Estrutura fundiária do Piauí: passado, presente e perspectivas.

Abstract

The lands that today form the State of Piauí were effectively occupied as of 1660, in a process whose preliminary stage, of implantation, only ends at the end of the XVIII century. It was only around 1780 that the social and economic structure of the territory that now corresponds to the State of Piauí appears relatively defined, after something more than a century of extensive and predatory exploitation of its lands and of systematic hunting for the Indians who inhabited it. In that period of approximately 120 years, the indigenous groupings of the region were practically decimated. At the beginning of the occupation, the area under the jurisdiction of Pernambuco still has serious conflicts between squatters and squatters, which determines the direct intervention of the Portuguese Crown in the affairs of the territory; the jurisdiction thereof is then transferred to Maranhao, which means victory for the squatters. As far back as 1701, therefore, two facts already marked the history of the Piauian land reality: the extermination of the Indians and the unregulated exploitation of a vast territory, with all the conflicts and contradictions that such practice could arouse.