ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the relevance of research on law and justice as a window to understand the dynamics of social transformation by reflecting on the political processes and constitutional transformations that dominated the social, political and cultural life of Ecuador and Bolivia during the period 2000−2015. The recognition of indigenous justice as an integral part of a project for plurinationality changes its political significance completely. The dimensions of this change involve many other areas of tension and dispute. Among the tensions analyzed, the following are the most salient: judicial monism and judicial pluralism; multicultural liberalism and interculturality; the nation and the plurination; Eurocentric political pluralism and intercultural political pluralism; dependent developmental capitalism and Sumak Kawsay or Suma Qamaña. The construction of a plurinational state will have to challenge the cognitive, economic, social and political injustice at the core of the nation state. This is a slow path which involves suffering and struggle and also requires transforming dualisms into ecologies of judicial knowledges. The chapter concludes with a set of lessons derived from the processes that were studied, which can serve as beacons along this path.
