Rights to indigenous culture in Colombia

Abstract

INTRODUCTION This chapter uses three cases from indigenous Colombia to examine the at times awkward relationship between the set of “basic” human rights seen to reside in individuals (e.g., the right to be free from killing, torture, or forced exile) and a set of collective rights known as “rights to culture” (also known as “rights to difference”). Both sets of rights appear in various covenants and treaties to which the country has been a signatory, and they share some – but only some – of the same intellectual and moral underpinnings. I also examine the problematic way both the Colombian government and indigenous communities (henceforth pueblos ) appeal to a discourse of culture when disputes arise over who is entitled to claim the “right to culture.” The conflicts these three cases illustrate have arisen in no small part due to the fact that campaigns supporting basic human rights, and the mobilizations around indigenous rights, have emerged out of significantly different histories. I have been conducting research since 1968 on various topics in the Vaupés, a department in the southeastern part of the country. In the early 1980s I became interested in the indigenous rights mobilizing taking place in the region, and subsequently expanded that interest to include the organizing at the national and international levels (see Warren and Jackson 2002; Jackson and Warren 2005).