Intercultural Interpretation of the Principle of Proportionality as a Guarantee of Due Process

Abstract

When the Ecuadorian Constitution defined the State as plurinational, it recognized the multiple diversities of its territory, the right to live with autonomy and granted jurisdictional faculties to the different indigenous collectives. The colonialist needs to subordinate these systems of administration of justice to the ordinary ones responds to monist and not pluralist criteria as established in the constitutional text. The objective of this research is to make a proposal for an intercultural interpretation of one of the principles of due process in the light of the guarantee postulates of the constitutional text, pronouncements of the Constitutional Court and international instruments on the rights of indigenous peoples and nationalities. Specialized publications on legal pluralism and indigenous justice systems were also consulted. The bibliographic analysis carried out constitutes a form of respect for diversity and the need to understand what must be recognized as part of the identity, history, and tradition of indigenous collectives, within the framework of the processes of administration of justice and punishment. The main result refers that the constitutional recognition of a plurinational State has not been enough to respect and guarantee the coexistence of different legal systems in the country.