RURAL DISPUTES OVER LAND OCCUPATION AND USE IN THE LEGAL AMAZON AND THE ADVANCE OF THE CATTLE-RAISING AND MINERAL FRONTIER

Abstract

This work is part of the Diest/Ipea project "Criminal Dynamics and Security Policies in Brazilian Regions". The article aims to map land disputes as a result of socio-historical, legal and political processes related to forms of governance over the occupation and use of land and natural resources in the Legal Amazon. These disputes play a fundamental role in understanding the dynamics of crime in the region. For this purpose, a methodological approach was used that combines interviews with actors from public institutions (agents from the Secretariats of Public Security, members of the Judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office), academics and social movements, as well as documentary research, a bibliographical review and consultation of statistical sources. The analyses done have identified systems of mechanisms that may be at the heart of the high levels of violent deaths in the Legal Amazon. The core of this violence lies in land conflicts, related to the colonization model, the lack of land-use planning, the absence of supervision and executive and legislative action to make it more flexible. These disputes are related to the search for new areas to expand the cattle raising and mineral frontiers, historically associated with land-grabbing practices and financial speculation. These use violence and legal-political mechanisms to advance over the territory. Policies that blur the boundaries between the legal and the illegal often amnesty crimes of land grabbing and deforestation, deepening the dynamics of violence associated with land and extraction conflicts in the Legal Amazon.