CRASSH

Colombia’s 1991 Constitution both grants significant autonomy to indigenous peoples' laws and proposes “coordinating” indigenous legal practices with state law, thereby aiming to ensure the compatibility of indigenous laws with international human rights norms. Ethnographic data acquired at the indigenous law school of the Nasa community will yield a new understanding of local adoption of human rights, in particular illuminating the phenomenon of legal vernacularization as this proceeds through and simultaneously with the politicization of indigenous identity. The paper will further trace the effects of human rights translation on notions of understanding law, justice and community with the Nasa community and will explore the effect of contemporary forms of human rights translation on the emergence of new forms of political subjectivity in Colombia. 

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