On Wednesday (12/11), Repórter Brasil, a national reference in the defence of human rights, launched Moda Livre (Free Fashion), a free application for smartphones, available for Android and iOS operating systems.

Launched under the celebration of the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which turns 65 this week, it intends to be a useful tool for consumers who go shopping for Christmas.

A result of an investigation conducted by Repórter Brasil’s journalism team, with digital and development by the PiU Comunica agency, the App brings to the public – in a fast and accessible way – the actions that the country’s leading clothing retailers are taking to prevent pieces sold at their stores from being produced by slave labour.

Besides the strongest brands in the market, companies involved in cases of slave labour found by Ministry of Labour and Employment inspectors were also included.

All companies listed on Moda Livre were invited to answer a questionnaire based on four broad indicators:

1. Policies: companies’ commitments to fight slave labour in their supply chains.
2. Monitoring: companies’ measures to monitor their clothing suppliers.
3. Transparency: companies’ actions to tell their customers what they have been doing to monitor suppliers and fight slave labour.
4. History: Summary of companies’ involvement in cases of slave labour, according to the government.

Based on the responses, companies received a score ranking them into three colour categories (green, yellow and red) according to the measures they take to fight slave labour. Those who did not respond to the questionnaire despite repeated invitations were automatically included in the red category.

It is important to note that Moda Livre does not recommend that consumers buy or refrain from buying any clothing brand. It only provides information for that choice to be made consciously.

The App is now available at Apple Store (http://is.gd/htz9d9) and Google Play (http://is.gd/9KtOEH), operational systems iOs 5+ and Android 4+. It can be find researching by “moda livre” or “moda livre reporter brasil”.

Click here or in the image above to watch the Global 3000, where Deutsche Welle presents independent media projects in Brazil.

Thai ‘ghost ships’ that enslave and even kill workers are linked to global shrimp supply chain, Guardian investigation discovers

Kate Hodal, Chris Kelly in Songkhla and Felicity Lawrence

Brasilia – The Brazilian Senate approved the Constitutional Amendment Bill (PEC) 57A/1999 on Slave Labor late on 27th May. The proposed constitutional amendment provides for expropriation of real estate property where this crime is found and their allocation to land reform or urban housing programs.

After an agreement between party leaders, the two rounds of voting were held in the same session. As an amendment to the Constitution, the bill requires no presidential sanction and takes effect right after its promulgation, scheduled for next week. It had already been approved in two rounds by the Chamber of Deputies in 2004 and 2012.

Of the 49 votes needed, the first round saw 59 votes in favor, none against and no abstentions; at the second round, there were 60 votes in favor, none against and no abstentions.

A sub-amendment was also approved to add the words “according to the law” to the proposal. Senate president Renan Calheiros said that such redundancy was intended to stress the need for further regulation. The amendment will cause the bill to return to the Chamber of Deputies, according to its Leadership.

A proposal for regulation is being discussed, pointing out procedures for the forfeiture of lands, buildings and improvements – the amendment includes whatever is inside the property, such as machinery or livestock. It shall be voted next week, according to Senator Romero Jucá. The so-called ruralist parliamentarians will try to waken the PEC’s power by reducing the list of situations to which it would apply.

All senators speaking at the session that voted the PEC stressed that this was a “historic moment”, as if some of them had not fought hard behind the scenes for years to prevent the bill from proceeding.

The first time a proposal to expropriate properties found with labor analogous to slavery was presented to Congress was in 1995 – the same year the Brazilian government recognized before the United Nations that contemporary forms of slavery persisted in the country and created the public system to fight that crime. Since then, more than 46 thousand people were rescued from slave labor by the federal government at farms, charcoal kilns, sewing workshops, construction sites, among other businesses.

On Tuesday (27), the Chief Minister for the Human Rights Secretariat of the Presidency Ideli Salvatti, alongside artists and intellectuals from the Humanos Direitos (Right Humans) movement, such as Camila Pitanga and Maria Zilda Bethelem, visited the offices of party leaders and senators and asked for their support to vote the proposal.

“This is a clear sign that the Brazilian State does not condone this crime in its territory. At a time when the International Labor Organization is meeting in Geneva to strengthen measures against this violation of human rights, the PEC’s approval sends a message to the rest of the world,” Ideli Salvatti told this blog.

