Indigenous vs. Peasant’s Rights? Lhaka Honhat v. Argentina and the Role of the Inter-American Human Rights System in Communal Inter-Ethnic Conflicts

This article presents a socio-legal analysis of the Lhaka Honhat case, a decades-long territorial dispute between indigenous communities and peasant settlers (criollos) in the Northern Argentinian Province of Salta. This is the first case in which the Inter-American Court of Human Rights confronted the normative implications of inter-ethnic communal conflicts. The Court was called to apply human rights standards to resolve conflicting land claims between two similarly impoverished rural groups. The judgment compelled Argentina to protect the right to land of indigenous communities and ordered to relocate hundreds of criollo settlers, while incorporating some exceptional provisions that indirectly recognized the vulnerable situation of the criollo population. We argue that this decision opens a third wave in the jurisprudential evolution of indigenous rights cases before the Inter-American System. Initially, the Court focused on protecting indigenous land rights vis-à-vis powerful interests. The second wave registered cases where indigenous land claims were brought against the encroachment of other non-indigenous groups holding private property rights. In this third wave, the Court would confront the challenge of protecting indigenous land while also recognizing other modes of property and livelihoods. The article describes this evolution and discusses the implications both for international jurisprudence and local communities.