Associated Press / July 18, 2000
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil's government has canceled deeds to almost 2,000 large rural properties to alter the country's skewed land distribution, in which a small rich elite controls most of the land in this vast country.
Agrarian Reform Minister Raul Jungmann said Monday that 1,899 landowners had their deeds canceled, freeing up an area the size of Central America, after they failed to present documentation proving the land they claimed was theirs.
"We've put an end to all the mega-areas and large land holdings in Brazil today. I invalidated and definitively canceled 62 million hectares (153 million acres)," Jungmann said.
Property owners who had their deeds canceled are prohibited from selling or subdividing the properties, nor will they be allowed to use them as collateral for bank loans.
The government hopes to rectify some of the disparity in land ownership by taking control of the land, redistributing some to the landless, and making other tracts into parks.
Jungmann said, however, that court challenges would likely tie the process up for years, even decades.
"It may take some time, but at least we started," he said.
Over the years, a relatively small number of powerful families have acquired massive holdings -- sometimes the size of small European nations -- mostly in the sparsely populated Amazon and Central West. Many properties were acquired illegally, with forged documents and the help of local registry officials who destroyed the original land titles.
On June 14, the government asked 3,065 large landholders to provide proof of ownership as part of a campaign to strip landowners of properties obtained through forged titles, a common practice for centuries in Brazil.
The government also plans to develop a national land registry to better track land ownership after it has reviewed documentation of landowners who did prove ownership. Jungmann said he believed about a third of those documents would turn out to be false.
He said the government also planned to investigate registry offices where false deeds were recognized.
In Brazil, the richest 20 percent of the population owns about 90 percent the land, while the poorest 40 percent holds just 1 percent.:
