Indigenous peoples and justice in Latin America: a historicalanthropological reflection on the concept of legal pluralism

Abstract

This paper compares the theoretical justification, main characteristics, and -alleged- beneficiaries of systems of justice that developed during two moments of Latin American history: the colonial period and the period that runs from the constitutional reforms in the 1990s. During both moments, differentiated ways to accessing justice were implemented for different categories of peoples or social groups. Our goal is to analyze the arguments employed and the interests at stake when defending a differentiated access to justice; the conditions in which indigenous courts were created; and the recognition of autochthonousnormative systems by the Spanish crown and the national states. We will develop this reflection, which entwines historical and anthropological approaches, along with historiographical considerations regarding the way in which the concept of legal pluralism has developed, in the last decades, as an analytical category to investigate Latin American normative systems indiverse moments of its history, and how alternative proposals have emerged.