Neoliberal Native Lands? Temporal Discontinuities Land Allocation in Brazil

• In Event: Making Rights Claims: Environment, Land, Gender, and Sexuality - Who Claims and How?

Abstract

To what extent does neoliberalism hurt the allocation of property rights to native groups? This paper uses new micro-level data on native land titling from Brazil from 1988 to 2017, a country that has apportioned about thirteen percent of the national territory to autochthonous collectivities, to test whether neoliberal governments undercut native land titling. Native land titling is analyzed using event history analysis. The results show that the risk of titling is higher in neo-liberal administrations, even after controlling for environmental value, agricultural potential, mineral wealth, and hydrocarbon deposits in the land. In addition, we found that external pressure is a major driver of titling. This suggest that democratically elected neo-liberal governments are more like to relent to external pressure than the left to title ethnic lands.

Author

• Giorleny Altamirano Rayo, Department of Labor