Original: Para além de grilos na gaveta: uma definição contemporânea de grilagem / In addition to crickets in the drawer: a contemporary definition of land grabbing / Además de los grillos en el cajón: la definición contemporánea de acaparamiento de tierras. (2023). REVISTA NERA, 26(65). https://doi.org/10.47946/rnera.v26i65.8776
Francisco Octávio Bittencourt de Sousa
University of Brasília (UnB) – Brasília, Federal District, Brazil
E-mail: francisco3505@gmail.com
Abstract
The formation of large landed estates in Brazil occurred through the theft of land. This process is known as grilagem (land grabbing through fraudulent appropriation of land) and remains a serious problem within the Brazilian land tenure structure, although it has been reconfigured and carried out through new mechanisms. In common usage, and even within academic settings, grilagem is often equated with land occupation. While this association is not entirely unfounded, since grilagem involves a form of occupation, it is characterized by specific objectives, methods, and actors, which this article seeks to delineate.
To address this conceptual gap, I conducted a broad bibliographic review of the term grilagem in order to identify a definition capable of encompassing its contemporary manifestations. To achieve this objective, I analyzed a wide range of sources, including newspapers, magazines, government publications, documentaries, reports from Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry (CPIs and CPMIs), theses, and academic articles that have examined the issue.
It is important to emphasize that the purpose of this study is less to challenge existing interpretations than to fill a conceptual void by contributing to the construction of a comprehensive analytical framework. The analysis is limited to Brazilian debates on the subject, focusing on rural areas—a scope that is already quite extensive. Therefore, it should be noted that any investigation of an object with such fluid boundaries necessarily possesses an exploratory character.
Keywords: Land grabbing; Land theft; Land tenure structure; Bibliographic review.
A New Philosophy, Religion, or Epidemic? A Brief Introduction
In 2002, the final report of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI) on grilagem (land grabbing through fraudulent appropriation of public lands) established an important distinction regarding the occupation of public lands, helping to clarify a common misconception: is every land occupation an act of land grabbing? The answer is no.
Broadly speaking, the report distinguished between “economic occupation” and “legal occupation.” The former refers to the physical occupation of land, whether temporary or permanent, for the purpose of exploiting available natural resources. Such occupation may be legitimized when it occurs on public vacant lands (terras devolutas). This type of occupation, when it fulfills the socio-environmental function of land, does not constitute grilagem. It has often served as a mechanism through which land reform movements pressure the state to address distortions in Brazil’s land tenure system, highlighting the concentration of land ownership produced by decades of support for large estates (latifúndios), which historically restricted small producers’ access to land while seeking to create a pool of inexpensive labor.
Legal occupation, by contrast, is characterized by obtaining a land title recognized by public authorities. When the title has been lawfully acquired, there is no major issue. However, legal occupation also creates a broad field for irregularities, among which grilagem occupies a central place. Through fraudulent claims to ownership, vast areas—typically public lands—can be appropriated for speculative purposes using a variety of methods to secure legal title.
The distinction proposed in the CPI report has its limitations. The process of grilagem may unfold through the physical occupation of land and/or encroach upon areas already under economic occupation, operating not only on a legal or documentary level but also through direct territorial control. Nonetheless, recognizing that other forms of land occupation exist for social and economic purposes—and that these arise from a land tenure structure historically based on large estates—is important because it helps resolve a common, often intentional and ideological, confusion that equates smallholders (posseiros) with land grabbers:
“In Rondônia, for example, the smallholder is being accused of being a land grabber, while those illegally appropriating rubber estates and selling them are receiving government support and being treated as entrepreneurs. (...) The land grabber is the one illegally selling public lands; the smallholder is the one seeking a small plot of land on which to live” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 67).
According to legal scholar Carlos Marés (2003), the category of posseiro encompasses those who give effect to the socio-environmental function of land, in contrast to land grabbers. From this perspective, the category includes Indigenous peoples, Quilombola communities, riverine populations, and many other social groups broadly referred to as traditional communities (Almeida, 2008).
Throughout this article, I seek to make this distinction increasingly clear by bringing together contributions from diverse sources and by defining the objectives, methods, and actors involved in grilagem—a task that is often secondary in studies addressing the subject. I recognize that writing about grilagem necessarily means writing about conflict and violence in rural areas, both of which are rooted in the precarious structure of Brazilian land tenure, historically based on large estates and monoculture, and whose devastating effects continue to be felt daily.
This is the starting point of the present study. Its purpose is to contribute to a more qualified intellectual debate by focusing on the method—that is, the ways in which land grabbing operates—thereby helping to inform public policies capable of addressing the problem at its roots. The article does not examine the consequences of grilagem, since a substantial and growing body of literature already addresses this dimension (Sousa, 2022; Alves, 2009; Baiocchi, 1999; Barcelos & Barros, 2016; Benatti et al., 2006; Costa, 2013; Cunha, 2012).
The text is organized into four sections. First, I discuss definitions of grilagem; second, I examine the actors involved; third, I explore its objectives; and finally, I analyze the methods through which it is carried out.
