Discursive behaviour of the statement “ancestral territory” in the judgments of the constitutional court of Colombia

Discursive hegemony has made it impossible for indigenous people to express themselves in their own terms; however, in the unfinished exercise of the disputes for the power to speak, they have been conditioned to enter the struggles of the legal field that, even imposing rules beyond their own control. Cultural, political and legal practices constitute a strategy for the expansion and guarantees of their human rights. In this article, we present part of the results of the critical analysis of the discourse of the judgments of the Colombian Constitutional Court, which ruled in favor of the prior, free and informed consultation, specifically the analysis of the discursive behavior of the statement “ancestral territory”. The disputes over the power to speak, of indigenous people and a Court with a rights approach, have gradually sought to permeate the harsh discourses of the legal field with ancestralism. However, although the Court decided to grant the protection of the right to prior consultation, in the follow-up of the cases, it was found that the consultations were not carried out and, for the most part, there was a deepening of the problems that were being resolved; because the causes of territorial conflict remain intact.