{"id":36797,"date":"2017-06-12T07:55:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-12T10:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=36797"},"modified":"2017-06-22T20:04:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T23:04:00","slug":"debate-denounces-temers-change-to-land-regularization-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=36797","title":{"rendered":"Debate Denounces Temer’s Change to Land Regularization Law MP759"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

On December 22, 2016, President Michel Temer<\/a> revised a law that specifically regularizes\u00a0urban and rural land<\/a> owned by the federal government, notably eliminating requirements for upgrading infrastructure on those lands. The revision was passed by the Senate on May 24<\/a>\u00a0without consulting affected groups, experts, or representative bodies of land regularization. On May 30, the student council at Rio de Janeiro’s Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-Rio) hosted the debate “Land Regularization\u00a0in Brazil: Setbacks in the Struggle for the Country and the City<\/a>” to discuss and raise awareness of the change.<\/p>\n

The legal alteration, known as Interim\u00a0Measure (MP by the Portuguese acronym) 759\/16<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0has caused major concern for housing activist, environmental and human rights groups across Brazil. By\u00a0removing barriers to\u00a0foreign and domestic companies\u00a0to\u00a0privatize and exploit public land, the law will directly impact the biodiversity and environmental protection of large areas, particularly the Amazon.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the urban context, the\u00a0new law severely undermines the\u00a0land rights<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0favela residents by giving equal priority to private interests and creating the conditions for commercial exploitation of urban areas occupied by low-income communities.<\/p>\n

On the panel at the PUC event was:\u00a0Maria L\u00facia de Pontes, Public Defender<\/a> with the Rio de Janeiro Land and Housing Nucleus (NUTH);\u00a0Fernanda Vieira, professor and lawyer from the Mariana Criola Popular Advisory Centre;\u00a0Alexandre Nascimento, PUC-Rio Social Science undergraduate and Brazilian Institute for the United National Environmental Programme (Instituto Brasil PNUMA) graduate in Environmental Management (UFRJ); and\u00a0Pedro Paulo Cruz, social scientist and former director of Housing Regularization at ITERJ (Institute of State Lands of Rio de Janeiro) from 2000-2010.<\/p>\n

Pedro Paulo Cruz started the discussion by contextualizing the new measure within historical legal frameworks around land rights in Brazil. Section 5 of Brazil\u2019s Constitution<\/a> declares that public land must serve a social function<\/a> for the population. For Rio de Janeiro specifically, these requirements are also mentioned in the state\u2019s constitution<\/a>. However, Temer\u2019s revision is a clear departure\u00a0from the values and protections set out in the constitution, denying the rights of many agrarian and low-income\u00a0families–whose need to dependably live on and off the land is greater than their need for the right to sell it–by enabling the easy\u00a0privatization of public land.<\/p>\n

Cruz argued that\u00a0the ongoing legacy of slavery is a\u00a0historical factor which allows Brazil\u2019s politicians to neglect\u00a0the needs of citizens. \u201cMany residents keep being distanced further and further from the city center where they work and earn their living,\u201d Cruz said. Over 77,000 people<\/a>\u00a0were\u00a0evicted<\/a> from communities all over Rio de Janeiro during the period leading up to\u00a0the 2014 World Cup<\/a> and the 2016 Olympics<\/a>, while\u00a0market forces also displaced many through real estate speculation and urban renewal in this period.<\/p>\n

Fernanda Vieira followed Cruz\u2019s critique. In Brazil, there has been a surging war on land rights activists<\/a> and she explained that the new MP will heighten the militaristic means with which the government quiets\u00a0opposition.<\/p>\n

Like Cruz, she noted that the economic\u00a0practices that have shaped the\u00a0world\u2019s largest economies have resulted in and continued to advance unconstitutional policies that are against traditional workers’ rights. \u201cWe are further away from a city that is inclusive and democratic. That is why conversations like this are so crucial,\u201d Vieira explained.<\/p>\n

In the case of favelas, the new MP incentivizes the government to sell plots to beneficiaries instead of improving conditions of these informal residential communities that have long been abandoned by the government<\/a>. \u201cIt is a perverse logic within a larger neoliberal framework that does not guarantee\u00a0any right or access to decent citizenship<\/a> with dignity for the majority of the population, meaning that families are going to suffer brutal pressure from capital in order to possibly maintain their land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Fernanda<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Nascimento focused on the social impacts of the new legislation. Although land disputes have been common\u00a0since Brazil’s\u00a0colonial founding, he declared the debate concerning land will become an overwhelming factor in the ability for indigenous and quilombo<\/a>\u00a0communities\u00a0to survive and thrive. Following the philosophy of sovereignty, Nascimento highlighted that land is a key element within the right to not only protect\u00a0oneself from outside forces but to sustain one\u2019s livelihood. The conflict that is currently surging in Brazil is not new and it deals with land, the key for people to claim sovereignty and to sustain themselves and survive. \u201cWe need to realize that we are not only losing land, we are losing culture too, and we are losing our biodiversity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The last speaker on the panel, Maria L\u00facia de Pontes, emphasized how vulnerable Brazil could become to foreign interests in the coming years. Like the Dilma and Lula administrations that had been criticized<\/a> for collaborating heavily with international companies, the new MP\u00a0will allow foreign entities to buy publicly owned land despite the social rights of Brazilians. This move was seen by panelists\u00a0as clearly demonstrating the current administration’s\u00a0disinterest in improving\u00a0the lives of favela residents. \u201cThese are people who do not dream about a new year model car, they dream of having proper security over their land and that dream is being threatened,\u201d Pontes\u00a0insisted.<\/p>\n

Each of the speakers criticized recent trends decreasing\u00a0Brazil’s lowest income groups’ access to land and\u00a0housing and called on audience members to remain vigilant\u00a0and active in response to current trends and\u00a0policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clique aqui para Portugu\u00eas On December 22, 2016, President Michel Temer revised a law that specifically regularizes\u00a0urban and rural land owned by the federal government, notably eliminating requirements for upgrading infrastructure on those lands. The […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":36807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1267,1854,1668,2242,1333,336],"tags":[449,842,698,2122,715,1033,434,936,354,2388,69,2413,450,2368],"writer":[2373],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-36797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gentrificationwatch","8":"category-housingwatch","9":"category-participationwatch","10":"category-democracy","11":"category-event-reports","12":"category-violations","13":"tag-constitution","14":"tag-debate","15":"tag-federal-government","16":"tag-housing-law","17":"tag-indigenous","18":"tag-land-rights","19":"tag-land-tenure","20":"tag-land-titling","21":"tag-law","22":"tag-mp-759","23":"tag-public-defenders","24":"tag-public-defenders-housing-nucleus-nuth","25":"tag-quilombo","26":"tag-rural","27":"writer-adriana-gonzalez"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36797"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=36797"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=36797"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=36797"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=36797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}