To undertake this broad and exploratory study, I draw on a wide range of sources, including CPI reports, newspapers, magazines, government publications, documentaries, investigative reports, theses, and academic articles. It is important to note that every process of land grabbing varies according to its historical and geographical context, and this article is not intended as a case study. Consequently, the perspective presented here is necessarily general and inclusive, aimed at identifying the broader characteristics that define grilagem as a social, legal, and political phenomenon.
Networks of Solidarity and Bribery: Some Attributes of Land Grabbing
Beyond the traditional image of crickets in a drawer, grilagem constitutes a process of land theft—a concise and widely used definition—carried out through increasingly sophisticated procedures developed over time, as noted by the Association of Rural Workers’ Lawyers (AATR) in a 2017 publication. It is a highly profitable activity, often ironically described as “the crime that pays.”
Historian Márcia Motta (2005) was particularly precise in highlighting the deeply rooted and centuries-old character of grilagem as a mechanism commonly used by large landowners to expand their holdings. She defined it as operating within “networks of solidarity and bribery” that act against the public interest and have historically underpinned private property formation in Brazil. Through these networks, large landowners have been able to expand their estates virtually without limit.
In this sense, grilagem becomes one of the pillars of class reproduction in Brazil. As Fajardo (1988) argued, it reinforces a social structure divided between large landowners—the representatives of the latifúndio system—and peasants or smallholders (posseiros), who remain subordinated by that structure. Wealthy landowners are often able to influence police action through corruption and exert pressure on the judiciary, which frequently bends to the interests of powerful actors and produces legal interpretations that appear neutral but systematically favor those with economic resources.
Along similar lines, Prieto (2020) emphasized the social, economic, and political relationships underlying grilagem, highlighting the alliance between “large landowners and owners of capital.” Devisate (2017) likewise drew attention to the breadth of the land-grabbing universe, arguing that it has become a threat not only to the environment but also to national sovereignty. For him, grilagem represents a modern expression of Brazilian capitalist development, one that subjects land to overexploitation while exposing the peoples who inhabit it to continual persecution, thereby revealing a distinctive and unequal relationship between society and the environment.
The White Book on Land Grabbing (1999) underscored the complicity of sectors of the public administration in the theft of public lands. It argued that it is impossible to discuss grilagem without considering the role played by agencies responsible for managing public lands and by the judiciary. These institutions may contribute directly by participating in the operational chain of fraudulent land appropriation, or indirectly by failing to enforce oversight mechanisms and allowing known institutional loopholes to persist.
A similar argument was advanced by Santos and Tavares (2016), who correctly emphasized the organized nature of the fraud. In their view, grilagem is sustained through arrangements that connect sectors of both society and the state through corruption and mutual interests.
The Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Land System (1979) highlighted the bad faith inherent in land grabbing, defining the land grabber as an individual who uses technical, intellectual, professional, and financial resources to:
“create a harmful distortion in the occupation process, because he will not clear the land, nor engage in any activity that generates wealth; he is interested only in speculation” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 71).
Here again lies the distinction between the posseiro and the grileiro: the former fulfills the socio-environmental function of land, while the latter seeks primarily speculative gains.
As Asselin (1982) observed, grilagem cannot be reduced to the “harmful actions of a few bad Brazilians.” Rather, it is part of a broader political, economic, and social structure that has been not only planned but actively encouraged. Asselin referred to grilagem as a process of “pseudo-officialization” of land acquisition, emerging from Brazil’s highly concentrated land tenure structure—a condition that has been intensified by the expansion of agribusiness, fiscal incentives for large-scale projects, and export-oriented development policies.
Returning to the report of the Land System CPI (1979), we encounter a particularly revealing passage:
“The land grabber is a figure who, in pursuing speculative objectives, encounters no obstacle—not even the law. His plans are aimed at accumulating as much land as possible in order to sell it at favorable prices. Titles are always falsified, so that the same tract of land may have multiple titles and multiple buyers. The land grabber, who may often be a respectable gentleman, does not act alone or directly. He employs others to perform specific tasks, especially to ‘clear the area,’ often using gunmen and/or soldiers, frequently with the protection of judges and other local authorities. They present themselves as ‘investors,’ giving a very concrete meaning to the word ‘invest.’ They invest against the law, against public property, and against the rights of smallholders and small landowners. For all these reasons, they should be classified as criminals” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 306, emphasis added).
This passage once again highlights the network of solidarity that enables grilagem, involving “respectable gentlemen,” hired gunmen, soldiers, judges, and other local authorities, thereby reinforcing Motta’s (2005) interpretation. The binding force holding these actors together is profit. As another section of the report notes:
“The land grabber has money. He arrives in the region with money, while the settler has none. Therefore, it is more convenient for the police to side with the land grabber than with the colonist” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 454).
More recent studies suggest both the continuity and expansion of these networks. The category of “respectable gentlemen” now encompasses increasingly broad groups, including rural entrepreneurs, timber operators, cattle ranchers, and land speculators—most of them large landowners integrated into international markets and employing increasingly sophisticated methods of illegally acquiring land (Rocha, 2015; Melo, 2006; Sousa, 2022; Gonçalves, 2018; Spadotto et al., 2020).
