5 described in a revealing paragraph of the proven facts in the respective judgment: “At the end of the nineteenth century, vast areas of the Paraguayan El Chaco were sold on the stock market in London.” This second process of colonization, if one can refer to it thus, determined a long process during which, for different motives, there were several displacements of the indigenous communities whose ancestors had once been lords and masters of those lands. 20. In its judgment in that case, the Inter-American Court discusses two very relevant issues, among others (which include the issue of due process applied to territorial claims). They are: (a) the community’s ownership of its ancestral lands, or more important still: the relationship – which is much more than a traditional right to property, as I will indicate below – that the community has to the land it has occupied; a relationship that, evidently, extends to the members of the community and makes a specific contribution to all their rights, and (b) the right to life of the members of the community, in the terms of Article 4(1) of the Convention, in relation also to the meaning of the right to ownership of the land and all that derives from the ways this is exercised. 21. Once again, the Court establishes the scope of ownership in the case of members of indigenous communities, or rather: once again it determines its scope (which the State must respect), under the auspices of an ancestral culture in which this right is deeply rooted and from which its takes its principle characteristics. In these cases, ownership has different characteristics from those that it has (also validly) in other spheres. It implies a singular relationship between the possessor of the right and the property this relates to. It is more than a real right, according to the meaning currently attributed to that expression. It incorporates other components that are also of interest – or of great interest – in order to redefine ownership in light of the indigenous culture in which ownership is exercised. In my opinion, by doing this, the Court affirmed another interpretation of Article 21 of the Convention, so that it protects both the right to property in its classic sense – which the liberal principles that prevailed in the twenty-first century transferred to our continent – and also the underlying right to property that finally reappeared. This other interpretation is the appropriate one. 22. Both the constitutional and other laws of Paraguay have recognized the existence of the indigenous peoples “as cultural groups that existed prior to the establishment and organization of the Paraguayan State.” This emphatic recognition not only of a demographic fact, by also of a cultural reality, that entails juridical consequences, must translate into respect for the traditional forms of land ownership – prior to the establishment and organization of the state – and into the assurance that all the rights derived from this ownership will be effective and effectively guaranteed by the public authorities in their legislative, executive and jurisdictional functions. 23. The Court has previously examined the right to life. This examination has revealed both the prohibitions that this right embodies with regard to the arbitrary action of the State, and the actions, initiatives, entitlements and promotions that the State itself must assume and develop to establish or foster conditions for a decent life. The first absolutely essential element of these obligations was supplied by a previous stage in the development of law and the provision of rights. The second element, which is also necessary – so that the right to ‘life,’ a concept with a moral tone, is not resumed in a simple ‘possibility of existence or subsistence,’ a biological fact – is characteristic of the current stage. This concept has entered into force in the