15. The petitioners explain that through a directive, [2] 2the Brazilian Government invested the “Palmares Cultural Foundation” with the authority to identify, demarcate and issue titles to the lands belonging to the remaining quilombo communities. However, the petitioners point out that while Brazil has over 1000 remaining quilombo communities, since October 1988 the “Palmares Cultural Foundation” has given only 18 communities definitive titles to their land. To make matters worse, say the petitioners, of those 18 communities that have received legal titles to their land from the “Palmares Cultural Foundation”, only about three of them have managed to get their titles registered with the “Office of Civil Records”, because Brazil’s civil records system does not recognize property titles issued to communities, against recorded property of old plantations and ranches, even if those communities have lived on the land for over a century. 16. The petitioners report, that the “Alcântara Launch Center” (CLA)[3] 3was created in 1983 to conduct and support the launch and tracking of aerospace operations, as well as tests and experiments of the Ministry of Aeronautics. To make this project possible, in 1980 the Government of the state of Maranhão declared[4] 4that the tract of land needed for the CLA project was to be expropriated for public use. That land was home to various quilombo communities. 17. The petitioners assert that although more recent data are not available, their estimates are that 3,600 families belonging to dozens of interrelated communities live within the area declared for public use or interest for the Launch Center. Moreover, even the communities outside the tract of land on which the Launch Center is located, sustained and are sustaining indirect damages caused by the establishment of that base, and by the Agreement concluded between Brazil and the United States on “Technology Safeguards Relating to the Use of the Alcântara Spaceport”.[5] 5 18. The petitioners argue that, with the signing of the Agreement on Technology Safeguards, the planned commercial use of the CLA facilities was made known. They describe a gradual change in the project’s objectives, which started as a national security project and then morphed into a commercial venture. 19. The petitioners report, that the predicament of the communities that live within the Alcântara territory is extremely difficult. For the petitioners, the dispossession of collective and ancestral lands is a vital issue, as are the adverse effects on the economic, family, cultural and religious aspects of the communities’ lives, salient among them the following: fishing is impossible; families cannot grow, and some members of the communities are not being allowed to visit the cemeteries where their relatives are buried. 20. For purposes of the present petition, the petitioners divide Alcântara’s traditional communities into three different groups: communities threatened with dislocation; communities threatened with destructuring, and dislocated communities. The area undergoing expropriation is divided into two areas, according to the petitioners: Area I and Area II. Area I is where the CLA installations are located, while Area II is the remaining land that the Brazilian Government is planning to expropriate. The CLA’s timetable for relocating nearly 400 families is in two 2 3 4 5 Directive 447, dated December 2, 1999. Created by Federal Decree No. 88,136, of March 1, 1983. Decree No. 7,820, of September 12, 1980. Signed on April 18, 2000. Regulates access to and use of the facilities at the Spaceport. 3