Abstract

Indigenous peoples have inhabited Andean territories since before the Spanish conquest. The Aymaras, Atacameños and Collas, among others, developed legal rules of conduct that were obligatory for the members of their communities. This autonomy has recently been recognized by the international community with the development of international standards and guidelines. The current relevance of these topics is linked to the development of projects that could potentially impact sacred sites as well as lands and waters traditionally occupied or used by indigenous and local communities. On one hand, this paper aims to propose a perspective of indigenous people as subjects, distinct from other members of Chilean society, with rights to control their own water institutions. On the other, it seeks to demonstrate empirically how existing legislation and procedures currently used by the General Water Directorate (DGA, for its acronym in Spanish) and National Corporation for Indigenous Development (CONADI, for its acronym in Spanish) disregard the particularities of indigenous peoples’ legal rules, subsuming their treatment in the general title clearing process. This situation translates into a disregard for existing human rights standards that are binding for Chile.