Günter Mertins (1996):
Land Tenure Regulations and Land Tenure Forms in Latin America:

2.1 Public property

Public property in Latin America consists of two categories. One covers streets, waters, coastal strips, harbors, areas for national defense etc.; they cannot be sold, leased, granted, or mortgaged. The other covers all remaining state, province / departamento and community areas. While state lands (baldío) are allowed to be divided, sold, granted etc., this does not apply to the communal areas (ejidos) which arose during the colonial period (HENDRIX 1993, pp.2.).

The state lands are of especially great importance as reserve areas for all agrarian colonization forms. A well-known example is the development of large areas of the Brazilian Amazons, through small farm colonization projects (up to 100ha/farm), with various forms of settlement, up to grants of considerable estates (some over 100,000ha/farm), within the framework of large, tax-deductible projects (see, among others, COY 1988; KOHLHEPP 1987). Of greater importance in the destruction of damp-hot lowland forests is the illegal occupation, clearing, and usage (at least for now, still in the form of shifting cultivation) by spontaneous colonists, who have a share of approximately 53% of cleared forests in the Brazilian Amazons and 77% in the Amazon areas of the Andean lands (MERTINS 1991a, p.20).

State endeavors to declare especially valuable ecologic areas as national or nature parks, supported by international organizations or bilaterally, often fail or are evaded - due to insufficient controls and sanctions - by various user and interest groups (for example, rare wood or gold and diamond mining), or also for the layout of farms of various sizes (KOHLHEPP 1991). [FN 4]