Liminality and the processes for certifying communities descended from quilombos

Abstract

Article 68 of the Acts of Transitional Constitutional Provisions of the Brazilian Constitution recognizes the right of the country’s remaining quilombo communities to claim ownership of the land they live upon. The process for such recognition and the consequent bestowing of titles to such communities involves an arduous path riddled with conflicts and internal and external challenges to the community, considering that the granting of titles to the remaining quilombo communities represents a rupture with the historical process excluding the black population, entailing as it does social exclusion, exclusion from the owning of land, and exclusion from the recognition of rural black populations’ common use of the land. This article analyzes the liminality characterizing the legal and administrative procedures a community must implement in order to be recognized as the remains of a quilombo and certified as such by the Ministry of Culture’s Palmares Cultural Foundation. It also studies the steps required in the process to land title regularization and the obtaining of a land title issued by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform.