People of Fundo and Fecho de Pasto: An Ancestral Way of Life

Decree 6.040/2007 establishes the National Policy for the Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities and defines Traditional Peoples and Communities as culturally distinct groups.

Automatic mapping of closed-off pasture territory in western Bahia.

From their ancestors, they learned to inhabit and coexist with the Gerais, as they call the Cerrado. This territory remains alive thanks to community care; they develop traditional cattle management practices, collect fruits, roots, and nuts, and protect the waters that feed the region.

At certain times of the year, cattle are released into the Cerrado; at other times, the Cerrado transforms into a space for gathering, cultivation, social interaction, and recreation.

Within the Corrente River Basin, there are over forty communities practicing traditional grazing systems (Fundo and Fecho de Pasto). These communities are located in both the Cerrado and Caatinga biomes, where land use dynamics differ.

The Three Kings' Day celebration is a vibrant part of the culture of the Cerrado peoples. Between December 24th and January 6th, groups of "kings" travel through the communities, from house to house, singing and playing music to announce the birth of the Baby Jesus and visit the nativity scenes.

At each stop, they are welcomed with coffee, biscuits, snacks, and shared experiences that strengthen community ties.

Deforestation continues at an accelerated and violent pace. Municipalities such as Correntina, Cocos, Jaborandi, São Desidério, Barreiras, and Luís Eduardo Magalhães are losing their native vegetation in an overwhelming way.

The waters are also disappearing; 3,050 stretches of waterways are dry—streams, creeks, springs, and headwaters—totaling 7,120 km of dead water, a distance equivalent to a journey between Brazil and Mexico (CPT et al. 2024).

In the municipality of Correntina, a single landowner holds authorization to extract 466.8 million liters of water per day. This authorization would be sufficient to supply populations equivalent to the municipalities of: 97 Correntinas, 226 Coribes, or 340 Jaborandis.

They fight to ensure that their ancestral ways of life continue to exist, ways of life that protect the Cerrado, sustain socio-biodiversity, and keep alive the waters that feed the São Francisco River, quenching the thirst of millions of people and animals, and supplying family farming.

They reveal the Cerrado, cared for by hands that have known it for generations, the territories in dispute, the faces that confront a development model that, in attempting to destroy the Fechos (enclosed natural forests), also destroys the waters and the lives of humanity.

For Fecheiros/as, the future can still exist, but it depends on the full recognition of their rights and the urgent defense of the Cerrado biome. What is at stake is not just land and water, but the continuity of a way of life, a biome, a living memory that endures despite everything.

"We continue hand in hand and will resist the systematic crime of eco-genocide against the Cerrado and its peoples. For those who came before us, for us, and for those who will come after us, we need the Cerrado standing to nourish our ancestry." March 2025.