Chapter 02: Land Rights

Non-human Rights

Non-human Rights
Paulo Tavares

In the new Constitution of Ecuador (2008), Nature, as similar to human beings, is defined as a subject of law. This legal text challenges the ways by which modern-western societies conceive the material world, projecting a radical Universalist ethos based on the commonality between humans and non-humans.

Chapter 02: Land Rights

Land Rights or What is a Territory? Interview with Luis Macas, Kichwa politician and scholar,

Chapter 02: Land Rights
Artist/Author: Paulo Tavares

founder member of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador – CONAIE. Archive images of the landmark indigenous uprising of 1990 in Ecuador. Macas speaks about the “problem of the land” within political struggles of indigenous movements in Latin America, questioning the limits of the concept of territory as defined by the State. The Rights of Nature are grounded on the historical battles of indigenous movements for the State to recognize collective rights to ancestral land, but also points beyond that paradigm, for what is really at stake is the very definition of land/territory to which rights are bound. The fight for territory is situated within the realm of disputes over life. Non-human rights as bio-politics.