Almost four decades after its creation, the action of INCRA in the Amazon region shows a double paradox. Firstly, although the human occupation of that region was a strategy of the military regime, it was after democratization that the agrarian reform policy intensified the settlement of peasants in the Brazilian Amazon. Secondly, the institutionalization of policies aimed at protecting the environment, which has increased during the last two decades, is contradictory with social protection, which is also a result of the democratic regime. Social protection (which in rural Brazil is very much related to agrarian reform), and environmental protection are two contradictory aims of the re-democratization process after 1985. Due to its pattern of land ownership, the Amazon region is the focus of a public effort to promote social justice based upon a model of agrarian reform that inevitably leads to deforestation.