Socio-ecological conflicts and (cosmo)political reconfigurations in the Peruvian Amazonia: the case of the Wampis Nation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper, which draws on research carried out in collaboration with the first indigenous government to be officially constituted in the Peruvian Amazonia, the Gobierno Territorial Autónomo de la Nación Wampís (GTANW), describes the governance structure and territorial policies of this new political actor. Research activities conducted between June and August 2017 included fourteen interviews with Wampis political leaders and GTANW activists, three discussion groups organized and co-animated by the participants and the participant observation of a variety of activities related to the democratic life and territorial governance of the Wampis Nation. In the context of an explosion of social conflictuality caused by the expansion of extractive industries in Wampis territory, the GTANW puts into practice a vision of indigenous political and territorial self-determination that revendicates Wampis cosmopraxis, ancestral knowledge and traditional institutions of political leadership. Through a participatory democracy based on consensus building, Wampis political leaders and GTANW activists seek to establish an economic development model compatible with their worldview. Results suggest that, in the Peruvian Amazonian context, socio-ecological conflicts are rooted in different ontological understandings of the territory that is being disputed and of the stakeholder entities involved in the conflict, and therefore do not occur in a unified system of signs and cosmovisions shared by all the conflict stakeholders. The newly formed indigenous government’s intent is to create spaces for political dialogue in epistemic equality by translating their cosmovisions into terms that are negotiable to the State and other institutions.