Rituals for dispossession. Indigenous Peoples, oil and negotiations in the Peruvian Northern Amazon basin (original) (raw)

For more than 40 years hydrocarbons activities have degraded the indigenous habitat in the Pastaza, Corrientes, El Tigre and Marañon river basins in the Peruvian northern Amazonia. Negotiations between indigenous peoples and the state have been going on for more than twenty years with unfortunately scarce results. From the perspectives of Global Justice theory and Legal and Political Anthropology, in this article I contend that negotiations on oil contamination of indigenous land and water sources may be better understood as political rituals that maintain indigenous peoples in a liminal state, while their main concerns on global justice are usually dismissed.