ABOUT LEGAL PLURALISM IN VENEZUELA AND THE CHALLENGE OF THE RECOGNITION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES RIGHTS

Abstract

Legal Pluralism and the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples in Venezuela have been limited, since its constitutional regulation in 1999, by some factors such as the non-application of the Organic Law of Indigenous Peoples and Communities (LOPCI), the pending territorial delimitation and, more recently, in the official extractivism expressed in the so-called Arco Minero del Orinoco plan, destroying the territories and the specific ways of life of these peoples. Based on these reflections, the present work seeks to demonstrate how in Venezuela the rights of indigenous peoples have not moved, from their formal enunciation, to their material validity, but have remained stuck in a limbo between recognition and the absence of materialization of legal pluralism, this situation being aggravated by the consequences of the pandemic product of Covid-19, thus framing the recognition of the rights of the Venezuelan Indigenous Peoples, within a process of negative deconstruction of the rule of law. The methodology used in the present work is based on documentary and bibliographic analysis, mainly through the dialectical-hermeneutical method; taking into account for the conclusions and final proposals of this, some urgent actions, the result of dialogues with indigenous actors and organizations (ULA, GTAI, WATANIBA), which have been positioned in front of megaprojects.

Keywords: Legal pluralism, fundamental right to cultural identity, indigenous territorial rights, Amazonian indigenous peoples