3.2 | Assentamentos: Rural Settlements of Brazilian Agrarian Reform
What are 'assentamentos'? INCRA defines an "assentamento project” simply as a “set of agrarian independent units, installed by INCRA in a place where a rural estate belonging to one unique proprietor originally existed” (INCRA, 2015a). MST also provides a definition of its own, which reflects its convictions as social movement: “An assentamento is a space for a set of peasant families to live, work and produce, fulfilling a social function for the land and safeguarding a better future for the population. Life in an assentamento guarantees for the families social rights that are not guaranteed to the entire Brazilian people, such as housing, schooling and nutrition” (MST, 2015a). Beyond these definitions, our field observations and interviews suggest that, in practice, a significant number of assentamentos share a similar process of creation in which both MST and INCRA play central roles.
To see all federal assentamentos in the map, access Acervo Fundiário, a website developed by INCRA.
INCRA’s database currently registers a total of 9,255 assentamentos with 969,691 families, covering about 88.3 million hectares of territory. Assentamentos also exhibit a wide variance in their conditions of “life, work and production”. Living conditions, capacities and methods for production and commercialization of goods, access to policies and services, and other physical, economic and social characteristics vary intensely across different cases. Particular differences in assentamentos’ processes of creation may help explain some of this variance—we will turn to this point further below, in the analysis chapter. In order to provide a deeper background, this section will focus on the elements that characterize, in general, the process of creation of an MST-related assentamento.
What formal processes lead to the creation of an assentamento?
The process starts with INCRA detecting or, more frequently, being indicated about a rural estate that potentially fulfills conditions for expropriation. In the majority of cases, the process begins with a ‘formal’ indication made by MST, which has dedicated members performing research on unproductive rural properties. Sometimes, MST is aided by “friends” in local government, who may have access to databases and other sorts of information to suggest the likelihood of sufficient grounds for expropriation.[1] After the detection or ‘indication’, INCRA notifies the owner of the estate and a team visits the property to inspect and evaluate those conditions. This team issues an Agronomic Report of Fiscalization (Laudo Agronômico de Fiscalização), which attests whether the property is unproductive or not; and, if yes, whether it is suitable for agrarian reform purposes (i.e., the establishment of an assentamento). As basis for the Report, the team presents a “study of the land’s capacity to generate income”, which includes information about “the agricultural suitability of the land, the number of families that it may be able to hold, its economic viability, the availability of water and a pre-project of the spatial organization that a future assentamento might have” (INCRA, 2015f).
Historically, such “indications” were not formal, but rather performed by means of an MST-led occupation. However, in 2001, in a moment when the frequency of MST’s occupations was very high, President Cardoso issued a Provisional Executive Order ("Medida Provisória" 2.183-56/01)[2] forbidding the inspection and expropriation of any land that had been occupied, for two years after the occupation is declared ‘over’ (normally by intervention of the police). As a result, owners have the possibility of using this time period to effectively turn unproductive land into productive land (which MST cannot then hope to press for expropriation) [9:63]. In an effort to counteract MST’s action, the amendment also introduced penalties[3] for individuals who already are assentados but support others in their occupations—a practice that is still frequent. Therefore, today many MST occupations occur only after INCRA issues the “Agronomic Report”. Even so, when the pressure of an occupation is too intense (“it needs a lot of people”), INCRA may sometimes proceed with the inspection; however, the situation varies from state to state [9:64].
When INCRA’s Report positively identifies the land as suitable for agrarian reform purposes, the President of Brazil needs to sign a decree that attests the piece of land as being of “social interest” and eligible for expropriation. It also stipulates compensation for the previous owner (in public-debt bonds). If the President, for any reason, withholds signing the decree, the process may be blocked. Once the decree is signed, INCRA continues with the legal “expropriation claim”, by proving before a court that the land has been paid for through debt bonds and that the monetary value of any added value (such as infrastructure) left by the previous owner has been deposited in an account linked to the process. The judge then has 24 hours to transfer land property rights to INCRA. However, according to one interviewee, this never happens so soon [9:7]. Indeed, if the previous owner resists the legal action, the “expropriation claim” can last for years, even decades.
Once INCRA acquires property rights over the land, it issues an Ordinance (Portaria, see an example) through which an assentamento is officially created. The document includes details such as the estimated number of families, the name of the assentamento project, and the next steps that will be taken for its implementation. A new process, leading to the permanent establishment of families in the assentamento, begins with a liberation of credit options and the creation of the PDA (Assentamento Development Plan), on the basis of which basic infrastructure will be built. Usually, technical experts from INCRA draft the PDA in collaboration with assentamento residents.
An assentamento can belong to different project modalities (21 in total, full list here) [4], depending on the characteristics of the families, the distance to urban areas and the process through which the area became subject to agrarian reform. There are five types of assentamentos currently implemented by INCRA, each of them with specific conditions and goals (INCRA, 2015b). Among these, Sustainable Development Projects (PDS), the majority of cases in our research, are those that in principle aim to “develop environmentally distinguished activities” (Portaria INCRA 477/99).
After introducing the definition of assentamento as a set of “individual agrarian units”, the same INCRA document states: "each unit [...] is delivered [entregue] to a family without economic conditions to obtain and keep a rural estate by other means”. Note that the verb “delivered” does not seem to adequately capture the magnitude of the struggle that has just been described, in which assentados have to fight for their piece of land and stay, at times for years, in precarious conditions with no infrastructure.
The Law states that all citizens are eligible to participate in the process of agrarian reform, independently of their gender or civil status; however, it grants priority to those who have demonstrable experience in rural activities (Law 8.629/93, Art. 19) [5]. However, this legal priority does not seem to play a relevant role in practice, since the process of creation of an assentamento can be understood as INCRA ratifying the people that were already camping and occupying a given piece of land, instead of a selection of candidates for which priority could be granted.
>>> 3.3 | Public policies for agrarian reform in Brazil
[1] Suggested by a senior assentamento leader [7:27, 7:28].
[2] The Provisory Executive Order is a legislative norm adopted by the President of the Republic that, by its definition, should be issued only in cases of relevance and urgency. The MP, as it is called, has immediate application, but to turn into law, must have Congressional approval. However, MP 2.183-56/2001, which introduced changes on Law 8.629/93, was never voted by Congress and is still valid today. The reason for this legal aberration is that the last version of the MP (that had its primary version in 1997 and successive reeditions) was issued one month before the enactment of Constitutional Amendment 32/01, which limited usage of MP by the President, but gave definitive validity for all MPs issued until that point, until Congress considered them (art. 2º)—something that never happened in this case.
[4] For a full list, see INCRA (2015b). Assentamentos built on State or Municipal land are subject to state agencies’ control, although the same federal regulation is applicable. For instance, in São Paulo, ITESP “cooperates with the Federal Government in the land reform destining state public land for landless rural workers. It also cooperates by providing technical assistance to assentados and inspecting private properties (that could be destined to land reform).” (ITESP, 2015)
[5] An interviewed assentado reported that a clean certificate of criminal antecedents is also required [7:29], as the law 8.629/93, since the Provisional Executive Order mentioned above, states that: "It will be excluded from the Land Reform program those that [...] were identified as participant of a public building invasion, acts of threat, kidnap or maintenance of public servants and citizens in captivity, or any other acts of violence practiced in those situations" (Art 2º, §7º).