INCRA’s Normative Ruling makes demarcation of quilombola territories unfeasible

In the August 31st edition of Brazil’s Official Gazette, the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA, Brazil’s Land Agency) published Normative Ruling 128, which, in practice, makes the process of demarcation and titling of quilombola [Afro-Brazilian traditional communities] territories more difficult.

The National Coordination of the Articulation of Rural Black Quilombola Communities (CONAQ) denounces that the measure “makes it unfeasible to enforce” the quilombola constitutional right to their territories by bureaucratizing the expropriation of properties in ancestral territories.

For the organization, Normative Ruling 128 is one more among a serie of attacks by the Bolsonaro administration against the quilombola population: “While still a candidate, the then-president promised to withdraw rights from the quilombola populations and has been fulfilling his promise since the first days of his term.”