SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE FORMATION OF LEGAL CONSCIOUSNESS AMONG THE INDIGENOUS ARHUACO WOMEN

Abstract

The field of legal anthropology has widely debated Indigenous Peoples’ justice practices. However, the legal perspective of sexual offenses remains understudied. In this respect, this paper depicts the Arhuaco people's justice system, from the spiritual and political entities to the procedure, and sanctions, touching upon how the homogenized society influences Indigenous People’s justice in Arhuaco society. Furthermore, this work explores how the Arhuaco people resolve cases in which community members are allegedly responsible for committing sexual crimes. It also highlights some challenges connected to raising this type of offense and its lack of trust in authorities, disregard for the victim's version, and the difficulty of verifying these cases. During the fieldwork in the Arhuaco territory, the applied method follows some parameters of the procedural paradigm-legal conscience studies as an interpretive framework to understand how the Arhuaco women conceive the legal phenomenon. As a result, this study offers some insights into the Arhuaco women's perceptions of justice, specifically concerning sexual abuse cases. Such a perception is analyzed based on the Arhuaco women's political position, cultural and lineage origin, illustrating how they constantly go through inter-legality practices to claim justice for sexual offenses.

Keywords

• Justiça dos Povos Indígenas, direito consuetudinário, ofensas sexuais, Mulheres Indígenas, Povo Arhuaco, Interlegalidade, pluralismo jurídico.