Modern Day Slavery in Brazil: A Report from the Field
By Binka Le Breton - 13 August 2021 HEALTH AND SOCIAL POLICY
This is part of a forthcoming Global Policy e-book on modern slavery. Contributions from leading experts highlighting practical and theoretical issues surrounding the persistence of slavery, human trafficking and forced labour are being serialised here over the coming months.
This chapter provides a brief overview of modern day slavery in Brazil, a clandestine, criminal activity found in every corner of the country and involving activities as varied as illegal logging of valuable timber to harvesting the coffee supplied to well-known chains of coffee houses, or keeping undocumented immigrants in illegal sweatshops to produce garments for the fashion industry. In a continental sized country, with glaring social inequality and a history of racism and exploitation, what measures are being taken to repress and eradicate slavery, how successful are they, and how can they be improved? What role is played by the government at local, state and federal level as well as international organizations? What is the role of the public and private sectors, and of civil society? And in a world where so many competing crises vie for our attention, how can we ensure that the fight for humane treatment of our most vulnerable populations remains as one of our most urgent ongoing priorities?
It is August 2020 and a loudspeaker car is patrolling the streets of the hot little town of Timbiras, Maranhão, in the interior of the dirt-poor northeast of Brazil, bringing good news in a place where jobs are hard to find. The offer is breathtaking: steady work harvesting onions at a salary of 3000 reais a month, almost three times the normal wage. Along with several of his friends, twenty-year old Antonio signs up on the spot.
Two days later they join a busload of forty-two young men bound for Ituporanga in the distant state of Santa Catarina. After a five-day journey they arrive, full of hope and excitement and head for one of the local farms to start the great adventure. But the reality is very different from the dream. It is winter in the south, and there is frost on the ground. The men have no warm clothes, the work is grindingly hard, the overseers drive them relentlessly, and they sleep on old mattresses on the dirt floor of the barn. When payday comes around, they are presented with a steep bill for their bus fare, their food and their work tools, and the contractor brooks no argument. Although he doesn’t know it, Antonio has become a victim of modern day slavery, and It takes several weeks before he admits to himself that he has been tricked. So he does the only thing he can think of. He sends an audio message to his mother by Whatsapp, begging for help.
It’s a sad old story that has changed very little since the late nineteenth century rubber boom, when young men like Antonio were lured into the farthest reaches of the Amazon forest to tap rubber in exchange for their supplies, in a never ending cycle of debt. Or the 1970s when the military government was opening the vast regions of Amazonia promising “land without men” for “men without land,” and proposing a model of economic development based on logging, ranching and mining. All of these activities required a large amount of manpower easily available, then as now, from the impoverished northeastern states.
In response to the government's promise of land, waves of migrants swept into the region, some to make their fortunes, others to eke out a hardscrabble existence in the unfamiliar jungle, and yet others to trade the only thing they had, their labor, for some sort of a living.
When the Amazon frontier was opening up, this is how the system worked, and fifty years later little has changed. Young men like Antonio are still enticed with promises of adventure and good money. To sweeten the deal, they are given a cash advance, and, from that moment on, they are trapped. They are then transported to their workplace, by truck, bus, train or even by plane. Conditions on the job are generally precarious in the extreme. If they are in the forest, they will likely string their hammocks under a plastic sheet, work from dawn to dusk, eat a poor diet, drink dirty water, and suffer from mosquito bites, malaria, and work-related accidents. Divided up into small teams to keep them from any thoughts of rebelling, they are “protected” by armed overseers under the guise of security guards.
More:
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/13/08/2021/modern-day-slavery-brazil-report-field
= new reply since forum marked as read
Wow, this is my post number 11,000! How'd that happen? 
No doubt they've been pushed to white wash it here, and only see it outside the country, even when US multinationals are deeply involved.
You're starting to look like a DU veteran! Congrats. 