Expropriation – The PEC provides for an addition to Article 243 of the Constitution, which already includes expropriation of areas where psychotropic crops are found. The idea has been debated in Congress since 1995, when the first draft was presented by Congressman Paulo Rocha (PT-PA), but it failed to advance. Then, a similar bill created by then Senator Ademir Andrade (PSB-PA) was approved in 2003 and sent to the Chamber of Deputies, where the 1995 bill was amended.

The murder of three labor inspectors and a driver working got the Ministry of Labor and Employment in a rural routine inspection on January 28, 2004 generated public outcry. It became known as the “Massacre of Unaí” (a town in northwestern Minas Gerais) and caused the bill to pass in the first round at the Chamber in August that year. Farmers Antério and Norberto Mânica, accused of ordering the crime, have not been tried yet.

Since it was presented, the PEC was in and out the voting schedule several times. Dozens of crosses were planted on the grass in front of Congress and over a thousand people embraced the building in March 2008 to protest against the delay in the vote. Two years later, a petition with over 280,000 signatures was delivered to then President of the Chamber of Deputies and now Vice President of the Republic Michel Temer. In January 2012, President Dilma Rousseff elected the PEC as a legislative priority for the federal government this year.

On May 8, 2012, a meeting at the Chamber’s auditorium Nereu Ramos gathered hundreds of people calling for the PEC’s approval, including rural workers, social movements, labor federations, artists and intellectuals. Another petition with nearly 60,000 signatures was delivered to the President of the Chamber of Deputies Marco Maia.

Seeing the growing social mobilization around the issue, which would lead sooner or later to the approval of the bill, ruralists changed tactics and started trying to alter the definition of slave labor. Thus, the approval of PEC 438 would become a window of opportunity to mischaracterize what contemporary slavery is.

On May 22, 2012, the PEC of Slave Labor, which proceeded at the Chamber of Deputies under number 438/2001, was approved in the second round. There were 360 votes in favor, 29 against and 25 abstentions, totaling 414 votes. In 2004, 326 votes had been in favor, 10 against and 8 abstentions. Therefore, the matter was sent back to the Senate where it originated, because the Chamber included a provision to expropriate urban real estate in it.

Regulation – In recent months, lawmakers opposed to the Slave Labor PEC pushed for its vote to be conditioned on a prior approval of regulation including definition.

Senator Romero Jucá (PMDB-RR), rapporteur of the bill to regulate the Slave Labor PEC, decided to adopt a partial definition of slave labor, which is more restricted than that on article 149 of Brazil’s Penal Code. The definition is not supported by the federal government, but it is aligned with the ruralist caucus, which excludes degrading conditions and exhausting working hours from the definition.

Renato Bignami, in charge of policies to fight urban slave labor at São Paulo’s Regional Labor and Employment Department said that the PEC will not contribute to the fight the crime at sewing workshops and construction sites, for example, if it is regulated as proposed by Senator Jucá. Prosecutors and labor judges heard by this blog say that the PEC will be weakened if ruralists are able to apply a softer definition.

Under current law, elements determining slave labor include: degrading working conditions (depriving workers of their dignity), exhausting working hours (preventing workers from recovering physically and having a social life – e.g. the two dozen-plus people who died from excess sugarcane cutting in São Paulo in recent years), forced labor (keeping a person working through fraud, geographical isolation, document retention, physical and psychological threats, exemplary beatings and even murder) and debt bondage (forcing workers to illegally acquire debts so they cannot leave).

Brazilian law is considered very advanced by the UN Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, since it covers not only freedom but also dignity as values to be protected. That is, when workers enjoy freedom, but are deprived of minimum conditions of dignity, that is also slave labor.

In her speech at the session that approved the PEC, Senator and Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (CNA) President Kátia Abreu stressed that the definition of slave labor is restricted to forced labor and debt bondage, ignoring the other elements connected workers’ dignity that are part of the law.

According to senators heard by this blog, the ruralist caucus wants narrow regulation not only to weaken the constitutional amendment, but also to enable a review of Article 149 of the Criminal Code itself. Ideli Salvatti said that there will be no agreement to change the definition that will be used to regulate the PEC. “The government will keep the definition from Article 149 of the Penal Code, which has guided the fight against slave labor.”

