The Kichwa of Sarayaku Case at the Inter‐American Court of Human Rights: Legal Pluralism, Identity and Citizenship in a Context of Extractivism

ABSTRACT

This article examines the tension between a universal approach to law and the recognition of indigenous peoples' rights at the Inter‐American Court of Human Rights. The struggle for citizenship in a situation of extractivism and land dispossession demonstrates how identity is mobilized to obtain and attribute rights. The focus of this study is the Kichwa of Sarayaku case (Ecuador 2012) and the violation of collective land ownership rights. The study is founded upon a virtual ethnography of the Court hearingand an analysis of the documents submitted by the parties and the judges. By centering the analysis on the legal structuring of heterogeneous and asymmetrical encounters, the article seeks to shed light on the processes through which law is produced and the effects it engenders on rights and identities. The argument is advanced that the outcome of this process is not a pluralist law, but rather a relational politics of recognition.