The precarium (plural precaria)—or precaria (plural precariae) in the feminine form—is a form of land tenure in which a petitioner (grantee) receives a property for a specific amount of time without any change of ownership. The precarium is thus a free gift made on request (or precarius, whence "prayer") and can be revoked. The grantor can reclaim the land and evict the grantee at any time, and the grantee's hold on the land is said to be "precarious". (The adjectival form "precarial" is also used.) The precarium arose in the late Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages it became a legal fiction, and the two parties usually signed a contract specifying the rent or services owed by the petitioner. Some precaria eventually became hereditary fiefs. In the Merovingian period the feminine form (singular precaria) became common, but in the eighth century the term beneficium began to replace precarium, although the institutions were practically identical.
In feudalism, the use of church lands to support warriors contributed to the growth of precaria in the eighth century in Catholic Europe. Modern historians have sometimes called these lands fiefs; however, to the extent that they were church property and not property of the lord or king—although that was a flexible distinction in the ninth and tenth centuries—they were not fiefs. The distinction was between the right of ownership in the ecclesiastical manner (jure proprio et more ecclesiastico), which remained with the church, and the right of benefit and usufruct (jure beneficiario et usufructuario), which was ceded away.
Precaria is a concept suggested in the framework of the international campaign of the non governmental organisation Un techo para mi país, in English “A roof for my country," that designates allegorically an imaginary country which would be inhabited by all the poor people from Latin America, for pointing out the magnitude of this critical situation as opposed to the constitutional law of the region and the human rights system of international law (such as Bill of Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals).
This term has been used by the Ambassadors of Precaria: the writer Isabel Allende, the current President of Chile Michelle Bachelet and Bernardo Kosakoff, former director of CEPAL, among others, to raise awareness of poverty in Latin America and to highlight the inadequacy of the indexes which assess the satisfaction of basic needs of the individual. Recently Bernardo Kliksberg, adviser of the UNDP and co-author of "The People First", coauthored with the Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen, has joined the campaign "Precaria: a country that nobody knows" as a way to combat adequately poverty in the region.
I know what you want, you know what I need
Show me what I came for
There's only one thing you gotta do for me
Just promise not to stop when I say so
[2x]
Just promise (promise [? x]) [3x]
Stop when I say so
Are you gonna take that risk, take that risk?
'Cause we're only getting older
I said kiss my lips, kiss my lips, and do it all over
I know you weren't expecting this tonight
But baby that's me