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. In 2002, the congressman had to pay more than $30 thousand Brazilian reais to settle the debts with the 54 workers found on his Caraibas property, located in Maranhão. Curiously, among the employees rescued by the mobile inspection team, some were wearing T-shirts from Olivera’s political campaign, who has accumulated nine consecutive terms as member of the federal house of representatives. Sadder than curious was the rescue of a 14-year-old teenager in roço de juquira, as the task of clearing the undergrowth is commonly known. In June 2006, Oliveira was sentenced to pay $300 thousand Brazilian reais for collective pain and suffering damages. Just like his colleague João Ribeiro, Oliveira has appealed the sentence, trusting the Justice System; however, unlike the senator, Oliveira claimed he had already sold his property.

The list of politicians who have had their names on the dirty list does not stop there. Congressman of less prominence have also suffered the embarrassment of taking office with their image tainted by slave labor, as it is the case of Augusto Faria (PTB-AL). He is brother of the deceased and notorious P.C. Farias, treasurer of the campaign that led Fernando Collor de Mello to the Palácio do Planalto (Seat of the Brazilian Government). In fact, it was actually the agricultural business Santa Ana Agropecuária, company belonging to his family and responsible for the plantation that bore the same name, in Cumaru do Norte (Pará), from where 99 workers have been freed, that appeared in the MTE dirty list. Augusto Farias and his sister were detained for a few hours in Marabá (PA). Even so, they left prison with the help of habeas corpus. Santa Ana Agropecuaria was removed from the list only in last October.

Leonardo Picciani (PMDB-RJ), current president of the Commission for Citizenship, Justice and Constitution of the Chamber of Deputies, is another politician who has one foot in the so-called modern slave quarters. He is a partner of Agrovás Agropecuária Vale do Suiá S.A., which also belongs to his father, Jorge Sayed Picciani, elected five times as state representative for Rio de Janeiro. The company is responsible for a plantation in São Félix do Araguaia (Mato Grosso), from where the mobile inspection team has freed 39 workers. Agrovás remained in the dirty list from December 2004 to the end of 2006.

The stories described above are not the final results of the mathematics that equate public men and slave labor. A survey carried through by the NGO Reporter do Brasil, specialized in the subject, shows that, in the last election, five members of the Federal Chamber of Representatives received donations from employers listed on the dirty list. They are: Abelardo Lupion (DEM-PR), Dagoberto Nogueira Filho (PDT-MS), Eunício de Oliveira (PMDB-CE), Giovanni Queiroz (PDT-PA) and Olavo Calheiros (PMDB-AL). The same findings were identified in the campaigns for the governors from the Workers Party Marcelo Déda, from the State of Sergipe, and Ana Júlia Carepa, from the State of Pará.

It is important to highlight that there is no indication that these conjointly efforts have any hidden motive, or that they may have resulted in any kind of advantage to the donors. But they can be seen as a vote of confidence to someone that defends the interests of the class, such as the congressman and landowner Abelardo Lupion. Known as one of the most important representatives of the rural group in the Chamber of Deputies, he is a strong opponent of a proposed constitutional amendment that foresees the expropriation of lands where slave workers are found. The idea has been dragging for over a decade in the Congress. And, if one day it passes, it will hardly be approved as wanted by the entities fighting these crimes.

The truth is that, if there was no dirty list, narratives such as the abovementioned would hardly have the repercussion they deserve. Claudia Márcia Brito, inspector auditor who has coordinated the mobile team for several years, argues: “This list is a very effective tool in the fight against slave labor because, besides the moral punishment, it also implies economic sanctions.”

Being added to the dirty list is hard to accept. If a person or a corporation is included in the list, it becomes automatically prohibited from receiving funding from public entities, such as from Banco do Brasil and Banco do Nordeste. The company owned by congressman Augusto Faria, for instance, was prohibited from withdrawing $755 thousand Brazilian reais requested for the Department for Amazon Development (Sudam). “It was very common, during inspections, to find signs showing the property was receiving public funding, especially in large plantations,” says Cláudia.

Some private financial institutions have also been taking similar measures, considering the use of slave work as a risk factor when evaluating financial applications for funding. In December 2005, the president of Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban) signed a declaration of intent recommending its members the adoption of restrictive measures to those included in the dirty list.

