The Serra da Canastra National Park - MG: Some proposals, conflicts and territorial uncertainties

Abstract

This article discusses some perspectives inherent to the National Park Serra da Canastra (NPSC) in Minas Gerais, mainly from proposals for that Integral Protection Conservation Unit from 2005 and from the 2nd Management Plan, as well as from developments in the peasant territories with the Interministerial Working Group (IWG) of 2006, which ratified the existence of a park with approximately 200 hectares. Thus, new tensions emerge regarding territoriality issues in the Serra da Canastra region, followed by mobilizations to defend the permanence of the peasantry in a ​​130.000 hectares area, which were not regulated in the years following the creation of the NPSC in 1972. In this respect, this research uses an extensive literature review of the legislation and the fieldwork in the region of Serra da Canastra to understand the land regularization process initiated by the environmental agency, which is:  the ICMBio in line with the most diverse mechanisms, i.e. legal and environmental reserve compensation linked to the interests of national and international mining and agribusinesses; the land-capital alliance is then amplified and it is expanded to a 'land-capital-environmental alliance, with the same exclusionary and repressive guise of the past. In this sense, the peasant resistance, through various strategies, reached the Federal Justice, the Public Ministry and the Public Defender which enabled the creation of the Serra da Canastra Truth Committee besides making it possible for technical expertise to map the "Canastreiros" from the point of view of the Rights of the Traditional Peoples and Communities. Thus, it is possible to mediate, and especially to understand the different facets of territorial conflicts to prevent the continuation of misconceptions which are sometimes called democracy.