Body-Territory Constitution

A Proposal for Brazil and Latin America

Colonialism created words, symbols, and abstractions capable of distancing the individual from their own Body-Territory.

It created the idea that the body needed to obey before feeling.
It created the idea that land needed to serve before living.
It created the idea that people needed to believe before participating.
It created the idea that wealth could leave the territory while the territory remained with the pain.

Often, the predatory explorer does not appear as an explorer. He appears as order, progress, faith, civilization, market, family, homeland, modernization, or development. He uses beautiful words to organize bodies in defense of causes that do not sustain the concrete life of those bodies.

That is why the Body-Territory Constitution is born from a simple question:

does public policy increase the real life of the citizen, or does it merely strengthen abstractions that capture the State?

Brazil already has a powerful Constitution. The 1988 Constitution affirmed citizenship, dignity, health, housing, social security, work, assistance, environment, and social rights. It opened a historic door. But now we can take the next step: bringing the real citizen to the center of the Constitution.

The real citizen is Body-Territory.

Has a body.
Has a home.
Has water.
Has electricity.
Has sleep.
Has food.
Has a neighborhood.
Has a biome.
Has family.
Has work.
Has data.
Has CPF.
Has memory.
Has Belonging Brazil.

The Body-Territory Constitution proposes that the State stop seeing only numbers, CNPJs, averages, GDP, contracts, speeches, and symbols of power. The State needs to see situated life.

This change also requires a material Secular State.

Brazil is constitutionally secular. This means that the State must protect the religious, spiritual, philosophical, and cultural freedom of all, without becoming an instrument of one specific faith, church, symbol, or doctrine. The intimate faith of people deserves freedom. The common public space deserves neutrality.

For this reason, the presence of exclusive religious symbols, such as the Christian cross in spaces of the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, needs to be rethought. The cross has been part of Brazilian history, but it was also used as a symbolic instrument of colonization, forced catechism, political obedience, and moral legitimation of forms of exploitation.

The issue is not to attack Christians.

The issue is to free the common State.

A Secular Body-Territory State can welcome all faiths in the bodies of people and remove exclusive symbols from places where the State decides for everyone. Instead of a religious symbol above public life, Brazil can place the Constitution, the biomes, water, children, Indigenous peoples, the diversity of the people, and the living map of the Brazilian Body-Territory.

Material Secular State is the State that protects faith without being captured by it.

This change is essential because many political groups still use “God, Homeland, and Family” to privatize the State in the name of a selective morality. They speak of God while defending policies that remove ground, water, housing, health, social security, and sovereignty from the people. They speak of homeland while handing over territory, data, strategic companies, and public resources. They speak of family while leaving families without time, income, home, and future.

The Body-Territory Constitution proposes another foundation:

God belongs to intimate freedom.
Homeland belongs to the living Body-Territory.
Family belongs to concrete care.
The State belongs to everyone.

Now informational technology allows us to implement a more concrete constitutional system. Brazil already has Pix, CPF, Cadastro Único, SUS, INSS, FGTS, public data, satellites, the Rural Environmental Registry, advanced banking systems, tracking capacity, artificial intelligence, digital platforms, and the Drex project.

The question is political:

will this technology serve to control the people or to free the Body-Territory?

The proposal of this block is clear: use public technology to sustain life, belonging, and democratic sovereignty.

The Body-Territory Constitution integrates the previous proposals into a single design.

DREX Citizen creates a layer of public economic metabolism, allowing money to reach the citizen directly, with transparency, traceability, data protection, and social purpose.

Jiwasa affirms the “we” as the basis of sovereignty: each person feels the State in their own Body-Territory, and the collective decides without capture by party, church, market, algorithm, or predatory leadership.

Base-Housing recognizes home, water, electricity, sanitation, and connectivity as the material ground of freedom.

INSS as Credit Without Debt transforms retirement into sovereign vital credit, protecting elders as Body-Territory Brazil, and not as an abstract expense.

State FGTS protects the worker in transition, freeing productive companies from part of the bureaucratic burden without abandoning the body that works.

IPB — Internal Product of Belonging measures development by the life Brazil sustains: health, time, housing, water, energy, biome, sovereignty, participation, and well-being.

Territorial Carbon recognizes the standing forest as living productivity, remunerating citizens, communities, Indigenous peoples, and municipalities that protect biomes, water, biodiversity, and climate.

High-Value-Added Company separates true production from financial capture, requiring final beneficiary disclosure, traceability, innovation, dignified work, added value, environmental responsibility, and return to the Body-Territory.

This integration can become a new constitutional chapter.

Article 1-A — The Federative Republic of Brazil shall recognize the Body-Territory as the concrete expression of citizenship, understood as the person situated in their body, housing, family, community, municipality, biome, data, work, culture, health, time, water, energy, food, belonging, and public participation.

In simple language: the citizen is not an abstraction. The citizen is situated life.

Article 6-J — The State shall ensure the Material Floor of the Body-Territory, composed of health, base-housing, drinking water, essential electricity, sanitation, food, social security, public connectivity, data protection, mobility, education, climate security, and citizen participation.

In simple language: freedom needs material ground.

Article 19-B — The Brazilian State shall adopt material symbolic neutrality in official spaces of public decision, ensuring full religious freedom to people and communities, without institutional adoption, privilege, or centrality of any exclusive religious symbol in offices of the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary.

