Territory, Autonomy and Cartography in the Peruvian Amazon

Territory, Autonomy and Cartography in the Peruvian Amazon

Written on 29 December 2025. Posted in News

BY ALEXANDRE SURRALLÉS FOR INDIGENOUS DEBATES

The Peruvian State has disregarded international agreements safeguarding Indigenous rights by pursuing an aggressive policy of natural resource extraction and large-scale infrastructure projects. In response, and drawing on the concept of integral territory and the right to self-determination, Amazonian Indigenous Peoples have begun to demarcate their lands independently, without State endorsement. The initiative of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Wampís Nation has set in motion a process that is now being replicated by other peoples.

Across the continent - and particularly in the Amazon - Indigenous Peoples have begun demarcating their territories as a crucial step towards exercising autonomy, without waiting for State recognition. In the Peruvian Amazon, these initiatives also undoubtedly stand out as the most significant political undertaking of the Indigenous movement in recent years. While the history and context of such actions vary from country to country, in Peru the process has emerged from a growing mistrust of a State which, according to the international treaties it has signed, ought to recognise Indigenous Peoples' existence and guarantee their development.

Successive Peruvian administrations have ignored both the law and the spirit of these international agreements by pursuing an aggressive agenda of natural resource extraction, together with large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric and road-building projects. The consequences for Indigenous territories and livelihoods have been severe: forced displacement and pollution are among the most visible. Instead of offering any form of redress, the country's highest authorities have openly branded Indigenous Peoples obstacles to national economic progress.

The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that extractive expansion has gone hand in hand with the steady erosion of the already fragile land rights recognised under the only Peruvian law on the matter: the Native Communities Act, first enacted in 1974. Within this political, legal, economic and social landscape, Indigenous Peoples have begun processes to reclaim what they call their integral territory. These efforts reflect both a recognition of the limitations of the current legal framework and a renewed vision of their right to the lands they inhabit. But what, exactly, is meant by integral territory?

The Notion of Integral Territory

For decades, the territorial space of Indigenous Peoples was understood simply as a particular plot of land sufficient for subsistence and to be titled in their name. The 1974 Native Communities Act was based on this idea. Today, however, the concept of integral territory embraces the full spectrum of relationships that an Indigenous People maintains with its environment, especially as perceived from within their own worldview - one that often differs markedly from the reductionist vision of land as merely a space for food production.

Integral territory covers the practical, emotional and cognitive exchanges between people and their environment, which sustain the productive and reproductive needs of a community, always in line with its cultural priorities. It also encompasses the kinship, social and political bonds within an ethnic group, which enable it to make appropriate use of the opportunities offered by the surrounding biosphere. Moreover, it incorporates the history of a people's presence in the areas it currently occupies - or once did - documented both through written records and oral tradition.

On the other hand, the concept of integral territory encompasses what is referred to as symbolic ecology-that is, the Indigenous perception of the biotic and abiotic factors of the environment, which often diverges from the conventional duality between nature and culture. This perspective allows Indigenous Peoples to meet not only their material needs but also those described as metaphysical (in philosophical terms) or spiritual (in religious terms). Finally, it also includes the social, political and legal conditions-both individual and collective-of spatial occupation, together with the processes, expectations, transformations and conflicts that such occupation entails.

Self-demarcation and Mapping

As the Indigenous Peoples of the north-western Peruvian Amazon no longer place their trust in the State, they are now seeking the necessary support for their cause abroad. They have found it in the unprecedented development of international law on Indigenous Peoples-although this framework only conceives of the notion of a people as a subject of rights. Native communities have no equivalent in contemporary international law: the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is explicit in this respect. Indeed, the most important legal element of the UNDRIP is the right to self-determination, which pertains to the people as a whole rather than to a part thereof, such as a single community.

Self-determination allows an Indigenous People to freely determine their political status and system of representation. Regarding territory-which under UNDRIP refers to the traditional lands they occupy or have occupied-Indigenous Peoples are entitled to manage their resources freely and to use them according to their practices, tenure systems and internal norms. Yet the prospect of States fostering the self-determination of the Indigenous Peoples within their borders, as envisaged by UNDRIP, remains far removed from reality.

For this reason, some Indigenous Peoples-particularly in the north-western Peruvian Amazon-have begun to define their territoriality, the boundaries of their land and its political status for themselves. Constituting themselves as an Indigenous People, defining their territory, negotiating it with neighbouring peoples and other affected groups, deciding on the type of ownership to be adopted, and regulating territorial governance are all ways of exercising self-determination. This is a responsibility that lies with each Indigenous People.

The Right to Map Their Own Territories

Achieving recognition from the national State and the international community is an objective that the Indigenous movement itself must pursue. It is the regional, national and international Indigenous organisations that must claim and exercise the right to self-determination, with the support of those institutions in international law tasked with monitoring the implementation and development of the fundamental rights enshrined by the United Nations.

In earlier times, Peruvian Indigenous Peoples-like most Indigenous Peoples across the Americas-did not even have a basic declaration. Nor did they have their territorial space demarcated, or even an approximate map indicating their location. In many cases, the last reliable maps depicting the territorial space of an entire Indigenous People, where they exist at all, date back to the colonial period and were produced by missionaries or colonial administrators.

In recent years, the landscape has shifted. Following the pioneering efforts of the Kandoshi people, other peoples of north-eastern Amazonia have embarked on similar processes-demarcating their own territories, carrying out anthropological studies and developing legal arguments to uphold the notion of integral territory. Then the Kandoshi, the Achuar, Shapra, Shiwilo, Kukama and Shawi peoples took up the task. Later, the Awajún and Wampís followed.

Regional organisations such as the Coordinadora Regional de los Pueblos Indígenas (CORPI) have promoted these mapping initiatives, mobilising both human and material resources to see them through. Today, there is even a map that brings together all the Indigenous territories of the region-and it is no ordinary map. It represents the outcome of arduous negotiations across hundreds of meetings and assemblies, many of them interethnic, to establish territorial boundaries by mutual agreement.

A Historic Moment

Among all the Indigenous Peoples of the region that have begun territorial self-demarcation, the Wampís were the first to take the next step: the creation of Peru's first Autonomous Indigenous Government. In November 2015, more than 300 representatives of 85 Wampís communities declared themselves a nation, adopting a constitutional charter known as the Statute of the Wampís Nation. The statute defined a territorial perimeter of around 1.3 million hectares and established the organs of government.

Once their authorities were elected, the first ordinance was issued as an act of governance. This ordinance focused specifically on the indivisibility of the Wampís territory, which cannot be fragmented-either into communities, or ecological zones, nor under any other classification. This step represented a qualitative leap in the long history of Indigenous politics in the Peruvian Amazon. For the first time, an Indigenous People was exercising its right to self-determination through a sovereign act.

The Wampís are not alone on this path: neighbouring Indigenous Peoples such as the Kandoshi and the Awajún, to name just two, have also undertaken the same transition. It is still too early to know what future awaits these new autonomous governments and others that may yet be established. The stance of the Peruvian State-and that of international institutions-remains uncertain at this formative stage. What is undeniable, however, is that we are witnessing an historic moment in the struggle of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

Alexandre Surrallés is Director of the Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale (LAS) at the Collège de France (founded by Claude Lévi-Strauss) and holds a PhD in Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. He is also a senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).

Cover photo: Assembly of the Wampís people. Photo: Pablo Lasansky

Tags: Indigenous Debates