Thus, the pursuit of profit emerges as the central aggregating element of the land-grabbing process. Speculative rent-seeking is increasingly combined with productive accumulation, both of which are fundamental pillars of Brazil’s land tenure structure. This broader conceptual framework allows us to include forms of land grabbing that extend beyond strictly speculative actors and encompass those who combine fraudulent land acquisition with agricultural production and market integration.
In summary, grilagem can be understood as an organized process of land theft operating through networks of solidarity and bribery that connect actors from both the public and private spheres. The following section therefore turns to these actors in greater detail in order to better characterize the networks through which land grabbing is organized and sustained.
A Project That Brings Many People Together: Land Grabbing and Its Actors
Before examining these networks of solidarity and bribery in greater detail, it is important to recognize that inaction, complicity, or the deliberate “turning of a blind eye” also constitute forms of agency—particularly when practiced by public institutions that enable land-grabbing schemes. There is little innocence in this process, since the interests of public officials frequently overlap with private interests, and in some cases the same individuals move between both spheres (Serra, 2019). Fajardo (1988) correctly identified omission and complicity by institutions responsible for investigating, judging, and punishing crimes as recurring features of rural conflicts throughout Brazil. Other factors may further expand these networks, including kinship ties, personal affinities, and professional relationships, as noted by Asselin (1982).
Numerous researchers have identified land registries, courts, judges, and public land administration agencies as indispensable to the expansion and consolidation of grilagem (Alves, 2009). In the words of Congressman Jerônimo Santana:
“A land-grabbing operation involves the judge, the prosecutor, the court clerk, and the bailiff. This is the group that carries out land grabbing” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 487).
Beginning in the 1930s, public investment programs and the creation of regional development agencies also provided indirect state incentives for land grabbing. Police action—often in partnership with gunmen and hired enforcers—as an instrument of “area clearing” constitutes another form of direct state involvement in the process and has been widely documented and denounced (BRAZIL, 2006).
In recent years, public authorities—particularly the federal executive and legislative branches—have also contributed to land grabbing through provisional measures, decrees, bills, and laws that create loopholes for the regularization of illegally appropriated lands. Examples include Provisional Measure 759, later converted into Law No. 13,465 of July 11, 2017, and regulated by Decree No. 9,310 of March 15, 2018; Provisional Measure 910/2019; and Bill 2633/2020, among others.
In short, land grabbing involves a web of relationships connecting members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, professional land grabbers, and even sectors of the armed forces, forming a highly articulated network that operates at the national level.
Within the private sphere, one finds the participation of the so-called “respectable gentlemen”—cattle ranchers, investors, speculators, large landowners (the traditional coronel or local oligarch), and, more recently, agribusiness corporations acting as promoters and financiers of land-grabbing operations (Alves, 2009). A number of companies function as intermediaries or front organizations, purchasing and holding lands before they eventually become the property of globally operating agribusiness corporations (Spadotto et al., 2020). It is also common for these enterprises to receive foreign investment, suggesting an ongoing process of the internationalization of land grabbing (Oliveira, 2016).
These actors are typically embedded within robust internal hierarchies that are often used to recruit additional collaborators, directly or indirectly, into land-grabbing schemes. Among these collaborators are laranjas (front persons or straw owners), whose names are used to conceal the identities of the true beneficiaries.
A particularly important figure is the professional land grabber—the document forger and organizer who operates behind the façade of the “respectable gentleman.” Acting with a strong expectation of impunity, often protected by public institutions and backed by substantial financial resources, this individual coordinates the entire operation. He forges documents, negotiates land transactions, recruits settlers, hires armed enforcers, and bribes whoever may be necessary. Depending on the resistance encountered, he operates through persuasion or intimidation.
At the frontline of the process stand the gunmen and hired enforcers (jagunços and pistoleiros), although the terminology varies regionally. Their primary task is to carry out the “clearing” of occupied lands. As Myskiw (2002, p. 111) explains, they are:
“generally individuals hired by the alleged owner or land grabber to intimidate, expel, remove, or kill settlers, squatters, sharecroppers, and tenants whenever necessary.”
Although physical elimination and assassination are the most widely known aspects of their activities, as noted by Canuto (2005), they perform a variety of other functions, ranging from issuing threats to operating heavy machinery.
It would be mistaken, however, to imagine the gunman as a poor and ragged individual carrying an old hunting rifle. Today, such actors are often referred to more generically as “security agents” and possess sophisticated weaponry, functioning as private militias operating outside the law. As noted earlier, they frequently work alongside local police forces because many are former police officers, retired officers, or active officers working secondary jobs, providing security services to protect property claimed—legally or illegally—by those who hired them (Motta, 2005).
Testimony given by Friar Anastácio to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Contract Killings in 2003 reinforces this interpretation:
“Landowners, leaseholders, and land grabbers use force and violence through private militias, almost always with the participation of civil and military police officers, persecuting rural workers and committing all forms of violence against them” (BRAZIL, 2005, p. 523).
Perhaps the most comprehensive description of this network remains Asselin’s (1982) typology, which, despite being nearly four decades old, continues to capture the diversity of actors involved in land grabbing:
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The Powerful Beneficiaries – Individuals who seek political protection to consolidate economic power and, through political influence, further strengthen their economic position. They rarely act directly, relying instead on intermediaries and front persons. Their reward is access to land and other privileges that reinforce their dominance.