In simple language: free faith in people, common State for everyone.

Article 164-I — Public retail digital currency, Pix, the Public Citizen Account, and equivalent systems may be used to operationalize DREX Citizen, sovereign social security, base-housing, labor protection, territorial carbon credits, social tariffs, care income, and public policies linked to the Body-Territory.

In simple language: public technology needs to serve real life.

Article 174-D — National planning shall use the Internal Product of Belonging as a complementary and guiding development indicator, measuring health, housing, water, energy, sanitation, time, dignified work, biome, territorial carbon, education, culture, digital sovereignty, participation, and well-being.

In simple language: Brazil needs to measure the life it sustains.

Article 225-H — Brazilian biomes, their waters, forests, riparian forests, wetlands, soils, living species, and green corridors shall be recognized as ecological Body-Territory, and the State shall ensure their connectivity, regeneration, species circulation, climate protection, and remuneration for ecosystem services.

In simple language: the right to come and go also belongs to living beings.

Article 170-F — The economic order shall distinguish high-value-added companies, generators of dignified work, innovation, productive sovereignty, and territorial benefit, from predatory structures based on opacity, financial capture, precarization, environmental damage, territorial concentration, and private transfer of public risks.

In simple language: producing is different from capturing.

Article 37-I — Every private or public structure that receives resources, concessions, subsidies, waivers, public credit, territorial control, or regulatory benefit shall identify its final beneficiary, responsible CPF, territorial impact, social counterpart, and return to the Internal Product of Belonging.

In simple language: whoever uses Brazil needs to appear before Brazil.

This Body-Territory Constitution is not a distant fantasy.

It is a proposal for the now.

Brazil already has digital infrastructure.
It already has scientific knowledge.
It already has SUS.
It already has Pix.
It already has debate on Drex.
It already has satellites.
It already has municipalities.
It already has biomes.
It already has Indigenous peoples.
It already has universities.
It already has public servants.
It already has social movements.
It already has technology to trace money, land, carbon, data, and public policies.

What is missing is a civilizational decision:

to place the Body-Territory above colonial abstractions.

This proposal can also inspire Latin America.

Latin America has been crossed by colonization, extractivism, slavery, forced catechism, financial dependency, cheap export of resources, and political capture by local elites associated with external interests. But it is also a territory of forests, mountains, rivers, Indigenous peoples, living cultures, creative youth, biodiversity, food, energy, science, art, and plural spiritualities.

The Body-Territory Constitution can be the beginning of a Latin American pact.

A pact for bodies with ground.
For connected biomes.
For sovereign data.
For public money serving life.
For high-value-added companies.
For territorial carbon credit.
For a material Secular State.
For respected Indigenous peoples.
For children with future.
For protected elders.
For workers with time.
For families with homes.
For cities with water.
For territories with voice.

Colonialism separated body and land.

The Body-Territory Constitution reunites them.

Colonialism placed symbols above life.

The Body-Territory Constitution places life at the center.

Colonialism created abstractions to capture the people.

The Body-Territory Constitution creates instruments to return the State to the people.

This is the New World that can be lived now.

It does not begin after a distant revolution.
It begins when we measure what sustains life.
It begins when public technology serves care.
It begins when faith stops capturing the State.
It begins when public money shows its path.
It begins when the standing forest pays.
It begins when the elder becomes vital credit.
It begins when the worker has protected transition.
It begins when home, water, and electricity become constitutional ground.
It begins when the CNPJ shows the CPF.
It begins when Brazil feels Jiwasa.

The Body-Territory Constitution is a proposal to free the Brazilian State from the kidnapping of abstractions.

And to return Brazil to the living body of us.

References and Foundations for Further Development

Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988 — citizenship, human dignity, social rights, Secular State, health, housing, social security, environment, social function of property, and rights of Indigenous peoples.

Brazilian Supreme Court, Theme 1086, 2024 — ruling on religious symbols in public buildings, important for the contemporary debate on Secular State, historical-cultural symbols, and institutional neutrality.

Central Bank of Brazil — Pix, Drex, Brazilian digital currency, financial system, and instant payments.

Law No. 8,080/1990 — health as determined and conditioned by food, housing, sanitation, environment, work, income, education, transportation, leisure, and access to essential goods and services.

Law No. 15,042/2024 — Brazilian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading System.

Brazilian Forest Code — Permanent Preservation Areas, Legal Reserves, native vegetation, and the Rural Environmental Registry.

Brazilian Federal Revenue Service — final beneficiary, corporate transparency, and identification of natural persons behind legal structures.

OECD / Beyond GDP — indicators of well-being, sustainability, inequality, and resources for the future.

UN / Beyond GDP — global proposals for measuring progress beyond GDP.

IPCC, AR6 Synthesis Report 2023 — climate change, emissions, land use, production, and consumption.

MapBiomas / SEEG — data on land use, deforestation, and Brazilian emissions.

Antonio Damasio — body, homeostasis, feeling, consciousness, and decision.

Alfredo Pereira Jr. — Triple-Aspect Monism.

Elinor Ostrom — governance of the commons.

Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum — development as real capabilities for life.

Ailton Krenak — critique of the separation between humanity, river, forest, territory, and life.