiciary. I was wondering which role do play these “broker organisations” that try to mediate between the subaltern and the elites as for example lawyers accompanying local groups in legal processes. Often they are not from the same community but support them in legal questions. So in how far one could frame that as bottom-up and in how far do they limit (or make possibe) the bottom-up incorporation of knowledge?
I hope I could explain my question well enough!
Hi all – this is a fascinating panel, such interesting papers and urgent topics. Thanks so much for organizing. In my own work in Guatemala (hi Rachel!) with territory defenders that face criminalisation and violence on an almost daily basis, I see that being so busy with staying safe, going to court, affects family life, health, and so much more in the more everyday life realm of the defenders. Have you also seen this in your cases? The pain so to say behind the struggles? Keep up the great work :)!