Land expropriation, capitalism, and the “rightless”: Social struggles in latin america/Abya Yala

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the category of the “rightless,” linking it to social and territorial struggles in Latin America/Abya Yala amidst the contemporary socio-environmental crisis. Drawing on a literature review of Latin American authors, it examines how the colonial-modern world-system—driven by capitalist and neocolonial logic—has historically sustained processes of territorial, epistemic, and existential dispossession that particularly affect Indigenous peoples, traditional communities, and marginalized sectors. It argues that these struggles are not merely sectoral reactions but rather emancipatory political projects that resist the instrumental rationality of capitalism, asserting alternative ways of living, knowing, and relating to nature. From this perspective, the category of the “rightless” allows us to understand struggles for social and environmental justice as an ethical and political commitment to alternative civilizational horizons, emerging from the periphery of the Global South. To develop these reflections, the argument is organized into three sections: the first elaborates on the category of the “rightless” based on Dussel’s political philosophy and its connection to socio-environmental struggles; the second focuses on processes of territorial dispossession in Latin America/Abya Yala as a concrete expression of this structural exclusion; and the third section offers concluding remarks on the challenges and horizons—proposed by social and environmental justice—that arise from the margins of the system.