Constitucionalismo de la Selva Viviente

Living Forest Constitutionalism

Why has the Kichwa People of Sarayaku declared their territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon as “Kawsak Sacha—a living forest and conscious being, a subject of rights”—when Nature, or Pacha Mama, is already recognized as a rights-bearing entity under the Ecuadorian Constitution?

From the perspective of legal anthropology, and positioning itself as a bridge between the territory and emerging posthuman legal discourses, this doctoral research develops -through ethnographic work- the theory of Living Forest Constitutionalism.

This is a fragmented constitution, co-composed through the interaction of the Kichwa People of Sarayaku’s Own Law, the law of the Living Forest, state law, and instruments of international law. It is also intersemiotic, insofar as the normativity of the Living Forest cannot be fully captured through written text alone. Baskets, ceramic patterns, drum sounds, children’s drawings, a hummingbird-fish canoe, rituals, and the puma staff of command function as carriers of law, embedding constitutional and cosmological significance.