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The Front Men (Testas-de-Ferro) – Responsible for planning and organizing land-grabbing operations. They are forgers, intermediaries, public-relations operators, and brokers who coordinate the process. They profit through bribes, favors, and, at times, direct allocations of land.
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The Operatives – Individuals recruited to perform specific tasks. Some are manipulated, while others knowingly profit from participation. This category includes nominal representatives, brokers, and participants in document fraud schemes.
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The Allies – The planners and organizers require alliances with public officials and institutions to execute their plans. These allies include registry officials, lower-level government employees, and personnel from agencies responsible for land administration. Depending on their position and degree of involvement, they may become active participants rather than mere collaborators.
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The Area-Clearers – Those responsible for removing settlers and occupants from targeted lands. This category includes managers overseeing eviction operations, hired thugs, gunmen, and even police forces acting on behalf of land-grabbing interests.
More recently, international markets have begun to play an increasingly important role by financing land-grabbing enterprises and purchasing commodities produced on illegally appropriated lands. These actors fit squarely within Asselin’s first category, representing the contemporary globalization of land-grabbing networks.
Today, land grabbing serves a wide variety of purposes. The 2002 Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Land Grabbing identified several uses for illegally acquired lands, including their use as collateral for agricultural loans, payment of debts owed to public institutions such as the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and the Federal Revenue Service, implementation of forest management projects, cultivation and processing of narcotics, and other economic activities. These findings have been reinforced by subsequent studies, including those of Santos and Tavares (2016).
Melo (2006) summarized the principal objectives of land grabbing as follows:
a) large-scale resale of land;
b) obtaining bank financing for agricultural projects;
c) timber extraction;
d) payment of tax and social security debts;
e) obtaining carbon-credit benefits;
f) securing compensation through expropriation processes (Melo, 2006, p. 24).
The “respectable gentlemen” involved in these schemes often justify their actions by claiming that they promote regional development and that bureaucratic delays in land regularization make it “better to grab land than to waste time following the regular procedures for acquiring state-owned lands” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 26).
These arguments reveal an important feature of grilagem: beyond being a mechanism for private enrichment, it is frequently accompanied by narratives that seek to legitimize illegality in the name of development, modernization, or economic efficiency. Such justifications help explain the persistence of land grabbing as a central feature of Brazil’s land tenure system and the remarkable capacity of its networks to adapt and endure over time.
The Land Grabber Is an Alchemist: The Methods of Land Grabbing
Having become familiar with definitions, actors, and purposes, what remains is the most creative part of the process: the methods of land grabbing. The land grabber is an alchemist. He ages papers, resurrects Imperial seals, invents tax receipts, promotes genealogies, makes old drunks who died illiterate appear to have known how to write, confuses judges, bribes clerks (ASSELIN, 1982, p. 34).
Asselin’s (1982) quotation makes it clear that land grabbing requires specific knowledge and particular techniques that have been developed over centuries. In order to record more precisely the evolution of these techniques, I begin from the division proposed by Prieto (2020): there are four national laws for the legalization of land grabbing (the Land Law of 1850, Decree-Law No. 19,924 of 1931, the Terra Legal Program of 2009, and Law No. 13,465 of 2017), a dictatorial period of routinization of the grilo (the civil-military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985), and a bill currently under discussion (Bill No. 2633 of 2020). I briefly examine the techniques that preceded the Land Law of 1850, the period between 1850 and 1931, from 1931 to 1964, from 1964 to 1985, and finally, in greater depth, the period from 1988 to the present day. This division is useful because it demonstrates that the process of land grabbing adapts to different political, social, and economic contexts, reinforcing the immense creative capacity of its operators.
Before the Land Law of 1850, the process of land grabbing revolved around the sesmaria system. Various criminal methods of land acquisition were recorded, including the possession of multiple sesmarias (sometimes in collusion with front men); the hunting and killing of Indigenous peoples followed by occupation of their lands; the control exercised by a few families over the legal apparatus, ultimately legitimizing land grabbing through “creative interpretations” of the law; and the donation and inheritance of lands, among other practices (NOZOE, 2006; MOTTA, 2004; PINTO, 2011; PUNTONI, 1999; PESSOA, 2003; MOTTA, 2012; CUNHA, 2012; PRIETO, 2020).
As Prieto (2020) argued, the Land Law of 1850 was the first national legal framework for the legalization of land grabbing in Brazil. The absence of discussion regarding the term “public lands” created room for the emergence of a network of solidarity whose objective was the forgery of titles legitimized by clerks through bribery. It was well known that the central power of the Empire lacked the capacity to monitor land occupation processes and, with military power in the hands of large landowners, the expansion of property frontiers through violence was common. Already during this period, conflicts between large landowners and smallholders or Indigenous peoples were far from rare.
The most common method was the forgery of titles—through the famous method of crickets or horse urine—since records were precarious and inspection mechanisms had very limited effectiveness (SILVA, 1997; MARTINS, 1996; PRIETO, 2020).
Together with the Land Law of 1850, the attempt to regularize lands through the “parish registers” (registros do vigário) in 1854 inaugurated yet another means of legalizing fraudulent titles, opening the possibility for landowners to extend their properties as much as they wished in their parish declarations (BORGES, 2009).
