Contextual justice, indigenous rights and multinational companies in Ngulumapu (Chile): Array

Abstract

This paper advocates a philosophical conception of contextual justice which is questioned by the necessary justification of rights, and leads to understand the inter-ethnic conflicts as a struggle of rights in context. This idea allows to understand in a specific way the issue of human rights and the emergence of management projects linked to the globalization of the international market, based on the exploitation of natural resources on a large scale, which overcome ancestral and native rights. Two types of multinational economic megaprojects are exemplified in the Ngulumapu: the multinational expansion of forestry and hydroelectric activities. In both cases it is shown that positive policies and laws respond to the insertion of national states in the global economy, without recognizing native rights to the preservation of the territory and the use of vernacular knowledge. This situation aggravates conflicts by denying the right to the use and preservation of the territories and the maintenance of cultural identity. From this point, it is concluded that legal systems linked to the exploitation of nature on a large scale, respond to economic and political interests of management projects.