The current debate concerning the Legal Amazon in Brazil suggests that deforestation is a multidimensional phenomenon. Many studies have analysed deforestation in this region in the economic and institutional spheres, treating them jointly or separately. However, in addition to including family structure and social aspects, this work seeks to identify the multiple configurations that potentially lead to deforestation. We applied exploratory statistical techniques to analyse the 762 municipalities located in the Legal Amazon and to extract four characteristic dimensions, namely, economic development, family labour farming, property and rural density and openness to trade. One of the main results suggests the logical configuration between high economic development and the number of establishments occupied by squatters, with high rural populations covering 54% of the municipalities analysed, which is highly consistent (84%) with the high deforestation in the Legal Amazon.