Collective Land Rights Among Brazil’s Quilombos

Why do collective land-titling efforts advance in some places but stall in others? Focusing on Brazil’s quilombos, Afro-descendant communities with constitutional rights to collective land ownership, this talk examines how state institutions, landed elites, and community organizers shape the legal recognition of land. Drawing on quantitative evidence, fieldwork, and interviews, Clara Bicalho shows how local mobilization, civil society alliances, and territorial conflict influence the success of land claims.

Clara Bicalho (she/ela/ella) is a Tinker Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Latin American Studies. She received her PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on comparative politics, land governance, and political participation in Latin America, with particular attention to collective land titling among quilombos in Brazil. Her work has appeared in Science Advances, World Development, and Political Analysis.

Illegal Markets and Organized Crime in Latin America

Why do some Latin American countries experience extreme levels of violence, while other maintain comparatively moderate crime rates? Marcelo Bergman argues that illicit economies and limited state capacity help produce two distinct patterns: high-crime and low-crime equilibria. This framework offers a sharper explanation for persistent cross-national variation in violence and highlights why effective crime prevention must be tailored to local institutional conditions.

Marcelo Bergman is a professor and the director of the Center for Latin American Studies on Crime and Violence as well as the Master’s program in Criminology and Public Security at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. He holds a PhD in Sociology from UC San Diego. His research examines criminology, public security, tax compliance, and polarization, and he has conducted research in more than 15 countries across the region.

This is event is co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab, Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law.