Forced Labor Common in Amazon
8/28/99
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Title: Forced Labor Common in Amazon
Source: Associated Press
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 28, 1999
Byline: Michael Astor
GUARAI, Brazil (AP) -- These days, Lazo Martins dos Santos and his son
know better than to accept offers of easy money clearing Amazon rain
forest. They did last year, and had to be rescued by federal agents.
Not all their companions were so lucky.
``Six men tried to escape and only three were ever seen again,'' says
Santos' 17-year-old son, Jose. ``If it wasn't for the federals we'd
probably still be there.''
More than a century after slavery was abolished in Brazil, forced
labor remains widespread, especially in the sparsely settled Amazon.
In dirt-poor towns like Guarai (pronounced gwar-aah-EE) in Tocantins
state, 1,000 miles northwest of Rio de Janeiro, men like Ze Maria earn
their living recruiting workers for big ranchers and plantation
owners. Brazilians call such a gang boss a ``gato,'' Portuguese for
cat.
Santos, Jose and 18 other men accepted job offers from Ze Maria back
in January 1998. He gave each an advance of 30 reals ($18) -- to tide
their wives over while they were away -- then they climbed into a
cattle truck for the ride to the Estrela de Maceio ranch 200 miles
away in the neighboring state of Para.
Once out in the jungle, where roads are few and some ranches are the
size of small nations, promises of good conditions disappeared. The
men lived in a lean-to, drank muddy water and had to buy on credit
everything from food to the tarpaulin they slept under.
When Santos asked for his pay at the end of the month, he was told
that his advance plus the things he had purchased cost more than he
had earned cutting trees. And, Ze Maria added, no one was leaving
without paying off his debts. He faced down complainers at gunpoint.
``In the city he's a Christian; out there he's got a gun up your rear
end,'' Santos says.
Six workers fled anyway -- two came back, and only one of the other
four was seen again. After spending nights in the jungle and slipping
past three armed checkpoints, he reached federal authorities, who sent
officers to free the rest.
Since 1995, when President Fernando Henrique Cardoso created the
Special Mobile Enforcement Group to combat labor abuses, 790 workers
have been rescued from slavery-like conditions. But human rights
defenders say the government has barely scratched the surface.
``For us to even learn of a slave labor situation a worker has to
escape,'' says the Rev. Henri Burin des Roziers, a French lawyer and
priest with the Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission. ``This can
mean walking 125 miles through the jungle with armed men on your
back.''
Debt servitude goes back to 1888, when Brazil became the last nation
in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery. Sugar and coffee
plantation owners began bringing in European immigrants -- many
of whom spent the rest of their lives paying off the cost of the
trans-Atlantic voyage.
In the late 1960s, the practice resurfaced in the Amazon. Ranchers
lured destitute manual laborers from Brazil's drought-ridden northeast
to cut down the jungle under a government-sponsored drive to develop
the region.
The Pastoral Land Commission estimates 100,000 people a year were used
as ``slave labor'' from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, when
pressure from environmentalists put an end to government financial
incentives for cutting down jungle.
Although it is generally believed forced labor declined dramatically
with the end of the incentives, activists say an upswing in logging
has revived the practice.
``I think there is less slavery than there once was, but there's still
so, so, so much. It's part of the culture,'' says Neide Cardoso
Oliveira, the first federal prosecutor to win conviction of a rancher
on slavery charges.
During her 18 months in Para, Oliveira managed two more convictions
for slavery, which Brazilian law defines as any situation in which a
worker is not paid and is physically impeded from leaving.
Although slavery is punishable by two to eight years in prison, no
rancher has spent a single day in jail. Instead, their sentences were
reduced to fines on appeal.
Worker advocates liken the punishment to a slap on the wrist and say
it mocks the efforts of the Special Mobile Enforcement Group.
``If you talk to the landowners, they don't think there's anything
wrong with what they're doing,'' says Claudia Ribeiro, one of the
agency's four regional coordinators. ``The sad thing is most of the
workers don't either.''
That was the case with Manoel Luis Martins Moreira, who was freed from
the Pantera ranch along with 12 others by Ribeiro's unit on May 7.
``When I got there, some of the men took one look at the situation and
left, but I felt that wasn't right,'' Moreira says. ``After all, they
fed us and gave us the advance.''
However, when he decided nine days later that he wanted to leave, the
gato threatened Moreira's life and forced him to stay.
``It's just how things are done around here,'' shrugs Diva Barbosa,
who runs the Pantera ranch with her husband, Nivaldo.
Barbosa says laws requiring housing with running water and electricity
for the workers just aren't practical on a ranch the size of hers. To
comply, they would have to build several barracks around the property,
or else just one barracks from which the workers would spend most of
the day just getting to work. Neither approach is workable, she
contends.
Besides, she says, the workers don't appreciate what they get now.
``We give them an advance. We pay to bring them here and we give them
lunch, and in the middle of the night they leave.''