The precariousness of records and maps was already noted in the nineteenth century, inaugurating land grabbing through “fantastic measurements,” reinforced by the “neglect of the State in pretending to ignore what was happening, thereby failing to take the necessary measures to put an end to this state of affairs, revealed in the constant illegalities involving vacant public lands and the resulting violence against peasants” (BORGES, 2009).
The practice known as “stretching” (esticamento) also emerged. This consisted of acquiring an area without exact boundaries to which adjacent areas would later be annexed. With the complicity of land registries, these areas would then be transferred into the Property Registration Books, a technique that would be widely used in the following centuries (BRAZIL, 1979).
Introduced in 1890 and modified in 1939 and 1973, the Torrens registration system established yet another method of land grabbing. It functioned as a parallel registration system, “a type of title registration that renders land ownership unquestionable and that, precisely for this reason, has been used in attempts to irrevocably consolidate the improper appropriation of public lands” (CAMARGO, 2016, p. 344).
The Revolution of 1930 and the provisional government established in 1931 opened a new round of legalization of land grabbing. It is interesting to note that Getúlio Vargas managed to “renew” the actors of land grabbing through local intervenors, replacing the human components of already established networks of solidarity and bribery. Decree No. 19,924 of April 27, 1931 legalized the vacant public lands appropriated up to that point and, at least theoretically, prevented the appropriation of new areas. By now, the reader should already understand that every legalization of lands appropriated in previous periods generates a new incentive for land grabbing based on the industry of forged titles (OLIVEIRA, 1997; PRIETO, 2020).
This was also a period marked by the expansion of tax incentives and the creation of large infrastructure projects, promoting a sharp increase in land values and encouraging land grabbing, which continued to persecute and kill smallholders and native peoples. The conflict of Trombas and Formoso, documented in the film Cadê Porfírio? (2013), exemplifies the effect that infrastructure projects had on land, which became a store of value subject to rent-seeking.
The cycle of violence associated with land grabbing acquired a new “pattern” that persists to this day, described by Asselin (1982) as consisting of three stages: the selection and clearing of the area; the reaction of the smallholders; and the intervention of the federal executive. During this period, land grabbers also developed a new technique: the “auction fraud” (golpe de arrematação), which “consisted of taking to public auction some plots located within the perimeter of the reserved area due to non-payment of land taxes. The bidders would thus obtain a title legally issued by the local court” (BORGES, 2009).
The method of inheritance negotiation, which had existed since the colonial period, was repackaged and is well described by Devisate (2017):
Let us return to rural Brazil in the late 1950s and early 1960s and imagine a humble widow living in one of the most isolated villages of the Cerrado, in the interior of the country. She is approached by someone claiming that she is the sole heir to a piece of land left by a deceased relative she never knew. Although suspicious, she believes what she is told and, being illiterate and without legal guidance, agrees to negotiate this “inheritance,” thereby transferring these “non-existent rights, since the whole thing is a fraud” to the person who approached her. The “buyer” then presents the document (in reality, a legal nothing, false in substance, but now transformed into an idealized latifundium recorded with unreal names, titles, and thousands of hectares) to a judge in a small inland town, requesting the opening of probate proceedings; within forty-eight hours the judge approves it. The document is then registered in a registry office in another state, without any connection to previous records. Thus, out of nothing, an immense area is born with the “appearance” of private property and, through this act of land grabbing, the appropriator begins selling parcels to domestic or foreign buyers and/or removing long-established legitimate smallholders from the land (DEVISATE, 2017, pp. 12–13).
It is not difficult to conclude that document forgery has been a recurring feature since the beginning of the period analyzed. A good summary of the process can be found in Asselin (1982):
Through forged documentation (...) there follows a system called among land grabbers the “wheel” or triangulation. The crime is carried out as follows:
1. The document is forged (Goiânia–Anápolis–São Paulo or São José do Rio Preto).
Methods used in the forgery:
a) They search old registry offices for blank deed pages, leftovers from probate proceedings, unused Masonic paper, etc. Once in possession of the material, these sheets are sent to previously hired calligraphers.
b) If the interested party wishes to create a probate proceeding, one or two legitimate probate files are removed from the Dead Archive and handed to the calligraphers, who remove the pages describing the assets, the partition sheet, the payment sheet, and so forth, replacing them with fraudulent pages, thereby creating a chain of succession.
c) If the interested party wants a private deed, blank sheets are delivered to the calligraphers, who then create a thirty-year sequence of purchase and sale transactions.
Once in possession of the documents, the interested party goes to a registry office and requests an authenticated copy of the document presented. The authenticated copy is not itself a document registered in the registry office. A “verbo ad verbum” certificate is then issued from the document presented, taken to another registry office, and entered into the Notarial Registry Book. Subsequently, another “verbo ad verbum” certificate is issued from that registration.
2. In possession of the documentation, the interested party goes to the municipality where the land to be grabbed is located and registers it in the Land Registry Office. Thus, another grilo is born (ASSELIN, 1982, p. 43).
