ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a historical perspective to reflect on the process of land concentration and on the impacts of this process on the denial of land rights. It analyzes how the outcomes of social struggles are reflected in the 1988 Brazilian Constitution and legal system, including the social-environmental function of land and different property and tenure regimes. Land ownership in Brazil is highly concentrated, and it is this concentration that is the most important historical cause of land conflict and struggles for land in the country. Agricultural modernization was achieved by capitalizing large estates, which were granted access to credit and tax breaks, thus creating conditions for the acquisition of innovative inputs and mechanized agricultural implements. The multiplicity of land relationships, kinships, territorialities, ancestralities, traditions and cultural practices of a social identity and political subject are fundamental factors for inventing and reinventing places with respect to property and tenure rights.