The article carrying the definition of slave labor dates back from 1940; it was renewed in 2003 in order to make characterization clearer. Lower, district and higher courts use that definition. Lawsuits filed against parliamentarians at the Supreme Court are also based on Article 149.

Ruralist leaders claim that there is an alleged “confusion” in the definition of slave labor – a discourse heard during the session that voted the PEC. Movements, social organizations and lawmakers who are involved with the matter and accompanied the vote are worried about that demand.

According to Xavier Plassat, head of the campaign against slave labor conducted by the Catholic Church’s Land Pastoral Commission, that “confusion” about the definition is a “fallacy” promoted by the ruralist caucus to invalidate not only the PEC – by changing the definition of the crime – but the very fight against slavery. A deputy accompanying the matter for a long time in Congress was heard by this blog and said that “the impression is that ruralists want to punish only those found holding a whip, chains and the purchase receipt for the slave”.

Those pro-PEC and the government claim there is no need for that and that the definition of slave labor is already clear in Article 149 of the Penal Code. They advocate the adoption of sub-constitutional legislation only to regulate expropriation and define when it takes place – after a labor inspection, after a lower court ruling, a collegial ruling or a final ruling? Should it be an administrative act or a civil, labor or criminal court decision?

In rural areas, the highest incidence of modern-day slavery is found in bovine cattle raising, charcoal production for the steel industry, production of pine, sugarcane, yerba mate, coffee, fruit, cotton, beans, onion, potato, in extraction of mineral resources and of native wood and latex. In cities, the incidence is higher in sewing workshops, trade, hotels, brothels and domestic services. In both scenarios, cases abound in construction.

Analysis – Just as the fight against contemporary slavery has been essential to improve the quality of life of rural workers – for instance, it pushed for expansion of labor inspections structure and punishment of offenders, which is useful for the larger society – the defense of businesspeople who use slave labor has helped to maintain the status quo in rural areas.

An emblematic case is constitutional amendment bill 57A/1999. Even if the proportion of employers who use contemporary slave labor is small given the universe of rural producers, those political representatives have been historically against the proposal – as said above, their current agreement with the approval is more related to a change in their action strategy than to their actual acceptance of the matter. That is because, for them, what is at stake is land ownership, considered inviolable by their constituency – landowners. Its continuation and concentration is essential to enable agricultural business because, besides being capital, it is the place where wealth is produced through work. According to members of the ruralist class, the PEC on Slavery was a risk to their very existence. Therefore, fighting against its approval amounted to more than maintaining exploitation of non-contractual forms of labor.

Opposition to the PEC brought together entrepreneurs who follow the law and those who commit crimes, those who pay taxes and those who evade them, those who honor labor contracts and those who do not even have them, those working within market rules and those who prefer anomie. Who is interested in protecting those who promote unfair competition and social dumping and illegally cut costs in order to gain competitiveness through exploitation of human beings – and tarnish the name of Brazilian products abroad as a side effect?

Only in the symbolic field can we understand the importance of that bill seeing it from both sides. For we know that enforcing such law – just as all those related to workers’ rights – would face several difficulties at the courts. The reference for this prediction is what already happens with expropriation of lands where psychotropic plantations are found.

The conduct of organizations points at the same direction. Although CNA officially repudiates the use of this type of labor, their public interventions on the matter have been towards delegitimizing situations found at farms by Ministry of Labor and Employment inspectors. That is, that organization, which is a member of the National Commission for the Eradication of Slave Labor, does not reject the need to eradicate contemporary slavery – it even advocates that need on its publications and public speeches – but it says that farmers and cattle ranchers do not resort to that. A sad, but understandable, paradox.

A 19-year battle comes to an end with the approval of the PEC. But another one continues not only during the regulation of the amendment, but also in bills currently under proceedings in Congress: to ensure that the definition of labor analogous to slavery – the basis of the current fight against such crime – is not dilapidated.

Originally published in portuguese

Database consolidated during the second stage of project Eles Mandam (They Rule, in Portuguese), launched on Wednesday (18), provides transparency on a number of direct and indirect relations among large economic groups within Brazil’s economy.

The information allows identifying corporations’ tentacles and pointing out rarely seen links that may bring together a large bank and a large mining company, a health insurance company or a clinical analysis business group.

Another novelty is the expansion of profiles for important board members of those economic powers. It allows evaluating their educational and professional training, which is yet another valid tool to check relations among people,economic groups,and the State, as well as how they interrelate.

Extensive research conducted by Repórter Brasil on companies’ websites, balance sheets and official reports resulted in names and profiles of people sitting in their Boards of Directors. The research covered the 100 top companies, the 50 largest business groups and the ten largest pension funds.

Eles Mandam is a Repórter Brasil initiative supported by Friedrich Ebert Foundation. It was inspired on They Rule, which shows board members forthe largest U.S. companies and allows identifying their networks of relations. The Brazilian version was produced under permission of those in charge of the American platform. It also include sproperty and control relations among businesses.

Economic sectors
The project coincides with increasing consolidation in several manufacturing, finance and agribusiness sectors. The map of the financial sector has changed significantlysince the adoption of Plan Real in 1994. The country had 241 banks earlier in the Real period; they are now fewer than180. The arrival of new forces such as HSBC and Santander in the last 15 years coincided with the increased scale of national groups, resulting from the sale of state-owned banks by governments, economic difficulties experienced by smalle rbanks or the search for larger scale.

Bradesco, for instance, has acquired several institutions: BCN in 1997; Banco do Estado da Bahia in 1999; Banco Espírito Santo in 2002; BBVA in 2003; Agora Corretora in 2009. Itaú did not lag behind and announced the largest operation of the sector: in November 2008, it communicated the “merger” of its operations with Unibanco, thus creating Itaú Unibanco.

In the services industry, higher scale has also been strengthened in order to increase revenue, reduce costs and expand nationwide presence, especially in the Northeast, where income has been growing by two percentage points above the national average. In the super and hypermarket segment, the level of concentration as measured by the five largest companies’ share in total turnover is higher than 40% and is likely to continue growing due to the increased volume of investments in organic expansion and acquisitions.

Infrastructure sees two clear movements. One is led by large Brazilian construction companies that have expanded their action beyond the construction of enterprises and entered the field of concessions, such as road and subway lines, or hold shares in energy companies. By acting on this connection, they increase margins and gain revenue predictability during contracts, facilitating their dividend policy and their possibility to obtain funding.

The agribusiness sector might experience strong consolidation over the coming years, maintaining the trend seen with the Sadia-Perdigão merger and the expansion of Friboi. A wave of consolidation in the ethanol industry could emerge over the coming years, with large groups becoming even larger. But that may coincide with higher government presence through BNDESPar, which can become a shareholder in other ventures. The industry’s debt is now one of the major bottlenecks faced by plant owners.

This concentration process is clear in some sectors, but it raises questions: Will it be good for consumers? Will it really result in lower consumer service prices? Will Brazilians who improved their living standards become even more demanding regarding services – whether they are provided by public utilities concessionaries or by health insurance companies? Will companies be prepared to meet these new demands? What will their main challenges be over the coming years? These are some of the issues arising from the consultation of data available on platform Eles Mandam, now available in its second stage.

Report by Roberto Rockmann; production and research by Hélen Freitas. The platform was developed by Tiago Madeira. Edition by Leonardo Sakamoto and Marcel Gomes.

Eles Mandam can be accessed here.

Originally published in portuguese.

It does no justice to all that Emiliano Zapata’s, Frida Kahlo’s and Juan Rulfo’s Mexico means, but “Mexicanization” has become synonymous with bad things. It is used to speak about the risk of a country falling into the clutches of drug trafficking or having an authoritarian government disguised as democratic, as in the seven decades the PRI held power.

The term also found meaning in the economy. In that area, Mexicanizing means investing in maquilas – as export-oriented industrial assembly lines that usually overexploit workers are known. That is, when someone says that a country is Mexicanizing, it is not usually good.

Paraguayan postcard, 1916, avaiable at Portal Guaraní

When I was in Asuncion in December to investigate the increasing migration of young Paraguayans to Brazil, that was precisely what I heard from interlocutors about the situation in Paraguay. Hardships affecting the local population are increasingly similar to those faced by Mexicans – escalation of violence, drug trafficking and political corruption.

This may seem strange at a time when Paraguay’s GDP is growing at a rate many times higher than Brazil’s, driven by soybean. But things get more clear to those who – like us at Repórter Brasil – follow that agribusiness segment marked by income concentration and low job creation.

