By James A. Fraser, Lancaster University
When sixteen forest communities along Brazil’s River Manicoré won legal recognition of their Território de Uso Comum (TUC, the country’s first territory based on the common use of land, forest and rivers) in 2022, it was the culmination of more than a decade of grassroots organizing. Women leaders from the Central Association of Agroextractivists of the River Manicoré (CAARIM) began meeting on boats and riverbanks back in 2006, concerned about how industrial logging and land grabbing were poisoning land, water, and minds. Sixteen years later, their persistence reshaped land law in Amazonas state and, potentially, the future of territorial governance across the Amazon Basin.
In 2025, the Brazilian federal government adopted the TUC model as a framework for regularizing traditionally occupied lands in public forests. It’s a remarkable story, the convergence of a local struggle with a juridical innovation which have influenced the creation of a national policy. But the TUC is also conceptually innovative, for thinking about territory, recognition, and social and environmental justice.
For decades, land rights in Brazil’s Amazon have been recognized through categories tied to conservation (Extractive RESEX or RDS) or identity (Indigenous and Quilombola territories). While these have offered crucial protection, they also exclude many forest peoples, ribeirinhos and beiradeiros (river-bank inhabitants), and castanheiros (Brazil-nut harvesters), whose mixed ancestry disrupts official, colonially-derived, categorization.
The TUC has potential to transcend these issues. It recognizes territories not through identity categories but through common use; the collective, intergenerational practices of cultivating, hunting, fishing, and gathering in the forest. As one community member explained, “We live collectively. We fish here, farm there, hunt across the river. If land were divided, we’d become invaders of our own territory.” This collective principle defines the TUC: it is both practical and political, binding communities together against the fragmentation that so often accompanies state recognition.
Our recent Geo article interprets the TUC through the lens of insurgent universality, drawing on Frantz Fanon’s idea of concrete universal humanity. This means that a truly universal human community cannot be proclaimed in the abstract; it must be materially created by dismantling colonialism and racism. What Europe calls “universal” is partial and exclusionary, so the formerly colonized must participate as full subjects in building a new, genuinely universal world. In other words, universality becomes real only when those historically dehumanized help define it. Hence, Fanon saw freedom as emerging not from abstract rights but from lived struggle—the demand for human recognition made by those historically denied it.
In this sense, the TUC exemplifies a universalism from below. It unites Indigenous and non-Indigenous forest peoples around shared practices of living well in and with the forest. This insurgent universalism challenges both the false universality of capitalist development, freedom understood as the right to exploit, and the abstract universalism of liberal rights frameworks that treat humanity as an ideal detached from lived realities. Rather than rejecting universality, the TUC redefines it: as something forged collectively in struggle, rooted in place, and open to all who share the work of sustaining life.
The TUC’s creation echoes earlier Amazonian insurgencies. In 1930, caboclo and Indigenous workers rebelled against a rubber boss, Colonel Lindoso, who ruled the River Mataurá through violence and debt bondage. Their uprising, an “Indian-caboclo alliance,” prefigures today’s identity-transcending struggles. Both movements share the same horizon: freedom understood as the right to live collectively, according to one’s own ways, without domination. These histories remind us that Amazonian resistance is not new. The TUC formalizes, in law, a freedom long practiced by forest peoples in everyday life.
The TUC also has considerable environmental significance. Studies consistently show that deforestation rates are lowest where land rights are secure. By recognizing collective tenure and self-management, the TUC strengthens both climate mitigation and adaptation. It secures the conditions for forest peoples’ autonomy (Fanon’s ‘existential freedom’) while defending the forest as a living system vital to planetary health.
Although born in the Brazilian Amazon, the TUC has wider resonance. Forest peoples across the Congo Basin, Southeast Asia, and beyond face similar challenges: fragmented recognition, external control, and extractive pressures. The TUC’s model of common-use recognition suggests a path forward—one that values autonomy and cooperation over identity policing and market mechanisms.
By institutionalizing collective self-governance, it bridges the divide between social justice and environmental governance. It also revives a neglected insight from Fanon: if universality is to be emancipatory it is not given from above but created through struggle.
Despite its promise, the TUC remains precarious. Illegal loggers have already cleared thousands of hectares, and the state’s failure to intervene leaves residents vulnerable. As one activist noted, “The only thing worse than being seen by authority is not being seen.”
The Território de Uso Comum shows how the defence of the forest and the defence of collective human freedom are inseparable. In a world facing deepening ecological crisis, the TUC offers a vital lesson: universality can be insurgent, born from below, and grounded in the shared work of caring for the commons.
About the author: Dr. James A. Fraser works on the political and historical ecology of tropical forests, agrarian change, and struggles for recognition in Amazonia and West Africa. He holds a PhD in Environmental Anthropology from the University of Sussex, taught at Lancaster University in the UK for twelve years, and has held various visiting fellowships in institutions in Brazil and Colombia. His research has explored themes of sustainability, justice, and socio-ecological resilience, with a strong focus on collaborative work with forest peoples. Dr. Fraser is also engaged in postgraduate training and participatory research in Latin America, mentoring students and fostering cross-cultural academic exchange.
Suggested further reading
Fraser, J. A., M. Torres, L. Parry, et al. 2025. “ The Amazonian Common Use Territory: Pluriverse or Insurgent Universality?.” Geo: Geography and Environment. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70043.
Rigkos-Zitthen, I. & Kapitsinis, N. (2025) On commons, state institutions and capitalism. The Geographical Journal. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.70023
Shokrgozar, S. & Sareen, S. (2025) ‘Fine, you made your energy, but how much did we have to pay for this?’ Embracing situated energy ecologies for pluriversal futures. Geo: Geography and Environment. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70020
How to cite
Fraser, J. A. (2025, December) Common use and collective freedom: Amazonian Forest Peoples reimagine the commons. Geography Directions. https://doi.org/10.55203/ZETH9196
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