Indigenous Biocentric Law Against a Legacy of Violence: Chilean Water Regulation, Free Trade with the EU, and Violations of Mapuche and Aymara Rights to Water

Assertions of Mapuche and Aymara law in defence of waters are hampered by a legacy of state violence, and continued appropriation of Indigenous worldviews under commodified conceptions of nature. I interrogate and analyze the connection between Chile’s water market regime, natural resource extraction, water scarcity, and free trade and foreign investment. Chile’s Water Code facilitates water-intensive agribusiness, mineral extraction, and salmon aquaculture as part of export-oriented economy. At the same time, free trade agreements signed with EU countries knowingly encourage overextraction of water and natural resources.

I argue in favour of grassroots movements toward land restitution and jurisdiction as solution. I aim to show international human rights litigation and the concept of virtual water as legal means to hold Chile and major EU importing states responsible for environmental harm, and violation of Mapuche and Aymara peoples’ right to water including ancestral and cultural uses.