Mineralizing the Right to Prior Consultation: From Recognition to Disregard of Indigenous and Peasant Rights in Peru

Abstract

AbstractBy using a sociolegal analysis, this article shows how the Peruvian State has used administrative mechanisms to prevent the free, prior and informed consultation of indigenous and peasant communities impacted by mining projects throughout the country. Prior consultation – a fundamental right for these communities – is being drained of its content by ad hoc procedures of a mining bureaucracy bent on ignoring it. For this, the main strategy has been to deny the identity of indigenous peoples and, by doing so, divest them of their collective rights. The goal has been to promote the expansion of the mining industry at all costs. In the context of an extractivist economy, indigenous rights loose substance. The state has thus moved from the discursive recognition of indigenous rights to its effective disregard. However, the reaction of other state agencies against the systematic denial of indigenous collective rights offers not only hope but the chance to assess the tension between economic and special human rights.