Cartography and Law in Territorial Formation and Property Configuration in Brazil

Abstract

The dialogue between cartography and law allows us to discuss and evaluate the historical consequences of land demarcation, titling, and registration in Brazil. This dialogue between areas of knowledge guides the development of interdisciplinary research, seeking to recover, in their respective areas, the historical path of techniques and regulation. Therefore, the discussion and the questions formulated in this research are related to the need for integration between systematic topographic mapping and cadastre; to the lack of topographic mapping; to legal problems of demarcation and titling of public and private lands; and the diagnosis of the current situation concerning cadastre and its relationship with the systematic topographic mapping. Thereby, this paper presents the arguments with which we establish a research project whose primary goal is to understand the historical consequences of the lack of topographic mapping in land demarcation and registration in Brazil and its relationship with the current regulatory framework. The analysis shared among researchers of this group denotes absences and contradictions, which point to the need to search for common conceptual elements, problematizations, and questions in identifying and solving problems.