INDIGENOUS PEOPLES AND THE LAW IN LATIN AMERICA:

THE CONSTITUTIONAL RECOGNITION OF LEGAL PLURALISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE CRITIQUE OF LAW

Abstract

Abstract: This article is the result of research developed collectively with the Asociación Nuestramericana de Estudios Interdisciplinarios en Crítica Jurídica in the discussions of main theme “Legal Pluralism” at the meetings held in 2017 and 2019. The objective is to reflect about the current reality of legal pluralism in Latin America from the perspective and methodologies developed by Oscar Correas to think about modern law.  Thus, starting from the key question: “why does the law say what it says and not something else?”, we seek to understand the implications of recent constitutional recognition of legal pluralism for the indigenous people of the region. For that, we start from the critical and interdisciplinary conception about the battlefield that is the law, and allowing to understand the organization of indigenous communities as another one of the multiple legal phenomena existing in the continent; to then focus on criticizing the current constitutional formulas for the recognition of legal pluralism, through the methodology of socio-semiological analysis, in order to know its limits and possibilities for the self determination of Latin American indigenous people.
Keywords: Critique of Law; Legal pluralism; Latin American Constitutionalism; Indigenous People