Torturing Environment in the Documentation of Human Rights Violations in the Case of the Indigenous Rama-Kreol Communities in Nicaragua.

The article focuses on applying the concept of "torturing environments" to document human rights violations against the indigenous Rama and Afro-descendant Creole communities in Nicaragua, targeted by the State to coerce acceptance of an Interoceanic Canal project through their ancestral territories. Using a mixed-methods approach—including historiographical analysis, interviews with community leaders involved in legal actions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and psychometric assessments—the study identifies six axes of coercive state actions: threats to community survival, assaults on physical integrity, loss of control over life, attacks on identity and dignity, erosion of community cohesion, and economic and cultural disruption. The findings reveal a complex, cumulative environment of repression involving militarization, misinformation, legal and administrative measures, and economic marginalization, which has caused severe psychosocial harm and threatens the survival of these communities and their cultural identities. The study underscores the utility of the torturing environments framework for forensic documentation in fragile contexts and transitional justice processes, while acknowledging limitations due to security constraints and advocating for future incorporation of decolonial and ecological perspectives in transitional justice research.