Asentamientos indígenas de la nacionalidad Shuar en el cantón Morona: lineamientos conceptuales y metodológicas para la formulación de planes de ordenación territorial

Abstract

The Constitution of the Republic determines three premises that support the approach of this study: the first, the leading role of the territorial planning, as a mandate and competence of the different levels of government; the second, recognizes that Ecuador is an intercultural and plurinational State; and the third, referring to the collective rights of indigenous peoples and nationalities.

On the basis of these arguments, it is important to emphasize the need to propose territorial planning methodologies that take into account the geographical and cultural particularities of our country. For this reason, this study proposes conceptual and methodological guidelines to the formulation of the indigenous settlements component in the framework of Territorial Planning Instruments, with the appropriate territorial and cultural relevance, but fundamentally, strictly observing the territorial rights of indigenous peoples and nationalities, stipulated in the Constitution and others international instruments.

The conceptualization of territory based on a multidimensional approach from the point of view of indigenous peoples cosmovision, acquires a substantive role in this investigation, being the spiritual dimension of territory, which denotes the importance of a different approach between the mestizos settlements and the indigenous settlements. In such a virtue, for the explanation of the settlements and uses of the territory from the ethno-cultural perspective of the indigenous peoples, the study is based on the approaches of symbolic ethno-territoriality, and it proposes an ethnographic analysis of the territory. The scope of the investigation is the territory of the Shuar nationality located in Morona, in the province of Morona Santiago, Ecuadorian Amazon.