With the Military Coup of 1964, the process of land grabbing became routine and came to have the State as its greatest contributor (PRIETO, 2020). Land grabbing became the principal means of land acquisition in the country. It was a period marked by an increased flow of international capital, encouraging the grabbing of lands with guaranteed sales to foreigners, with the knowledge and participation of members of the public administration, consolidating networks of solidarity composed of land grabbers, businessmen, public officials, and international capital.
The generalized corruption of agencies such as the Brazilian Institute of Agrarian Reform (IBRA) and the Indian Protection Service (SPI), producing documents that either attested to illegal occupation or served to generate legal confusion regarding ownership, legitimized land-grabbing processes that operated through the terror of extermination (ASSELIN, 1982; PRIETO, 2020). With fiscal incentives and the military regime’s slogan “integrate in order not to surrender” (integrar para não entregar), large corporations transformed vast areas of public land into pastures (BRAZIL, 1979).
Between 1970 and 1980, the absence of state protection for traditional populations made several land-grabbing practices commonplace, including:
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the sale of the same land to multiple buyers;
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the resale of titles to public lands to third parties as if such lands had been legally offered for sale through bidding processes;
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the forgery of titles and the demarcation of purchased lands at a much larger scale than originally acquired, with supporting documents artificially enlarging them;
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the creation or alteration of deeds and various certificates;
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the incorporation of public lands into private properties;
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the sale of land titles attributed to areas that did not correspond to the titles themselves;
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the sale by private individuals of public lands—including Indigenous territories and environmental conservation areas—to third parties;
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and, more recently, the sale of public lands through internet advertisements or magazine listings based on forged documentation, as in the case of Chandless Park investigated by this Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (BRAZIL, 2006, p. 398).
The weakening of the military regime and the return to democracy brought to light the extreme violence that formed part of the repertoire of land-grabbing techniques during this period. The denunciations were so alarming that the process of redemocratization was marked by a series of initiatives aimed at combating land grabbing, including numerous Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry (CPIs) that addressed the issue directly or indirectly and the publication of the White Book on Land Grabbing (Livro Branco da Grilagem) in 1999.
In summary, land grabbing occurs throughout the national territory. Although public lands remain its primary target, when such lands are unavailable, land grabbers turn their attention to privately owned lands, relying on the traditional mechanism of forging property titles (deeds) and artificially aging them (SERRA, 2019; BRAZIL, 2002), as already described.
Infrastructure projects, particularly highways, are good indicators of the “path” followed by land grabbing, as pointed out by the Parliamentary Joint Commission of Inquiry on Land (CPMI da Terra) (2005), Oliveira (2005), and Alves (2006). Asselin (1982) also emphasized that land grabbers often “follow hunger,” meaning that they target lands already occupied and improved by smallholders. This position is reinforced by the findings of the CPI on the Land System:
“Land grabbing is interested in areas already cleared by smallholders, because in this way it can obtain improved land at reduced cost” (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 38).
However, the presence of smallholders is not in the interest of land grabbers. This has given rise to various techniques designed to carry out the “clearing of the area” (limpeza da área), that is, the expulsion of occupants. The CPI on the Land System listed seven such techniques:
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invasion of occupied lands by the land grabber’s livestock in order to destroy improvements and crops;
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obstruction of roads and paths used by occupants in order to hinder transportation and the marketing of production;
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deforestation of surrounding areas to prevent agricultural expansion, or the use of fires around homes to force occupants to abandon their holdings;
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sowing of pasture grass, including by aircraft, over occupied lands to damage crops;
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threats by gunmen (psychological warfare) intended to frighten occupants into leaving, including unlawful arrests of smallholders to force them to abandon their lands;
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expulsion of occupants by hired gunmen, sometimes involving police officers acting without judicial authorization on behalf of the purported purchaser, often accompanied by the burning of homes and belongings;
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pressure and threats to induce occupants to sell their lands at nominal prices or accept compensation in the form of smaller plots lacking deeds or registration, causing them to lose both their former possession and the new allotment (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 38).
The clearing of an area is only one part of the process. For land grabbing to be consolidated, some document is still needed to prove false ownership of the land.
The CPI on the Land System provided a synthesis of non-digital methods, listing seven techniques commonly used in the operational process of land grabbing:
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purchase by the land grabber of possession rights over small areas containing improvements but lacking clear boundaries, followed by a request for adverse possession (usucapião) even where no private ownership record exists. A judicial decision, often issued without meeting legal requirements and accompanied by a map encompassing thousands of hectares, then allows the registration of ownership;
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registration of occupation titles in the Property Registry Book;
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forgery of titles and their subsequent registration in the Property Registry without complying with legal requirements;
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registration of simple purchase-and-sale deeds without the chain of title required under Public Registry Law;
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mortgaging large areas to financial institutions without proper registration;
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judicial declarations of adverse possession over extensive areas issued without notifying the federal government, state government, or municipality;
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possessory actions decided in favor of land grabbers who justified ownership merely through INCRA registration certificates (BRAZIL, 1979, p. 38).
In testimony before the CPI on Land Grabbing, lawyer and professor Otávio Mendonça provided a more detailed description of these fraudulent practices:
A) Fraud in Titles: forged signatures, names, statements, dates, and numbers; references to non-existent registry books; altered stubs and inconsistent records.
