Modern-Day Slavehouse - Article originally published in the February 2008 edition of Rolling Stone Brazil magazine Brazilian employers using slave labor find support in the Congress to have their names off the so-called “Dirty List”. The author, the journalist Carlos Juliano Barros, closely follows the slave labour question throughout Brazil. Translation: ILO office Brasilia The workers arrive at the farm in the back of a truck, after long hours on the road. As soon as they see the area to be cleared, they start their first task: building their own shelter. Only then they can rest their depleted bodies in hammocks, protected from the sun and the rain by a black tarp hold by wooden sticks. Their day- to-day life is harsh and requires energy. The rice and beans eaten regularly for lunch and dinner never appease the hunger. The water used to cook, clean their bodies, and drink comes from the same source used for the animals trying to cool down. The cigarette packs and the liters of aguardente (Brazilian distilled alcohol) bought at overpriced rates at the local market slowly eat-up the long-awaited end-of-month payments. Also carefully registered in a little notebook is the cost of transportation, which seemed such a nice gesture from the boss. By the end of the day, the roles are reversed; it is the employee who owes the employer. Only two options remain then: to work, or to run away. This narrative could have been extracted from a movie script with strong images showing the horrors of a distant land – a place where there are no limits to the exploitation of human beings. However, the tragedy is not that far away. On the 120th anniversary of the day Princess Isabel abolished slavery in Brazil, the numbers of persons who, to this day, still work under forced-labor conditions on plantations in the Brazilian countryside is not negligible. Since 1995, when the Brazilian Federal Government acknowledged before the United Nations (UN) the existence of forced labor in the country, more than 27,000 people have literally been freed in operations performed by groups known as “mobile inspection teams” of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE). Formed by inspectors and Labor public agents, as well as federal law enforcement officers, who ensure the safety of the expeditions, such operations are performed without warning and can last for days. In general, they are initiated from anonymous tip by someone who has escaped from a plantation to a labor union or to a human rights protection agency, which then warns authorities in Brasilia. Last year, official statistics reached record numbers: 5,877 individuals were rescued. This statistic leaves no doubt as to the contemporaneousness of the problem. The modern-day slave masters are not small producers with no spare money to pay for the expenses of their workers, as one could hastily think. On the contrary, they are capitalized investors and large corporate groups insisting on recruiting desperate workers, not respecting their basic rights. The goal is simple: to increase profits to the nth degree. Even representatives of the public authority are involved in the problem, as it is the case of Senator João Ribeiro (PR –TO) and the congressman Inocêncio Oliveira (PR-PE), to name a few important people from the national political scene. Both have been involved in judicial proceedings deriving from the mobile inspections which found forced labor on their lands. The identity of such bad and sometimes prominent employers only come to light thanks to the feared “dirty list” of the MTE. Regulated by the Decree 540/2004, the list is a registry of employers found practicing such crimes, and it is updated on average at every six months. In its more recent edition, available on the labor ministry website, the list makes public data on 189 individuals and corporations involved in these irregularities. For a better understanding of the power of these employers, one of the largest producers of dairy products in the country, Leitbom, is on the most recent edition of the list. Also on the list is the Grupo Soares Penido, which controls the transportation company Viação Passaro Marron, among others. Once on the dirty list, violators remain there for at least two years. If all pending issues are resolved during this period, the name may finally be taken out. “There is no record anywhere else in the world of a registry like this. It is the main tool in the fight against forced labor in Brazil, since from this list it is possible to create a series of policies to eradicate the problem,” says Andrea Bolzon, coordinator for the International Labor Organization (ILO). To explain how someone ends up on the dirty list, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by modern slavery. We are not just talking about people who work extra-hours or who are informally employed. The victims are poor rural workers, illiterate and many times undocumented. Seduced by “can’t miss” offers of employment made by middlemen, known as “gatos”, recruiters who are well known faces in poor counties of the States of Maranhão and Piaui, the victims end up in plantations, located especially in the countryside of the States of Pará, Mato Grosso and Tocantins. This is the area known as “the Amazon agricultural frontier,” where the native forest is cleared, giving way to the vast agricultural development. And from these places, workers cannot leave until their tasks are completed. Clearing the forest for starting new plantations; preparing the pasture that makes Brazil the largest beef exporter in the world; preparing charcoal that will feed mills selling pig iron to China and the United States; cutting ethanol raw material that will supply the national fleet of flex-fuel vehicles; pulling out roots for the soybean plantations traded by multinational corporations. Basically, these are the activities performed by the workers “living under conditions equivalent to those of slaves,” as defined by the Penal Code. Article 149, which characterizes this crime, foresees incarceration from two to eight years to violators, but it is possible to count on the fingers of one hand those individuals who have ended up behind bars. In most cases, sentences are converted into fines or the distribution of basic food baskets. What the mobile inspection teams find, unusually after hours traveling through precarious roads in the same property, can be touching, as the conditions described in the first paragraph of this article. Since when something goes wrong, more of the same follows, workers are also deprived of their freedom, either due to the constant armed surveillance, retention of their documents by the management, or the invincible distance to the nearest town. However, what happens most frequently is that they are bonded to debts fabricated in shops located in the plantation, where they buy their food and tools, which, according to the law, should have been provided for free by the employer. All these real absurdities – which modern-day slaveholders prefer to call simply as “local costumes” – result in infraction documented by the mobile inspection team. After answering to a MTE administrative process, if it is proven that the landowner has really been exploiting slave labor, the owner will then have his/her data, such as taxpayer Id number (CPF) and name, included in the dirty list. However, these processes can take some time. For example, the Ouro Verde ranch, property of Senator João Ribeiro, the sole congressman in the current edition of the list, was inspected in February 2004, but was only added to the dirty list two and one half years later. In the occasion of the operation, 38 workers were found living in a shelter made of palm tree leaves, with no bathroom, on a property located in the municipality of Piçarra, south of Pará state. According to the report written by the mobile inspection team, “they were forced to buy on the plantation their own working tools and protective equipment, such as boots, hats, and gloves, besides having their IDs retained, which characterizes conditions similar to slavery.” The said Senator did not miss the opportunity to defend himself in the Congress. In a speech, he claimed that formal employment and shelter under good conditions do not correspond to the reality of the region, where “the majority of the population lives in a situation of misery and abandonment.” He even asked work ministry inspectors for lenience “towards those rude country man who have not yet adapted to the new times.” João Ribeiro was judicially charged by a lower court to pay indemnification for collective pain and suffering damages in the amount of $760 thousand Brazilian reais. However, he has appealed and the Regional Labor Court (TRT) of the State of Pará has reduced the amount by 90%. The appeals court judges have also understood that the conditions found in his property did not characterize slave labor, but “only” degrading labor. Having already paid the debts to his employees, when the inspection came to the Ouro Verde, the senator appealed one more time the sentence, claiming that the $76 thousand Brazilian reais did not make sense. The case now awaits in a long line of processes to be judged by the Labor Supreme Court (TST), the court that makes the final decision. “The only prediction that can be made is that it will take time”, says Luis Antônio Camargo, deputy attorney general to the Public Ministry of Labor. According to his press secretary, João Ribeiro is considering selling the property to avoid new surprises and more problems. The slave labor procedure involving the former president of the chamber of deputies, Inocêncio Oliveira, is also waiting in the TST.