92
Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales
Abstract
A wake-up call about the economic, social, environmental,
political and legal implications of the disputed activity of
commodities in Guatemala was the tragic explosion of a
boiler in the Fenix Mine in El Estor, Izabal. The real threat to
the diversity and social peace in Guatemala, 20 years after
the signing of the Peace Accords, can be explained because
this happens in the territory of an indigenous people that for
defending the land and nature suffered one of the bloodiest
massacres known in Guatemala, 40 years earlier.
Indigenous-land-nature is the semantic field that helps
unveil the social problems of Guatemala and, particularly,
the relationship between these peoples and the defense
of nature. It takes into account some of the sociological
and anthropological analytical categories, often used in
texts and political and legal contexts. It is important in this
sense, the contributions from Dr. Augusto Willemsen Díaz
in the Martínez-Cobo study on indigenous peoples, because
the main interest is to discover the tensions created by
defending the rights of indigenous peoples against all forms
of capitalist extractivism.
Keywords: indigenous people, environment, nature, land,
territory, rights, legal pluralism, political crisis
Introducción: ¿Nombrar o reconocer?
Uno de los retos del presente abordaje es el relativo
a las categorías analíticas que permitan el diálogo entre la
epistemología de las ciencias sociales y políticas, por un lado,
y el reconocimiento –científico y político– de los saberes de
los pueblos indígenas, por el otro. Willemsen evidenció en
su momento, que la sola adopción de la palabra «pueblo»
en lugar de «poblaciones» o «comunidades», constituye un
largo camino en el reconocimiento político por parte de la