Detenção agrária de terras públicas: implicações jurídicas na regularização fundiária

Abstract

The present paper is about the legal treatment given to occupations of public land in rural areas, called land holding. Based on local observation, literature, cases law and legislation, we found out that the land holding does not confer the land possession or the property to the holder itself but it allows an adjustment of occupation with the government. The given situation deals with public lands, agricultural activity development as well as the importance of working on the referred land. Legal explanation relies on the Constitution interpretations which forbid this mean of property acquisition based on a single act of an individual as well as the legal situations that submit the permission for occupation to the Government acquiescence, through a regular administrative procedure. Besides it is based on agrarian laws which establish the needed requirements to the allocation of rural property in the public domain. Before the formal permission for occupation it may have set the land holding of public lands which has nothing to do with the matter regulated by our Civil Code. Areas occupied by indigenous, “quilombolas”, traditional agroextractive populations as well as the rural workers and their families do not fit this concept. For these ones, the Government assures the territorial and possessory rights. Therefore, we conclude that Brazilian legal system refuses public lands possessions in certain situations but it accepts them in others with both Government acquiescence and without it. Hence, the present work aims to establish distinctive criteria between land owner and holder proposing the stay of both legitimate owner and holder but the incorporation of the illegitimate occupied land to the public property roll.