The reality is that a considerable Paraguayan diaspora towards Brazil has started in this new millennium. The Brazilian Ministry of Justice reports that there are 17,000 Paraguayans in the greater Sao Paulo area, but Paraguay’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which I was able to visit in Asuncion, estimates something between 45,000 and 60,000. There could be 80,000 of them in Brazil.

That migration has gained momentum more recently, different from Bolivians’, who already total 350,000 in Sao Paulo. Two out of three Paraguayans arrived at the Greater Sao Paulo area after 2000, and half of them came after 2005, according to a survey conducted by the Scalabrinian Centre for Migration Studies, linked to the Catholic Church.

They are workers who arrive without any knowledge by the authorities, thus facilitating the occurrence of cases of labor overexploitation – and even slave labor. Most are young men who come to work in construction and in the garment industry, including the supply chains of top ‘fast fashion’ brands.

Despite the slowdown of Brazil’s economy, there are reasons to believe that this migration should remain steady or even increase. I mention two factors – one is conjunctural and the other one is deeper.

The first one is related the economic situation of the two destinations historically chosen by Paraguayan migrants: Argentina and Spain. A million Paraguayans are estimated to live in Argentinean cities today, mostly in the Greater Buenos Aires area, while 180 thousand live in Spain.

However, the long economic crisis in both countries has not only discouraged the arrival of new migrants, but also created a return movement. Diplomat Hugo Morel, director of a department of the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry that supports immigrants abroad, told me that at least two thousand people have returned to the country with government support in the last twelve months, after years living abroad.

Hugo Morel, director of a department of the Paraguayan Foreign Ministry that supports immigrants abroad

At the same time, Brazil has become the new Eldorado. Or at least it has earned such reputation. With the last decade’s economic growth, especially during the Lula administration, and the media image gained with the World Cup and the Olympics, the country was seen as a real alternative to Paraguayan workers. Many decided to come.

The second reason, as I said, is deeper. The victory of Colorado businessman Horacio Cartes in the 2013 presidential election means that Paraguay doubled its bet in the current model: a true minimal State and an economy driven by agribusiness and triangulation trade.

After playing important roles in the brief interval represented by the Fernando Lugo’s administration (2008-2012), the Paraguayan State remains as one of the least capable in Latin America. Not much can be done with a tax burden of only 12% of the GDP – what must make neoliberals jealous in any country in the world.

The same applies to the economy. The Asia-Paraguay-Brazil triangulation trade has undoubtedly enriched border cities such as Ciudad del Este (on the border with Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná) and Pedro Juan Caballero (border with Ponta Porã with, Mato Grosso do Sul). But how many Paraguayans are able to enjoy the benefits generated there?

The situation is perverse: looking at the country as a whole, we see a powerless State and a relatively poor society whose GDP per capita is only higher than Bolivia’s and Guyana’s in South America, but with very high income concentration, similar to that of Brazil. After all, about 15% of Paraguayans had to seek a better life abroad.

The Paraguayan model also has a deep functional connection with Brazil, beyond commercial exchanges. Paraguay’s territory was turned into an advanced space for many different forms of illegal activity such as drugs and arms trafficking,  smuggling and money laundering – for the benefit of Brazilian criminals.

Economist Luis Rojas Villalba, head of Base Investigaciones Sociales

My attention was drawn to that by economist Luis Rojas Villalba, a colleague who heads one of most traditional local research centers – BASE Social Research (BASE-IS). According to Rojas, Paraguay’s role regarding Brazil is similar to Mexico’s to the United States. If he is right, that is Mexicanization in its worst sense.

It seems really difficult to harbor any optimism based on the current Paraguayan scenario. But as many people say there, sí, se puede. That is the same slogan that guided the uprisings of Mexican workers on farms in the southern United States in the seventies and ended up translated and reinterpreted by Barack Obama decades later – Yes, we can.

In Paraguay, peasant and indigenous movements are sticking their flags in the corners of the country, although many groups need to overcome the challenges of lack of organization and their understandable aversion to institutional politics. In this arena, the Guasú Front stands out as a confederation of progressive and minority parties in parliament, with no deputy, but with five senators, including Lugo.

