Right to Territory and Collective Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America: Inter-American Jurisprudence, Peruvian Constitutional Control, and Assessment of Justice Operators

This study analyzed how the right to territory and the collective rights of indigenous peoples in Latin America are developed from a comparative law perspective, with an emphasis on Peru. It used a qualitative, basic case study design with a descriptive and interpretative scope. Ten judicial operators with more than five years of experience in constitutional matters were interviewed and three judgments were analyzed: Lhaka Honhat v. Argentina (Inter-American Court, 2020), Tagaeri and Taromenane v. Ecuador (Inter-American Court, 2024) and Judgment 88/2025 of the Peruvian Constitutional Court. The data were examined using hermeneutical interpretation and triangulated with previous studies and theories. The interviewees acknowledged that inter-American jurisprudence replaced the civil conception of property with a collective, cultural, and spiritual notion of territory, and that this advance reaches the administration and the ordinary courts unevenly. Seven of the ten proposed a comprehensive title to the communal territory and a single regulatory authority for titling. They described the prior consultation as non-binding and convened late, and one estimated that territorial reparations take between seven and ten years to carry out. The Constitutional Court annulled the suspension of the previous forest zoning but confirmed the transfer of competences to MIDAGRI. The findings suggest that the implementation gap, rather than the lack of standards, explains the limited effectiveness of territorial protection. The conclusions come from justice operators; the perspective of the communities remains to be studied.