Exposing in public the identity of employers exploiting workers has always resulted in a flood of injunctions and judicial actions against the MTE by entrepreneurs that desperately try to remove their names from the list. Their lawyers argue, among other things, that banning public bank financing is a penalty, and as such it should be anticipated by the law. Thus, their roles would change from violators to victims. “However, public authority must comply with the principles of morality and publicity. This list is just information that the authority is constitutionally obliged to disclose” refutes the deputy attorney general of the Labor Public Ministry.

“The fight against slavery through common Justice has always been of little consequence. However, the dirty list has affected bad employers where it hurts the most: their pockets”, summarizes Brother Xavier Plassat, member of the coordinating unit of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), the most important civil society organization dedicated to the problem. “With the threat of losses, i.e. no access to credit, or not being able to sell products, employers have started to consider slave labor more seriously”, adds Ruth Vilela, Chief of the Labor Inspection Secretariat (SIT), responsible for the coordination of the mobile inspections.

A recent proof of how the dirty list has threatened the economic soundness of those caught involved with slave labor is the case of the Pagrisa Plant, located in the municipality of Ulianópolis, at 390 kilometers from Belém (Pará). On July 30, 2007, the mobile inspection team rescued 1,064 sugarcane workers from the plantation that supplied a distillery with capacity to produce 50 million liters of alcohol per year. It was the largest rescue on record since the fight against forced labor has been added to the agenda of the Brazilian State.

Less than a week after the inspection, Pagrisa suffered a blow by losing one of its major clients, none other than Petrobras. The measure was in accordance to Petrobras’ social responsibility policies, which includes a clause in every contract executed with its suppliers requesting full compliance to the Brazilian social and working standards.

The decision by Petrobras to discontinue the acquisition of alcohol from Pagrisa has kept awake not only the owners of the plant, but it has also echoed in the halls of the National Congress. The Senate approved the creation of a special commission composed by the house representatives worried with what was called “excess of inspections by the Ministry of Labor”, regarding the authorization to verify in loco the conditions of the distillery. They wanted to see up close if shelters were provided with open-air sewer system, and if the water supplied to the workers was the same used to irrigate the sugarcane plantation, as claimed by the auditors from the mobile team.

One of the leaders of the visit to Ulianópolis, senator Flexa Ribeiro (PSDB-PA) claimed, in interview to the Agência Senado, that the freeing of workers has led to “dissenting manifestations regarding the procedure used by the inspection team, especially among civil entities, local leaders and the population of the municipality, which are worried about the consequences of the lay-offs”. The result of the visit, which occurred almost two months after the mobile team rescue operation, the Congressmen were content with what they had seen. “All this pressure happened because Pagrisa may be added to the dirty list. If the list did not exist, these actions would not have happened”, argues Andrea Bolzon from ILO.

Ricardo Young, president of Instituto Ethos de Empresas e Responsabilidade Social, entity representing the country’s major corporations, has criticized senators’s attitude: “While the State is actually trying to comply with the international standards for decent work, as the ones established by ILO, the Senate, due to corporate lobbying, interferes in the action”.

The concern of the Legislature regarding the “procedures” of the mobile inspection team led to a crisis between the Congress and the Government Seat. The Chief of the Labor Inspection Secretariat, Ruth Vilela, has suspended the inspections in rural areas for almost one month, as a means to call attention to the embarrassment suffered by the auditors. “The company was not even included in the list, since the administrative processes are still in progress. The pressure put by congressmen is natural in a democratic system. Besides, democracy is made stronger when undue or unjust pressure does not affect other authorities,” she argues.

But this was not the first time when politicians have used their influence to help employers unhappy with the dirty list. The former president of the Chamber of Deputies, Severino Cavalcanti, the one that stepped down from office after the scandal of charging improper monthly payment from a restaurant owner, has personally intervened to benefit the Gameleira distillery, which is a kind of champion of slave labor, including stories of gunmen and beating. Located in the city of Confresa (Mato Grosso), the distillery was fined in five occasions by the mobile inspection team, which freed more than one thousand sugarcane workers in a single operation in 2005. As the case of Pagrisa, some fuel distributors have also cancelled their supply contracts after being warned about the exploitation of forced labor.

The Gameleira distillery was part of the pool of corporations by Grupo Queiroz Monteiro, headquartered in Pernambuco, same state where Severino was born and built his career. However, the interesting network of relations, to say the least, is even more interconnected. The member of the Federal Chamber of Deputies, Armando de Queiroz Monteiro Neto (PTB-PE), also president of the National Confederation of Industry (CNI), is the brother of the group founder that controls the facility and comes from the same region as Severino.

On the 1st of June, 2005, the former president of the Chamber called the National Association of Gas Distributors to find out about what was happening and inquiry on the breach of contracts. However, some companies, such as Ipiranga, decided not to continue buying ethanol from the plant. To try to remove its slavery image, the board of Gameleira has bought more lands and changed the name of the distillery to “Araguaia.” Only time will tell if they really learned their lesson.

For the experts interviewed by Rolling Stone, moving private initiative to suppress the modern slave masters from their list of suppliers is one of the most effective tactics in the fight against forced labor. “Companies are starting to realize that the dirty list can be an ally, as it circumscribes the problem. It is a way of protection. The industry knows that trade barrier can be built in the international market due to slave labor”, adds Andrea Bolzon.

One of the most significant steps towards it happened in May 2005, when the ILO, along with the Instituto Ethos and the NGO Repórter Brasil, launched the National Pact against Forced Labor. Currently, more than 100 companies have already signed the document by which they agree to remove from their productive chains inputs produced by forced labor. An important share of the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product is engaged in this fight, since Petrobrás, Vale do Rio Doce, Pão de Açucar, among other large corporations, have showed their commitment to the cause.

Adding sales and acquisition contractual clauses respecting proper labor standards is the most common measure adopted by companies. However, some corporations take a step further. The board of directors of Wall-Mart Brasil have meet with packing plants that supply their stores to ensure they check the dirty list when negotiating with a cattle producer. This fear has a good explanation. The vast majority of employers in the MTE dirty list are dedicated to cattle raising. One of the suppliers, who had suspicious commercial relations, was banned from the supermarket chain because it did not demonstrate interest in collaborating. “Our objective is to improve the ethical level of our productive chain. We want to have products free of slave labor in our shelves,” summarizes Paulo Mindlin, Director of Instituto Wal-Mart.

Another important example is that of the pig iron plant in Carajás, an area located between the states of Pará and Maranhão. The 14 plants in the area joined as members of the Charcoal Citizen Institute (Instituto Carvão Cidadão), created with the objective of auditing the working conditions of the coal pits that supply high furnaces of the industry. Since most of the production is exported, especially to steel industries in the United States, the fear of facing any commercial barrier justified by social problems has led the companies to take action. “Today, some of these plants are grateful for having been in the dirty list, because they started to consider their social responsibility as they had never done before. It has even had an educational impact,” explains Andrea Bolzon.

The progress achieved in the fight against slave labor since the creation of the dirty list has led other public sectors to copy, in a good sense, the initiative of the MTE. On December 22, the Ministry of Environmental (MMA) gave a Christmas gift to ecologists. The Environmental Minister, Marina Silva, announced the creation of a plan to fight deforestation in the Amazon that will monitor 32 municipalities considered high-priority cases for the preservation of the forest. One of the pillars of this new idea consists exactly in the disclosure of a list with the names of landowners who deforest trees beyond what is permitted by law.

Another agency participating in this endeavor is the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform (Incra), whose mission will be to update the registry of rural properties located in cities bounded by the MMA. To regulate the situation, landowners will have to provide geo-coded references of their lands, which will allow public authorities to verify whether deforestation has been illegal or not. Landowners not registering their lands again will be prohibited from performing any transaction with the properties. In addition, those caught red-handed, destroying the Amazon, shall be added to a new dirty list. Thus, beef meat or soy produced in areas where there should have been native forest may suffer embargo from national and international markets, as it is already happening with those exploiting forced labor.

Unfortunately, it will take time until all illegal practices being performed in Brazil’s remote areas not cared for by the State, and where public authorities have been historically unable to ensure basic human rights to the population, can be extinct. The certainty that landowners will never be punished is one of the main nourishments of those producers sparing no efforts to profit more and more. Tarnishing their names in public has proven to be the only way to educate them.