Brazil unveils land titling plan for quilombola communities

Officials from Brazil’s Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Agriculture and the Ministry of Racial Equality on Tuesday (Apr. 8) signed the Plano de Ação da Agenda Nacional de Titulação Quilombola (“Action Plan for the National Quilombola Titling Agenda”).

The document was welcomed by the quilombolas—the descendants of runaway enslaved people from Colonial times. Their representatives, however, underscored the need for a budget to implement land regulation policies and called for the swift enactment of decrees recognizing more territories.

The plan lists the demands for land ownership countrywide and builds strategies to meet them. It also aims to enshrine the autonomy of quilombola people, safeguarding their right to land and self-determination.

A historical demand

Biko Rodrigues, political coordinator of national quilombola association CONAQ, notes that the new plan is the result of a long-standing demand from the quilombola movement.

“We understand the importance of this initiative for short-, medium-, and long-term planning, as well as for examining internal rules that hinder ownership regulation. They can make the process so time-consuming that it takes 15 to 20 years for a quilombola community to be titled,” Rodrigues told Agência Brasil.

He also said he hopes the plan makes it possible to estimate a budget needed to make real strides, in both ongoing initiatives and issues already addressed by decrees.

“Through this [plan], we hope that the Brazilian state, under President Lula’s administration, will be able to allocate resources to this agenda, which is so important to the country.”

“We understand the budgetary difficulties,” he added, “but we also understand that the Brazilian state owes a debt to its quilombola communities and its black people.”

Facts and figures

Brazil is home to 1,330,186 quilombola people. They live in more than 7 thousand communities spread across 25 of the country’s 27 states, concentrated in the Northeast (63.81%), mostly in Maranhão state.