Paper short abstract:

From some concrete ethnographic examples, It will be shown how environmental conflicts in indigenous communities involving a network of complex relationships that goes beyond the control of human beings on the natural resources and also involves deities, ancestors, animals and sacred places

Paper long abstract:

This paper suggests considering the cosmopolitical proposal promoted by some authors (Stengers, De La Cadena) as a possible analytical framework for the study of socio-environmental conflicts in which indigenous peoples are involved. Considering three ethnographic examples of western and northern Mexico, it shows how the territoriality of indigenous peoples should be conceived in relational terms. In the proposed examples, the elements that compose people's territory can not be thought of as mere resources but as complex nets of relationships. Some emblematic cases will show how certain environmental conflicts can not be conceived only in terms of access, use and protection of natural resources, but reveal radically different ways of thinking and living the territory.

Concrete examples of the construction of territoriality will be presentend, and it will be shown how territoriality and its practices can be used as the main sources of political resistance to the implementation of prjects that exploit natural resources and affect the territory in different ways.

It will be also described how indigenous peoples build their political demands against the state or the privat companies from the network of relationships in which they are embedded and that are formed by humans, deities, ancestors, sacred sites, but also activists, NGOs etc