Lula issues 51 ordinances recognizing quilombola areas in 2023

In the first year of his third term, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) issued 51 ordinances on the Recognition of Quilombola Territories. There were 290 thousand hectares allocated to quilombo remnants in just one year. According to data from the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra) and the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA), the issuance of bonds served around a thousand families.

The creation of quilombola territories was foreseen in the 1988 Federal Constitution, but only regulated in 2003, through Decree No. 4,887. In it, the remnants of quilombo communities were defined as “ethnic-racial groups, according to criteria of self-attribution, with their own historical trajectory, endowed with specific territorial relationships, with a presumption of black ancestry related to resistance to the historical oppression suffered”. In other words, based on self-definition, groups that identify themselves as black with a historical relationship with slavery, for example, can request areas of land in Brazil.

In addition to the 51 ordinances, Incra also issued 12 Technical Identification and Delimitation Reports (RTIDs), and published an ordinance recognizing the limits of quilombola territory in 2023. However, no territory was actually titled, which is the final stage of the process . Currently, Incra has 1,807 regularization processes for quilombola territories open, according to a survey published on the official website.

Quilombola territories in Brazil currently total around 2.5 million hectares, which correspond to an area slightly smaller than that of the State of Alagoas. The 2022 Census of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed that quilombolas represent 0.65% of the Brazilian population. There are 1.3 million people who identify as quilombola. It is also noteworthy that only 4.3% of the quilombola population resides in territories already titled in the land regularization process.

Despite the ordinances, there was only one territorial decree in Lula 3

The creation of quilombola territories has been used as one of the milestones of the first year of Lula’s current term. In fact, the 51 ordinances of Recognition of Quilombola Territories are a record. Before this milestone, the highest number of ordinances had been recorded in 2016, when 22 ordinances were published.

With regard to territorial decrees, one of the stages that precedes the granting of titles to quilombolas, there was only one publication during the Lula 3 government. It was the decree that demarcated the territory of Lagoa das Piranhas, in Bom Jesus da Lapa, in Bahia. , with an area of ​​9950 hectares. With the publication of the decree, the next steps will be the evaluation of the properties, with the execution of payments for improvements, expulsion of non-quilombola occupants through expropriation, to, finally, demarcate and title the territory. Residents are thus one step closer to achieving definitive title.

The publication of a decree for the territory in Bahia is well below the 30 decrees registered in 2009. To date, only 90 decrees for territories have been published. The number of fully titled territories is even smaller and amounts to just 19. Another around 30 territories are only partially titled.

The Lula government has stated that the demarcation of quilombola territories was completely paralyzed during the administration of former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL). However, data updated by the government itself – obtained by People’s Gazette – demonstrate that, between 2019 and 2022, 30 Technical Identification and Delimitation Reports (RTIDs) were prepared, in addition to the publication of eight recognition ordinances and a decree on quilombola territory. Regarding the preparation of RTIDs, the current government’s numbers are even lower than those recorded in 2021, during the Bolsonaro government. In 2021, 13 RTIDs were created, while in 2023, 12 similar documents were registered. It is worth remembering that Bolsonaro emphasized, on several occasions, that he would not demarcate any indigenous or quilombola territories during his administration.

Controversies over quilombola territories bring the topic closer to indigenous issues

The process of creating quilombola territories has similarities to that of demarcating indigenous lands in Brazil. Both processes can be initiated by self-declaration, as indigenous or quilombola, and the areas to be demarcated undergo studies for their identification and subsequent delimitation.

Likewise, the demarcation of indigenous and quilombola areas are the subject of questioning in the courts, and in particular in the Federal Supreme Court (STF). The reason is that the land is sometimes in the possession of other people, which generates lawsuits and causes legal uncertainty for land owners.

In defense of the demarcation of quilombola territories, Incra highlights that the “area worked in favor of quilombola communities does not reach 0.12% of the country’s territorial extension”. “It is difficult to imagine that such a small portion of the national territory allocated to a single segment is capable of hindering the development of any country”, states the information material published by the organization.

The demarcation of areas for quilombolas, however, has already been questioned in the Funai and Incra CPI, held between 2016 and 2017, in the Chamber of Deputies. At the time, parliamentarians pointed out possible fraud in the anthropological report of the Morro Alto quilombo, in Rio Grande do Sul. The case involves a land dispute between around 450 quilombola families and more than 350 small rural producers who live in the area of ​​more than 4.5 thousand hectares.

Understand the titling process for quilombola territories

In the process of creating quilombola territories, there are at least two government bodies directly involved: Incra and Fundação Cultural Palmares. Incra is the body responsible for demarcating and titling quilombola lands in the country. The Palmares Cultural Foundation, in turn, is responsible for the certification of communities, carried out after their self-definition, and for the maintenance and preservation of quilombola cultural heritage.

Until effective titling, quilombola territories need to go through up to six stages: self-definition, preparation of Technical Identification and Delimitation Reports (RTID); publication of the RTID, which occurs through the publication of ordinances; recognition, which takes place through decrees; expropriation and titling.

Incra survey, to which the People’s Gazette had access, shows that there are at least 572 processes with some type of progress in the body. The total area comprised in these processes is more than 2.5 million hectares and aims to serve more than 40 thousand families who identify as quilombolas.

According to Incra, preparing the Technical Identification and Delimitation Reports is one of the most complex stages of the titling process at the federal level. This document includes a survey of cartographic, land, agronomic, socioeconomic, environmental, historical, ethnographic and anthropological information, obtained in the field, with the community, and with public and private institutions.

There are still 1,807 regularization processes for quilombola territories open at Incra. The Northeast is the region with the highest number of open cases: 1,023. The Southeast is second with 363 cases, followed by the South region, with 163 open cases.

In this context, the 2022 Census showed that the Northeast concentrates 68% of the quilombola population, followed by the Southeast (14%), North (12.5%), Central-West (3.5%) and finally the South, with 2% . Bahia, Maranhão, Minas Gerais, Pará and Pernambuco, in that order, are the states with the most quilombola people, with 76.5% of the total population. In Rio Grande do Sul, the quilombola population corresponds to 0.16% of residents in the state. With the exception of Acre, Roraima and the Federal District, the other Brazilian states have quilombos.