How to overcome the development deadlock in the Quilombo Vila Formosa, Brazil?

Abstract

Although Brazilian Quilombolas possess specific land rights referring to their past as African slaves, the realization of such rights often fails due to the absence of land surveys, clarified institutional competencies and the general lack of power under which minorities suffer. Additional factors such as an expanding commercial agriculture contributing to land and water degradation and new actors introducing new logics intransparent to traditional populations often aggravate the situation. In order to identify options for traditional populations to overcome a development-deadlock typical for peripheral regions, the case of a Quilombo in Pará/Brazil will be analysed that has been struggling since decades with conflicting land tenure legislations and institutions. Starting from an inter- and transdisciplinary qualitative research process, scenario building by backcasting can represent an innovative approach to organize the central conflicts which have to be solved in order to overcome the development deadlock of the Quilombo Vila Formosa in Pará.