On promised lands

deintrusion as redress and the contrivance of land-grabbing

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.1590/2179-8966/2023/71792i

The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 recognized the original right to exclusive use over traditionally occupied lands to indigenous peoples. The fulfillment of this promise depends on the capacity of state organizations to evict invaders from indigenous recognized territory, by means of a legal-administrative instrument dubbed deintrusion. In recent years, alliances between politicians, landowners and religious leaderships have updated traditional mechanisms for land grabbing, by creating funding networks for the settlement of impoverished non-indigenous groups inside indigenous lands. Drawing on documental sources and semi-structured interviews, this text examines the institutional architecture of deintrusion, its legal contours, and its factual limitations. It also inquires about the ways through which exchangeable flows of faith, money and votes intertwine in the birth of local communities forged to challenge indigenous constitutional land rights. To that aim, it delves into the emergence of the occupations Promised Land and Rebirth Village inside the indigenous lands Ituna-Itatá and Apyterewa. Further, the text argues that the strategies of redress employed in the post-1988 period by indigenous peoples and state organizations in order to remove intruders from protected territories and restrain processes of land commodification can be interpreted as expressions of a militant-formalist attitude towards the Constitution.

Keywords: Indigenous rights; Territorial protection; Deterrence; Land commodification; Constitutional theory; Militant formalism.