A Postcolonial Marxist Critique of the River‐as‐Subject: Situating the Atrato River in Its Development Aporias

Abstract

AbstractIn 2016, Colombia's Constitutional Court declared the Atrato River a subject with rights and named the river's environmental stewards. This article traces how various actors co‐produced the ruling and critically engages scholarly calls to theorise a river‐as‐subject ontology. Centring postcolonial Marxist perspectives, the piece illuminates how power operates through the Rights of Nature discourse and theorises that the river‐as‐subject builds on and creates racialised development aporias: non‐passages beyond the hegemony of the state, capital, and development discourse and double‐binds for environmental justice struggles. Unpacking how the plaintiffs built the case and the river stewards navigated the ruling's first five years, I show that mining‐induced river degradation unfolds through (i) the fraught promise of justice in the Colombian Constitution, (ii) the naturalisation of collective legal personhood as “bio‐cultural rights”, and (iii) the inclusionary exclusion of river stewards from policy discussions about large‐scale mining enclosures and alluvial gold exploitation.