B) Fraud in Administrative Processes: because titles are merely the final stage of an acquisition process, they cannot be valid if the preceding stages are invalid. Nevertheless, titles often appear without any underlying process, or processes are missing essential formalities such as identification of the purchaser, proof of payment, publication of notices, and official granting decisions.
C) Fraud in Demarcation: during periods when regional maps were scarce and surveying professionals few, many surveys were conducted entirely at a drafting table without any connection to actual landmarks. Imaginary lines and bearings replaced real boundaries. Field notebooks frequently did not exist, and maps, descriptive memorials, and summaries were reproduced through mimeographs or photocopies, with only the blank spaces being filled in for each case. In addition to these office-based frauds, field frauds also occurred through the multiplication of distances, alteration of natural boundary names, invasion of public or neighboring lands, and the arbitrary stretching or shrinking of property lines.
D) Fraud in Location: many lands were sold whose location nobody actually knew, while others overlapped with lots previously sold. These became known as “feather titles” (títulos pluma or pena), wandering titles looking for a place to land. If nobody contested them, they remained there until challenged. If no challenge emerged, ownership and possession became consolidated despite having no correspondence with the actual description contained in the documents. Such practices generated severe problems of overlapping claims—a bizarre form of vertical property without condominium arrangements and without resolution.
E) Fraud in Registration: two provisions of the Civil Code frequently gave an appearance of legality to false registrations. One equated judicial certificates with original documents; the other granted similar authority to certificates extracted by public officials from instruments entered in their records. This allowed fraudulent administrative certificates relating to non-existent, enlarged, or relocated transactions to be registered first in the Registry of Titles and Documents and then transcribed into land registries by dishonest or uninformed officials. Beyond this maneuver, tax receipts, illegitimate possession titles, receipts for improvements, documents of deceased persons lacking wills or probate proceedings, and even state or municipal livestock permits were sometimes registered directly as if they were legitimate titles (BRAZIL, 2002, pp. 594–595).
The same report also highlighted a legal peculiarity: because death transfers ownership rights, probate proceedings (Article 1770 of the Civil Code) can sometimes be manipulated to include lands located beyond the jurisdiction where the property is actually situated.
Today, land grabbing has been strengthened through the advertising of stolen lands on the internet, expanding the network of solidarity that sustains the practice. Once the transfer is completed, the land grabber can distance himself from the fraud by effectively “passing the problem on.” It is therefore common for illegally appropriated land to be subdivided and sold to multiple buyers, increasing profits while obscuring the original fraud.
Another method, enabled by loopholes in Law No. 9.711/1998, consists of waiting for illegally appropriated land to become subject to expropriation in order to receive Agrarian Debt Bonds (Títulos da Dívida Agrária – TDA), which can then be used to pay federal and state tax debts (BRAZIL, 2002).
Beginning in the 2000s, land grabbing received continuous encouragement, provided that it could be framed within the broad category of “peaceful and uncontested possession” (posse mansa e pacífica), under the expectation that the land would eventually be regularized. The Terra Legal Program rewarded land grabbing by legally equating land grabbers and smallholders, paving the way for provisional measures, decrees, bills, and laws—such as Provisional Measure 759/2016, converted into Law No. 13.465/2017, and Provisional Measure 910/2019, which expired but was later transformed into Bill No. 2633/2020—designed to grant amnesties to land grabbers (OLIVEIRA, 2020; PRIETO, 2020).
The major novelty during this period was the emergence of “green land grabbing.” Mechanisms originally created for environmental regulation began to be used as instruments of land appropriation. The Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural – CAR) inaugurated a new modality of land grabbing that can be practiced with fewer intermediaries and from within one’s own home, since the system is digital and self-declaratory.
Uniting programs, benefits, and authorizations linked to the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR)
By combining the programs, benefits, and authorizations linked to the Rural Environmental Registry (Cadastro Ambiental Rural – CAR) with its acceptance as proof of ownership, the result is that the registry has been used as a form of prior regularization of large landholders’ interests. In other words, it functions as a type of arrangement for negotiating land, soybeans, or cattle, or for enabling access to public and private financing in rural areas, stimulating economic activities and rural real-estate speculation, forming genuine networks of solidarity and accelerating the expulsion of traditional peoples from their territories (SOUSA, 2022; OLIVEIRA, 2020; GONÇALVES, 2018; DALLABRIDA & FERNANDES, 2020).
In the state of Tocantins, quilombola communities were illegally required to present land-tenure documents in an analysis conducted by Naturatins, which adopted criteria used for rural properties, demanding features that are not mandatory for CAR registrations of traditional peoples and communities. Even after the signing of an Agreement between Naturatins and the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office (MPF), recognizing the constitutional rights of quilombola communities, some communities had their registrations arbitrarily cancelled, despite remaining active in the federal SICAR system. In these territories whose registrations were cancelled at the state level, only the CAR registrations of ranchers remain, whose state CAR receipts have been sufficient to access credit and public policies, regardless of the federal SICAR receipt.
Pará, which has specific investments directed toward CAR registration for Traditional Peoples and Communities through the Green Municipalities Program (Programa Municípios Verdes – PMV), has failed to advance community registrations in a state that reports more than 100% of its territory registered in the system, thereby carrying out a scandalous exclusion of collective territories.
