Abstract

RODRIGUEZ, Lizbeth de las Mercedes. Anthropological biocultural expertise: vulnerabilities and opportunities to tangibilize the intangible. Trace (Méx. DF) [online]. 2018, n.74, pp.92-113. ISSN 2007-2392.  https://doi.org/10.22134/trace.74.2018.171.

Indigenous Maya people of Campeche have a specific well-structured normative and juridical system of their own. This is recognized by the Indigenous Law as a normative expression with legal character derived from Customary Law. Although Mexican hegemonic law enforcement recognizes structured and tacit rules, codes and procedures among those native communities, this legal system and related practices are still vulnerable to misinterpretation because of misunderstandings by the judicial authorities. This different way to understand Customary Law forces judicial authorities to request specialized opinions (expertise) about practices among Mayan people or communities. In this paper, we will ponder about the importance of the biocultural expertise and their role as guiding documents for the judicial authorities in cases of controversy. We thus reframe the criteria which expert witnesses and law enforcers must apply to legal cases when analyzing different cultural contexts and cosmovisions.

Keywords : Anthropological expertise; Indigenous Law; biocultural anthropology; vulnerability; judicial system.