The indigenous collective rights: proposal of classification in a Latin American comparative perspective

Collective rights are a legal category that develops tools for protecting indigenous peoples. In Latin America, these rights are essential, and they have had an uneven legal development at every level: constitutional, legal, and regulatory. This article proposes a documental analysis presenting a classification of indigenous collective rights at a different level depending on the degree of autonomy in the relationships between indigenous peoples and the state and the degree of differentiation from the hegemonic society they inhabit. Thus, there are innovative, moderate, and basic levels considering nine specific collective rights. For the analysis, ten countries are divided into 22 cases, including several timeframes for each country. These cases allow us to visualize distinct trajectories and account for some of its implications for a complete knowledge of the Latin American context in a comparative perspective.