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• 1. At 01:59am on 21 Oct 2008, joengel wrote:

  I was in Maranhão, Northeast of Brazil few months ago, researching on biofuels production and development in the region. Cases of slave labour (or forced labour as the ILO would use) in the sugarcane industry are not rare; according to the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (2008), in 2007, 52 percent of the total workers freed from slavery by the Labour Inspection Secretary were from ethanol plants; that is to say, 3,131 cutters out of 5,974 rural workers. In November 2003, the Federal government divulged the lista suja (laundry list) denouncing publicly fazendas which use forced labour. This list determines which farms should be banned from supplier lists and from any recourse to all lines of credit.
  
  Victims of slave labour are normally people who live in acute poverty with a low or nonexistent level of education. They leave their home and family in order to find work in another state, hoping to ameliorate their life and the life of their relatives.
  Many are hired by the gato (gangmaster) who lures them with promises of a well-paid job and good accommodation in a sugarcane plantation. The gato, who very often favours expediency over morality, works from his ‘agencia de viagens’, a small office whose walls advertise different destinations . He sells to workers a one-way trip in a clandestine bus; the return ticket is far too expensive for the majority of the new recruits. Innumerable cases of slave labour were recorded during the last century; one of the most outrageous recent examples is the Pagrisa case. In June 2007, the Special Mobile Inspection Group freed 1,108 rural workers in slave conditions from the fazenda Pagrisa (Pará e Agrícola S.A), in the municipality of Ulianópolis, at 390 kilometres from Belém (Pará).
  
  This is a scary reality. Despite the Abolition of slavery 120 years ago, thousands of workers in Brazil are still being treated in an unacceptably degrading way, as slaves were.
  
  I am very glad bruce presented it so well. Degrading work conditions analogous to slavery is a reality in brazil that we tend to forget.
  
  You can access the lista suja (laundry list) on the website of the NGO Repórter Brasil at http://www.reporterbrasil.com.br/
  
  Many thanks to Bruce and his team for sharing with us this amazing journey. You did a wonderful job!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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• 2. At 08:32am on 23 Oct 2008, SANDRO_FONTES wrote:

  hello Bruce, i m Braziliam and i live in oxford-uk, im so proud of you... you have no idea how much, see everythink from England make me very special, obrigado por tudo e pela forma como voce tratou o meu povo e mostrou a realidade do meu pais, ver essa reportagem como foi feita me fez torna se seu fan, e de pessoas como voce que esse mundo precissa, so de lhe enviar estar mensagem estou muito emocionado e ao mesmo tempo muito feliz de saber que ainda existem pessoas como voce, lhe desejo toda felicidade do mundo do fundo do meu coracao, obrigado abracos. sandro fontes ( THE BEST DOCUMENTARY FROM BRASIL, MY COUNTRY. THANK'S BRUCE YOU ARE SPECIAL)
  
  
  

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• 3. At 8:01pm on 15 Feb 2009, marc1954 wrote:

  slavery in Brazil still is a fact. children are picked of of the street andplaced in to houses to work and clean. especialy young g irls. When they are 12, 13 years old they are used in bed and violated by the man and sometimes the woman also. I have seen children from 9 years who had to work and take care of the other children. When they get prgnant sometimes they are cicked out of the house. the father is most of the time the one who is the man of the house and the children are to afraid to tell that they are violated by him .
  This is wht the gouvernment should be after also,not only the destroying of the Amazone alone.

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