Zulma Stella Patarroyo Joya, Angela Patricia Pérez González
Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia
Abstract:
This article addresses theoretical concepts drawing on the epistemology of the South to examine the territorial issues faced by the Indigenous communities residing in the municipality of Puerto Gaitán. These issues were a result of emancipating production conditions versus social relationships with territory and the identity of specially protected subjects. The article links elements that have led to changes on property and dwelling, damaging Sikuani’s living conditions, by going from living to merely surviving. These territorial transformations are attributed to their own worldview—nomadic and semi-nomadic—as well as the impacts of Colombian armed conflict. The article also relates normative and jurisprudential elements that help set up protective measures for the territory to identify occupation and ancestral possession that challenge legal reality, since they call for institutional legitimacy versus social legitimacy.
Keywords: ancestral protection, Sikuani, territory, ancestrality, indigenous communities.
