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Through the description of a biography of a land in a village located in central Myanmar, this paper analyzes the interplay between local land relations and government practices. In Myanmar, colonial and postcolonial land reforms and policies have partly changed land access for local populations. This case study focuses on a specific plot of land : originally held by a family of villagers in the 1950s, the plot was latter allocated by government agents to the couple who cultivated it via a land-lease arrangement. The land was afterward turned into a “vacant land” following the implementation of a military-socialist policy and is now the village’s football ground. Meanwhile, the parcel remained dependent upon local uses and regulations challenged by development issues that update the question of its status : common land, village land, or vacant land ? First, the plot’s biography enables to show successive and overlapping uses and status. Second, the unfolding of government practices (colonialists, military-socialists and post-democracy) are analyzed and confronted to local land relations and moral economy. Finally, the role of village headman is highlighted in regard to how land status are claimed and negotiated, concluding on the importance of local-government relations to understand the dynamics of social changes at play in this area.