Paper short abstract:

This article aims to analyze how the agrarian communities in Brazil are struggling to legalize their lands as collective territories and not individual land properties as a strategy to curb land market speculation and land grab process and the recent shifts of the land rights.

Paper long abstract:

Agrarian Brazilian communities, i.e indigenous, peasants, riverine, afro descendants in Amazon and Cerrado biome have been struggling for a land reform and facing the intensification of land grab process, specially after the 2008 financial crisis. The major part of the communities has been occupying their territories hundred years ago, and some of them in Cerrado biome only settled in the past decades, since they were semi-nomads. This relation between the communities and the territory without rigid border created regions where the land was not legalized or just mapped as public lands. With the advance of the land market, for production of commodities, speculation or fictious propose these lands occupied by the communities was expropriated. The State acts as a contradictory agency: at the same time that it has created since 2003 policies for the recognition of traditional communities, it has created land laws that did not guarantee their survival and favored the titling of land for the agricultural land Market. Some land policies were created to 'legalized' zones with the participation of different supranational (ie Word Bank), federal (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply and Ministry of Environment) and state (Land Institute), agencies. But the major part of the law policies only accept and title individual land, creating difficulties for the identification of agrarian communities. This article aims to describe and analyze different communities in Amazon and Cerrado biome and their struggles to be recognized as an traditional community and have their land communal titles.