The limits of intercultural dialog in contexts of interethnic warfare and legal pluralism: The case of the waorani and tagaeri-Taromenane in Ecuador

Abstract

We propose a current debate on decolonial thinking and the ‘intercultural translation’ of human rights, within a framework of recognition of rights, legal pluralism and global neocolonialism. The goal is to describe the limits of intercultural dialog in a context of judicialization of traditional interethnic war between indigenous peoples of recent contact and in situations of voluntary isolation in the Ecuadorian Amazon, territory crossed and exacerbated by economic activities, promoted by public agents and private, national and transnational actors. The article identifies patterns of power that reveal the tension between the abstract universalism of human rights and the institutions of the traditional social organization of the Waorani and Tagaeri-Taromenane indigenous peoples. The description of tensions and limits allows us to relativize the different meanings of intercultural dialogue through Amerindian perspectivism and decolonial thinking.