Mass movements are one of the main causes of loss of people and environmental assets. Several factors contribute to mass movements, such as terrain morphology, rainfall regime, soil properties, land use and occupation. Studies showed that in the Northeast region of Brazil, between the years of 1991 and 2012, 38 events related to mass movements were recorded, resulting in 55,963,164 people affected by these events. Based on this information, the aim of this study was to build a systematic review of mass movement and erosion events that occurred in the northeast region of Brazil and were reported in Brazilian academic sources. The research was based on the articles published by the Soils and Rocks Journal and the proceedings of the Brazilian academic events: Brazilian Congress of Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, the Brazilian Conference on Slope Stability and the Brazilian Congress of Engineering and Environmental Geology. A survey of all the articles involving the subject matter was conducted between the years of 1954 and 2019 using the key words Landslides, Mass Movements, Geomorphology and Engineering Geology. From the data found, it was possible to identify the main geotechnical characteristics of mass movement occurrences in the region and their causes.