In Mato Grosso, the CAR became a police matter. Following the opening of a police investigation into suspected fraud in the management of the registry, the Mato Grosso State Secretariat for the Environment must be regarded as one of the most emblematic cases of how favoring the environmental regularization structure—and indeed land-tenure regularization—for agribusiness involves criminal schemes. The Secretariat, which receives financial support from German banks for the environmental regularization of rural properties, established its own CAR registration system, without the possibility of self-declaration by traditional peoples and communities and out of step with the customization of the national system.
In Tocantins, Pará, and Mato Grosso alike, it is possible to observe the political and economic use of the CAR in favor of the registration of large landowners, leaving aside the collective territories of traditional peoples and communities (Letter of the Carta de Belém Group⁷).
The registry guaranteed only part of the benefits envisioned in the legal text, streamlining environmental regularization while creating a database of rural producers, without advancing at the same pace for traditional communities. On the contrary, what has been observed is, to some extent, greater flexibility for the first group and the creation of obstacles for the second. Although communities possess a specific category within the registry, they did not benefit from environmental regularization and became increasingly vulnerable to land grabbing (SOUSA, 2022; GONÇALVES, 2018).
Without going into great detail, the process can be summarized as follows:
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Land grabbers identify areas, generally public lands, occupied or not by populations that have lived there for generations.
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The land is usually deforested and subdivided for sale or real-estate speculation. Occupation often occurs through conflict and violence.
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To create the appearance of economic use, criminals introduce cattle and claim ownership of the area. Although it is not a document proving possession, the Rural Environmental Registry (CAR) has been used as a land-grabbing instrument to demonstrate a supposed history of occupation.
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Land grabbers find complicity among notary offices and/or government programs in order to legitimize the invasion and obtain documents for the grabbed land.
The forgery industry and invasions of Indigenous lands were also encouraged through the issuance of Normative Instruction (IN) No. 9/2020 by the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), which was later suspended by the courts but generated considerable turmoil in 2020. The Instruction allowed the issuance of boundary-recognition declarations up until the formal homologation of Indigenous lands by presidential decree, which in practice meant encouraging and legitimizing the grabbing of Indigenous lands (OLIVEIRA, 2020).
Finally, it seems worthwhile to offer a brief reflection on the globalization of land grabbing. Beyond the professionalization of the forged-title industry—which is not in itself new—there exists a set of companies acting as front organizations for the purchase and sale of land before it effectively becomes the property of agribusiness corporations. In other words, thanks to the expansion of networks of solidarity and bribery within a global economy, large agricultural corporations do not need to purchase land directly from land grabbers; subsidiary companies do so on their behalf (SPADOTTO et al., 2020).
After this review, it is possible to define grilagem as a set of specific and constantly updated techniques and forms of knowledge designed to carry out land theft within networks of solidarity and bribery involving individuals from both the public and private spheres. These actors are united by speculative, rent-seeking, and/or productivist interests, disregard the socio-environmental function of land, and are strengthened by state power insofar as the state participates directly or indirectly in the process.
Conclusion: Let Hunger Become the New Consciousness
Through months of exploratory research, we constructed a broad framework of grilagem through which we believe it is possible both to refine the intellectual debate on the subject and to design more effective public policies with a greater degree of methodological detail. My intention is to contribute to the efforts undertaken by social movements, political parties, and non-governmental organizations in the ongoing struggle to end amnesties for land grabbers, to create Indigenous lands, quilombola territories, territories of traditional communities, and conservation units, and to encourage monitoring, enforcement, and punishment.
In recent years, despite the clearly crime-friendly orientation adopted at the highest level of the country's executive branch, it has been possible to observe state-level seminars against land grabbing throughout Brazil. As recently as December 2022, more than thirty representatives from Public Prosecutors’ Offices, Courts of Accounts, research institutions, and civil society organizations met to debate and advance strategies for combating deforestation and land grabbing on public lands in the Amazon. Operations such as Operation Candombá in Goiás and Operation Integrated Land Grabbing in Mato Grosso produced significant outcomes. The Regional Council of Engineering and Agronomy of Goiás (CREA-GO), in an unprecedented step in its history, financed the publication of a book on land grabbing in the largest quilombola territory in the country (SOUSA, 2022).
Finally, it is worth emphasizing that the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) reports used throughout this study are public documents and likely allow for many other interpretations beyond those presented here. My contribution has been limited to compiling and articulating them. By providing an initial overview of the subject and bringing together a wide range of primary and secondary sources, I hope this text serves as an invitation for other researchers to engage with the topic.
There remains much to be investigated and denounced regarding grilagem, which has advanced at an accelerated pace in recent years. I reiterate the words of Asselin (1982): if the “respectable gentlemen” act to create poverty, then let hunger become the new consciousness.
Original: Para além de grilos na gaveta: uma definição contemporânea de grilagem / In addition to crickets in the drawer: a contemporary definition of land grabbing / Además de los grillos en el cajón: la definición contemporánea de acaparamiento de tierras. (2023). REVISTA NERA, 26(65). https://doi.org/10.47946/rnera.v26i65.8776
