BRAZIL: FIGHTING CONTEMPORARY SLAVERY
by Deborah Goldemberg
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 @ 16:56 UTC
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Summary:
Slavery and forced labor have long been an problem in Brazil, the last country in the world to abolish slavery (it did so in 1888). More than a century later, it would seem that debt slavery and forced labor, particularly in agriculture, are still frighteningly prevelent, especially in the Amazon, frontier States, and other areas where there are “favourable conditions” for it. According to Lucio Flávio Pinto, slavery is more prevalent in these frontier States due to the lack of proper law enforcemnt and absence of contemporary human rights norms.
Perpetratros of these atrocities can be economic agents, farmers, and businessmen operating through systematic means of exploitation akin to slavery for profit. Just recently, labor investigators and prosecutors in São Paulo uncovered and liberated adolescent slaves living in an abandoned school. Brazilian bloggers have been exposing and reporting widespread slavery, usually in the form of forced labor for agricultural business, especially through the award winning Repórter Brasil.
Read the full article here