Coloniality and Indigenous Territorial Rights in the Peruvian Amazon: A Critique of the Prior Consultation Law

A massive indigenous protest in the Peruvian Amazon and its aftermaths triggered a socialconsensus in Peru about the necessity of intercultural policies and the enactment of aConsultation Law, a norm based on the ILO Convention 169 to consult indigenous peoples beforeapproving any norm that can affect indigenous collective rights. Nonetheless, the paper arguesthat, like previous legal reforms related to the recognition of indigenous rights, the ConsultationLaw remains conceiving indigenous peoples as minorities with proprietary entitlements instead ofconceiving them as nations with territorial rights. The Law is a form of liberal legality stillembedded in coloniality. Consequently, indigenous peoples maintain a tense and ambiguousrelation with liberal legality: they use the Consultation Law for territorial defence, but at the sametime they criticise the limitations of this legislation to fully take into account indigenouscosmologies.