Slaves in the Amazon – Part 1

Thousands of people are exploited by powerful Brazilian agricultural entrepreneurs. Inspections and blacklist abusers fail to address the phenomenon.

The rise of agrarian conflict afflicting the Brazilian Amazon has once again laid bare the social divide that persists in this region. Few powerful concentrate large tracts of land and benefit from their wealth, often causing irreversible damage to nature.

 Meanwhile, a large body continues to suffer hardship while waiting for the State to fulfil its promise to undertake the necessary reform. Only this alarming social inequality explains the phenomenon of slave labour to maintain a strong presence in certain
areas of northern and north-eastern Brazil.

For decades this practice finds its highest expression in the Amazonian state of Para. There, the Government of Brasilia proves unable to control the activities of powerful agricultural sector and the ubiquitous logging, mining and coal production. It is
difficult to quantify the extent of the problem. The authorities and police forces uncover only some cases.

In 2003, the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT)-linked to the Catholic Church and Bregeda in defending the environment, indigenous and peasant estimated that 25,000 people would be victims of the Slavic work in Brazil. Today no one venture an estimate, although
the permanent rescue of slaves attest that the problem persists.

"In every country in the world there is slave labour. The difference is that in Brazil we have made publicly that the problem exists, we have called by name and work to eradicate it. In other countries the economy is also stained by this phenomenon and not
recognizes so openly, "said Leonardo Sakamoto, one of the most renowned Brazilian specialists in the field.

It is true that the Government addresses this problem in all its rawness. In fact, reports on the rescue and aerating a blacklist of entrepreneurs and firms who use the inhuman exploitation of employees. And further: when a name is put into the list of public
scorn, now has 246 reported loses the right to receive loans from state agencies, and faces possible legal assaults promoted by the Labour Office or the Federal Prosecutor .

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Posted by Fouad Ashraf on Mar 21 2012. Filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry