There was a time when there were no fences and no limits on the Brazilian cerrado in the north of the Minas Gerais state. It was a "general land", for everybody. The "gerais", in Portuguese. In this area, the people, the "geraizeiros", picked fruit, pieces of wood and medicinal herbs, raised their cattle, made their farms, their orchards, their homes. By the end of the 80's, the community of Vereda Funda, in Rio Pardo de Minas, saw their lifestyle crumble down when the government handed these public lands to the monoculture of eucalyptus trees. The cerrado was deforested. River springs dried down, streams stopped flowing. For more than 20 years, there was a fight for the right to the water and the land, which ended in a victory for the community people, who know work to rebuild their original place.