Politics & Power Quote by Bianca Jagger

Jagger’s line lands like a calm indictment, and that calm is the point. As a celebrity-activist, she isn’t trying to win a seminar debate; she’s trying to make a moral imbalance feel obvious enough that inaction starts to look embarrassing. The phrase “Most governments” is a strategic broad brush: it resists the easy escape hatch of blaming one bad administration, one scandal, one dictator from the past. It turns the failure into a pattern, not an exception.

“Failed to recognize” is doing double work. It suggests that these rights already exist in principle - historically, legally, ethically - and what’s missing is political acknowledgment. That’s a sharper accusation than “haven’t granted,” because it implies governments are denying reality, not merely withholding a benefit. Then she repeats “right” twice, tightening the frame around legitimacy rather than charity: indigenous claims aren’t special favors, they’re baseline entitlements.

The closing clause, “their own traditional territories,” is where the cultural and economic stakes snap into focus. “Traditional” invokes continuity and identity, but it also quietly points to the modern forces that make recognition inconvenient: mining concessions, agribusiness expansion, hydroelectric projects, and development narratives that treat land as a commodity before it’s a home. Jagger’s intent is to re-center the conflict: not “protesters vs. progress,” but states vs. peoples whose sovereignty has been papered over for centuries. The subtext is blunt: Latin American democracy can’t call itself inclusive while it’s built on erasure.