Coloniality of power and neoextractivism in Amazonia: territorial disputes and the structure of knowledge

Abstract

This article proposes an exhaustive and critical analysis of the persistence and metamorphosis of the coloniality of power and knowledge in contemporary Amazonia, linking this sociological and historical phenomenon to the emergence and consolidation of neoextractivism as a hegemonic development model. Under the aegis of an interdisciplinary approach that combines political sociology, political ecology, and constitutional law, it deeply investigates how the Eurocentric domination structure — founded on the racial classification of the population, the international division of labor, and the naturalization of the liberal market society — underlies the predatory exploitation model that violently reconfigures Amazonian territories in this first quarter of the 21st century. Through a detailed exegesis of the seminal works of Aníbal Quijano, Edgardo Lander, Maristella Svampa, Eduardo Gudynas, and Carlos Walter Porto-Gonçalves, intertwined with a robust body of empirical data from the 2024-2025 biennium, the work demonstrates that the "Commodities Consensus" has evolved into more complex forms of "green coloniality," intensifying socio-environmental conflicts through mechanisms of nature financialization, such as carbon markets, and large logistical infrastructure projects. It is ultimately concluded that institutional inertia and state complicity in the face of the capitalism of dispossession and "extrahección" demand a jurisdictional and political intervention based on the decolonial turn, the recognition of the Rights of Nature, and the actualization of Bem Viver (Good Living), which are sine qua non conditions for the survival of the biome and its peoples.

Key words: coloniality of power; neoextractivism; Amazonia; territorial disputes; institutional inertia; decolonial turn.