‘Nosotros Somos Estado’: contested legalities in decision-making about extractives affecting ancestral territories in Colombia

Drawing on ethnographies from two case studies – one describing Afro-Descendant efforts at ensuring the enforcement of a constitutional court judgement in order to stave off incursions from multinationals and outlaw, armed actors, and another describing the efforts of Embera Chamí Indigenous people in regulating their own ancestral mining and fending off state criminalisation – I unpack the spectrum of legal pluralities around extractives in Colombia, and the tools that Black and Indigenous peoples are using to assert their self-determination and sovereignty. I explore the various logics, discourses and uses of the ‘law’ in its broadest sense; how these collide, clash or interact; and the effects of these encounters. I focus particularly on rights to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), analysing how these rights are conceived, invoked, appropriated, and played out in practice. Theoretically, I identify what I call ‘raw law’, the rules and regulations used by armed actors, a concept inspired by, and inextricably related to, the ‘raw economy’.