Officially, as every
Brazilian schoolchild knows, it was abolished in this country on the 13th of May,
1888.
That was the date upon which Princess Isabel, the daughter of Dom Pedro II,
signed the Lei Áurea (Golden Law) that put an end, forever,
to the practice in her father’s empire.
Or so the official story
goes.
Now, if by slavery you
mean the outright and legal ownership of one human being by another human
being, the story is certainly true.
But, if you by slavery
you mean a practice in which people are forced to exercise an activity against
their will under the threat of starvation, or physical harm, or even murder, then
it’s not.
This is one example of what
it looks like.
And here’s another.
And still another.
It’s not that people are
unaware of the fact that modern agricultural slavery is currently going on in Brazil.. Here’s a recent cartoon on the subject:
On the left, it says, “Brazil,1723;
Manoel, a slave, cuts sugarcane more than twelve hours a day. The only thing he
receives in exchange for his labor is a roof over his head and food.”
On the right: “Brazil,
2011; Manoel, who isn’t a slave, cuts sugarcane twelve hours a day and receives,
in exchange for his labor, money insufficient for his food and lodging.”
It’s a condition bringing suffering to young and old alike, and there are strict laws against it.
But in certain more isolated parts of the country, the local
landowners are more powerful than any law.
Here, for example, is how it
generally works in the State of Amazonas:
Agricultural workers
from surrounding states like Bahia, Piauí and Maranhão are recruited by people (called
gatos - cats) who promise them good
incomes and work conditions. Those who accept are loaded into buses and
transported hundreds of kilometers to remote farms. And it’s only when they get
there that they discover they’ve been sold a bill of goods.
Their every “expense”
from initial transport, to lodging, to food, to medical care, to the tools they
use for work, to small “luxuries” like soap, cigarettes and batteries for their
radios are sold to them, on credit, at exorbitant rates.
With each successive
payday, their debts to their employers rise.
And, if they attempt to
flee, armed capatazes capture them,
bring them back, beat them, sometimes even kill them to discourage others from
committing the same “crime”.
Recently, the government
has been rescuing about 4,000 people a year from this kind of servitude.
But no statistics exist to
tell us how many are still out there, right now, still suffering this kind of abuse.
Leighton - Monday