When I was in Asuncion on December 10, a march was being prepared by activists from dozens of social and political organizations to protest against the Cartes government’s new privatizing measures.

Fatima Rallo, a member of the Council of Popular and Social Organizations of Paraguay, and Gladys Cabrera, from the Paraguayan Association to Support Migrants, received me for a conversation the day before the protest. They were speaking on their cell phones because they were concerned about the obstacles created by the government to prevent the arrival of groups of activists coming from all over the country.

Fátima Rallo, a member of the Council of Popular and Social Organizations of Paraguay, and Gladys Cabrera, from the Paraguayan Association to Support Migrants

That was far from being the largest march I had ever seen. But its organizers celebrated it as an important step towards unifying Paraguayan social forces. Former opponents were there, closer than ever.

After the year-end break, the struggle shall be resumed in parliament and in the streets. In March, the tickets for the November municipal elections officially start to be formed. Sí, se puede. Let the brave rebellious spirit of Zapatistas and Mexican students infect Paraguayans and help to reinterpret the idea of Mexicanization. Paraguay and Mexico both need it.

Click here to read other reports of the Special Series on Immigrants (in Portuguese)

Miners in Ghana, fishers in Bangladesh and loggers in Brazil have two things in common: many are vulnerable workers often submitted to slave-like conditions while engaging in an activity destructive to forests, rivers and oceans. Another common element is that they often work extracting products destined for markets in Europe and the U.S.

“There’s always been a moral case to end slavery; now there is an environmental reason too,” says Kevin Bales in his latest book “Blood and Earth.” Co-founder of the advocacy group Free the Slaves and professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Nottingham (UK), Bales gathered seven years of research to unveil a cross-border and cross-industry connection between labor rights and nature protection.

“The key thing is how some groups are operating illegally. People are under violent control in forests that are supposed to be protected,” he said in an interview with Reporter Brasil, using cases of illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon as examples of the same system he saw operating in Africa and Asia. Hiding out in illegality, small logging companies – which Bales refers to as slaveholders – are committing various crimes to extract resources at the lowest costs.

In this interview with Repórter Brasil, Bales discusses the fragile regulations that are failing to cut the flow of money between consumers and the networks facilitating human rights abuses and environmental destruction. And he tries to answer the toughest question: how to stop it.

Repórter Brasil — How are slavery and environmental destruction connected?

Kevin Bales — Environmental destruction creates enormous vulnerability, especially when we think about people who live in a greater harmony with the natural world. Those who work in agriculture, who live in cost lines, who are caught up in places where climate change and environmental destruction take the land out from under their feet. Either literally disappears under the sea level rise or through erosion, deforestation and sometimes, there will be a project where someone is building a dam and there are areas that are going to be flooded and the poor people who live there will be pushed away. That all just creates a lot of vulnerability. They are poor, roofless and maybe they are refugees. It creates [a] situation where people can be enslaved.

On the other side, people in slavery are being used, being forced to particularly cut down forests from protected forests all over the world. Slavery is the root of a significant part of environmental destruction, especially in terms of CO2 emissions. Based on the deforestation rates and doing it very conservatively, we determined that if slavery were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of CO2 after China and the United States.

Shrimp farm workers in Bangladesh. (Photo: Naser Khan)

Repórter Brasil — What connects slavery in the logging sector in Brazil with realities such as Congo’s coltan mining or India´s shrimp farms?

Kevin Bales: One of the things that has happened in all these places is that environmental protections brought in laws and treaties…except virtually none of them actually have any sort of muscle in their protection. They state: “This is a protected forest,” but no one is hired to protect it. When they do hire, you have cases like in Africa, where two men [on] one bicycle have to cover hundreds of thousands of kilometers of forest, while the criminals have helicopters, trucks, airplanes and whatever they need.

When you look in illegal logging in Brazil, it is happening in places where the forest is supposed to be protected. I appreciate that, at local level, that is an issue often controversial. Because some will claim: “we need to open these places up to development.” But the key thing is that people are working under violent control in forests that are supposed to be protected.

Read the other reports:
Suppliers of Lowe’s in the US and Walmart  in Brazil linked to slave labor in the Amazon
Investigation reveals slave labor conditions in Brazil’s timber industry
Slave labor in the Amazon: risking lives to cut down the rainforest

Repórter Brasil — You say that we can change this system by adopting small inconveniences, like paying attention to what we buy. But do we have enough information to make this choice?

