Paper short abstract:

In Latin America, the proposed change to halt the depredation of nature by capitalism through profound political transformations following the inclusion of indigenous thought in the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia has been held back by deep contradictions within the State and the society.

Paper long abstract:

The constitutional changes associated with the recognition of the rights of nature made it possible to rethink the current paradigm from a perspective that starts from a critique of the idea of nature but does not bring with it a critique of property or of the political-economic system necessary for the materialization of these rights. Its core points to crucial aspects that so far have not been considered as far as it questions not only the relationship of people among themselves, but also with society as a whole and their relationship with the nature world around them.

Thus, the constitutionalization of the rights of nature proposes a paradigmatic transition that breaks with the reifying perspective of nature of modernity and seeks a theory that incorporates nature as a common space of interconnection and interdependence between different forms of life and non-life. It is a relationship with the environment that ceases to be conceived as a relationship of acting subjects that dominate nature (and other human beings).

However, the new-old state structures that emerged after the constituent processes had reproduced a liberal arrangement which is organized from the colonial order through structures of domination that endow extractivism as the resulting product of a process of historical accumulation. Having into account this, its proposed to critically analyse how we could construct effective questions and answers that have in mind a new socio-epistemic transition through not only another form of Constitutionalism (and State) but also the materialization of the rights of nature.