Ainhoa Montoya (London): Dispossession through Juridification: Irregular Uses of Law and the Defense of Territory in Honduras
| Dates: | 2 December 2020 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 18:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Speaker: | Dr Ainhoa Montoya |
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Part of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies research seminar series 2020/21.
This is an online event. Details on how to access it will follow soon.
This talk will be online. Here is the link: https://zoom.us/j/93328853287
Abstract: The Honduran political regime that emerged following the 2009 coup has promoted its extractive development model through legislative and judicial channels. This presentation explores the irregular use of legal mechanisms by the Honduran state, along with repression and persecution sometimes in tandem with organised crime, to counter local opposition to extraction in places like Tocoa, in the Bajo Aguán Valley. The legal-political strategies of locals from Tocoa who have opposed to mining have been mainly defensive, seeking to reveal irregularities by the state and to highlight the ‘gray areas’ of politics that have enabled them. However, the mobilisation of Tocoa locals has also inserted within political-legal circuits notions of nature and territory characterised by commoning logics with roots in the region’s peasant past. Such notions could encourage the development of collective rights with regard to territory among non-indigenous populations. In so doing, these notions, which resonate with the concept of the indigenous commons, could also potentially foster political alliances between indigenous and non-indigenous populations that are both seeking to lay claims over territory.
Speaker
Dr Ainhoa Montoya
Role: Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies
Organisation: School of Advanced Study
Travel and Contact Information
