4 examined and resolved on the basis of abstract, uniform formulas, which disregard the history and inherent legal system of the parties concerned, a legal system that helps to establish the scope – here and now, at a precise place and time, and not outside them – of the juridical concepts that underlie the American Convention. C) Elimination. Case of the Moiwana Community 16. In the Case of the Moiwana Community, the Court did not examine the massacre that occurred on November 29, 1986, because this related to facts prior to the date on which the Inter-American Court could exercise its jurisdiction, ratione temporis. Rather, it examined violations that had continued since that date – namely, continuing or permanent violations, a concept that case law has defined in other cases, particularly in relation to the presumption of enforced disappearance – or more recent violations of the American Convention, over which it evidently has jurisdiction. It is not excessive to observe – because it is a historical fact – that if we need to seek a starting point for the tribulations of the members of the Moiwana community, we would not find this in the date of the massacre, but at the time when their ancestors were forced to leave their African lands and were brought to America as slaves, an episode that constitutes one of the darkest pages in the history of humanity. 17. In this case - even though the Court did not issue a declaration or condemnation in this respect, owing to the lack of jurisdiction ratione temporis that I referred to above – the most severe public action that could be produced against the members of a community occurred: their physical elimination. This led to the dispersion of the survivors, but not to the loss of the members’ rights, or to the alteration of the characteristics of these rights, or to the disappearance of the State’s obligation to respect and ensure such rights (that remain in force), precisely in the terms imposed by their nature. 18. All this is contained in the Court’s judgment, which emphasizes: (a) the ownership of rights to the territory traditionally occupied, regardless of the lack of documentation authenticating this, considering that the documentary formality is not an element that constitutes ownership in these cases, nor the only evidence of the ownership of rights and not even an appropriate means of authenticating them; (b) the nature sui generis of the relationship that the members of the community, within its framework, have to the territory they own, a relationship that must be considered and that influences another of the state’s obligation (which has, of course, its own justification): the obligation of criminal justice, inasmuch as the exercise of the latter permits the “purification” of the territory, which, in turn, encourages the return of the inhabitants, and (c) the protection of the community’s culture, which extends to the members of the group as a right to cultural identity, as illustrated by the decisions that the Court structures, based specifically on the characteristic elements of that culture. D) Exclusion. Case of the Indigenous Community Yakye Axa 19. The Case of the Indigenous Community Yakye Axa presents problems of ancient origin: not only those that began with the avatars of the first conquest and colonization, common to the countries of Latin America, but those that derive from certain very remote events, which also produced adverse consequences for the indigenous groups, as was seen during the proceeding. I refer to what is briefly