How Can Multicultural Laws Guarantee Indigenous Territorial Rights? Evidence from Mexico and Peru.

As a response to international pressure along with massive indigenous mobilization across Latin American countries over the last two decades, most of the governments in the region have undertaken the implementation of innovative laws to address indigenous demands regarding cultural and territorial rights. Thus, multicultural laws such as Usos y Costumbres, Rondas Campesinas and more recently the Consulta previa law, stand as the mainstream legal instruments created to redress centuries of exclusion. Framed within international standards established by ILO 169, these laws attempt to fill the gap between representative democracies and indigenous collective claims for autonomy and self-determination. However, their implementation by national governments has been uneven and conflicts between the states and indigenous communities persist across the region. By comparing two cases from Peru and Mexico, this paper aims to explore under which conditions multicultural laws can foster the realization of indigenous people's territorial rights while at the same time contravening the capacity of the states to affirm their authority over the entirety of their national territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]