Law of the Rights of Mother

In the context of other poems that imagine “the land” as a source for national idenity, as a literary “figure” which can be addressed via apostrophe, this text centers earth's living systems as a living being (including human persons and all other life forms) – “a dynamic living system comprising an indivisible community. . . .” The authority or justification for this includes its basis in traditional world-views.

• “Mother Earth is considered sacred, from the worldviews of nations and peasant indigenous peoples” (Article 3)

Not a traditional poetic form, this text is included in the A Map of the Americas mini-gallery subtitled “America as a Women.” This except is not presented as a poem but as a text expressing, in legal language, a vision that might be more usually associated with poetry, myth, spirituality or religion.

The form, so to speak, is that of a legal document, divided into articles and subsections that provide definitions and aim to govern behavior or provide standing to “Mother Earth”.

According to the Guardian, “The law, which is part of a complete restructuring of the Bolivian legal system following a change of constitution in 2009, has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view which places the environment and the earth deity known as the Pachamama at the centre of all life.”

The law emerged from a socio-political movement that culminated in the election of President Evo Morales (2006-2019), who centered his own humble economic beginnings and Aymara ethnic background.

• Date: December 2010
• Nation: Bolivia
• Language: Spanish

The langauge and form of this piece are not like any of the poems included in this anthology. Yet its inclusion makes an implicit case for the important of oral poems, stories, mythology and belief systems on the broader society. In non-literate society, the poetic/narrative traditions of song and story encode and transmit values that industrial society allocates to speciailized sectors such as the judicial system. Here, for the editors, is a kind of “translation” into a legal framework of prespectives and believes nurtured and promoted through poetic forms of cultural transmission.

1. Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_Rights_of_Mother_Earth
2. “Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth,” The Guardian April, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights
3. “Bolivia Law of the Rights of Mother Earth” https://ecojurisprudence.org/initiatives/law-of-the-rights-of-mother-earth/
4. “Evo Morales,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales]