(De) Colonizing Development: Geographic and Epistemological Frontiers in the Encounter of Mega-development Projects and Indigenous Rights in the Amazon
My research project is designed to study the contentious ways in which indigenous rights and development projects meet in the Amazon through the geographical and socio-economic re-articulation enacted by the Initiative for the Integration of the Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA). The intersections between the discourses and practices of rights and development will be analyzed (under the perspective of the coloniality/decoloniality program) as evidences on the one hand of the colonial matrix of power that have been preventing indigenous peoples from participating in national and regional decision making processes concerning development planning and implementation; and on the other hand as elements that are also enacted by them from their particular epistemic position aiming at proceeding to the enlargement and fully realization of the capacity of emancipation promised by the discourses of rights and development.