Rights and indigenous peoples: objective advances, subjective weaknesses

Abstract

After decades of invisibility, indigenous peoples have managed to strengthen its role, with enormous differences depending on the case, in the Latin American political scene. This emergency has been accompanied by various processes of recognition, both international and constitutional collective rights. Years after the adoption of the two texts containing the most progress on the issue, the United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (2007) and the Constitution of Bolivia (2009), we are facing the need to make a balance: these regulatory developments, should be viewed from the hope or the disappointment? This article tries to provide useful elements in such an evaluation. In first place, a brief review is made of the legal texts cited; after that, we focus on the significance of the right to free, prior and informed consent. Finally, a reflection on the very meaning of the rights, as it is considered essential to the understanding of the relationship between indigenous peoples, state and mainstream society.