4 - Land Conflict

Summary

The fourth chapter deals with the complicated history of public land in Brazil. Weak federal control of public land before the 1960s allowed the illegal settlement of hundreds of families inside the Brazilian Iguaçu National Park. In the 1970s, however, Brazilian park officials had decided to evict all the 2,500 settlers. The shift was partly a reaction to the same international discourse that had influenced Argentine park authorities, as discussed in Chapter 3. However, in Brazil, the early 1970s eviction coincided with the harshest years of the military dictatorship that ruled the country for two decades. The generals were obsessed with suppressing political dissent and feared the settlers living inside the Iguaçu national park could fall prey to left-wing radicalism. The Iguaçu evictions anticipated the authoritarian agrarian reform and population resettlement programs later implemented further north in Amazonia, designed by the military to remedy peasant unrest.