Banca de DEFESA: BEATRIZ MENDONÇA DA COSTA

JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND AGRARIAN COUNTER-REFORM CONCEPTIONS FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PDS OSVALDO DE OLIVEIRA SETTLEMENT

agrarian reform, Landless Movement (MST), judicial power

The research is dedicated to understanding the ways in which the Judiciary actively participates in Brazil's land counter-reform policy. In order to reach this understanding, it is based on the hypothesis that, like the Executive and Legislative branches, the Judiciary also contributes to the policies of dismantling agrarian reform in the country, through evictions and denials of collective rights based on the traps in the constitutional text. The methodological approach is qualitative research based on a case study of the Osvaldo de Oliveira Sustainable Development Project, an environmentally differentiated settlement located in the city of Macaé in the north of the state of Rio de Janeiro. The territory in question has had its possession and ownership discussed in three court cases since 2009, in which the Judiciary reads and makes decisions based on arguments, mostly environmental and related to production, both supported by the institutes of the social function of the land and social interest. These categories are mainly discussed in the Public Civil Action, which is linked to the possession debate and contradictorily leads to arguments in favor of the families remaining in the settlement and arguments in favor of repossession by the former owner.