Kevin Bales — In many cases no. Every day someone asks me: “How do I find out? Where is the list?” There are some lists available, and there is some research going on. But not as much as you need to be able to make these choices.

But we are getting there slowly; it’s a very difficult area to police and to research. Often the criminals are hiding behind “front” people. Even the people who are inspecting supply chains will find it difficult to penetrate down to the bottom level. And once criminals are exposed, they will move to a different supply chain. So it’s about constant vigilance.

But I do feel optimistic in that so many people are saying: “I want to know more, I want to find out,” and more and more organizations are working to make it possible.

Repórter Brasil — This interview is being published as part of a wider investigation, in which we discovered that sawmills held responsible for slavery in Brazil were connected to the supply chains of big brands in the U.S. The companies allege that the specific product is not the same as the one extracted by slave labor, but they do not open the tracking information. Shouldn’t this information be public?

Kevin Bales — Of course this should be public information. There is no way around that. If they are claiming that to be the case, they should be able to demonstrate it. Are you just supposed to take their word for it?

Repórter Brasil — There are also the certification groups that monitor the supply chain. But, in these cases, they failed. Who audits the audit companies?

Kevin Bales — There is not much auditing of auditing. There are few groups that are trying to promote ethical investments that will dig into this. We are in the beginnings of a period of time that can take 20 to 30 years as we work out precisely how to keep these things transparent and under control.

Repórter Brasil — What is the most effective regulation to ban products linked to slave labor?

Kevin Bales — The “Dirty List of Slave Labor” in Brazil, if it was done correctly [The “Dirty List” is a list of companies held responsible for slave labor, the publication of which is currently suspended by the Brazilian government]. I would like to see more countries using this system; it is very powerful.

Also, the system that was [introduced] in the state of California and now in the United Kingdom, where you require a certain transparency from very large companies. The law applies to companies that are above a certain size. These companies have to report, every year, what they are doing to both investigate and to remove slavery and trafficking from their supply chains.

It is a good place to start, but not a good place to finish, because that’s all they have to do: report. If they find slavery in their supply chain, they are not punished. That sounds maybe weak, but the reason we were able to pass that law in California is because business groups were willing to support a law that did not have penalties.

If they were able to talk freely about their problems instead of keeping them a secret, then they had an opportunity to come clean, everybody playing on a level field. That created a context where you could begin to open the whole thing for discussion and get people to start doing what needs to be done without feeling threatened.

The idea was to create a situation where they wouldn’t feel like they are just putting a gun to their heads. They were, in fact, having an opportunity to become visible, and begin to move in the direction of the next step.

Repórter Brasil — Do you see any real perspective of when this next step is?

Kevin Bales — Not exactly. Except that in a lot of countries people are debating slavery in supply chains. Some country is going to say: “reporting is not good enough, we are going to put a little bit more teeth into the law.” I think that these laws will simply continue to grow teeth overtime. But I would like it to be faster.

I have been following a bill that is aiming to put $250 million into anti-slavery work: the Corker bill [End Modern Slavery Initiative Act, introduced by U.S. Senator Bob Corker, Tennessee]. [It is a] recent bill in the U.S. congress that is said to do that kind of remarkable investment in anti-slavery. They [U.S. government] are going to allocate $250 million over time, and expect other organizations and countries also to kick in. I know they have talked to the government of the UK, for example.
Shrimp farm workers in Bangladesh. Image courtesy of Kevin Bales

Repórter Brasil — Are there other international regulations that are already more effective in banning products connected to slavery?

Kevin Bales — I don’t know if I can point to someplace that is doing a great job. It’s interesting that in the United States they have a number of laws on the book and some of then go back to the 1930s that are very strong, but not necessarily understood to be enforced. In most countries there are equations about jurisdiction, so they say: “we don’t want anything to be imported that has slavery,” but their jurisdiction does not reach to other countries – in the sense that they can’t go to other countries to inspect. So they have to rely on businesses paying auditors. I am sorry to say it, but I feel like we are still in the early days here.

Cover of “Blood an Earth”, book by Kevin Bales in which he analyzes the connection between the destruction of the environment and slave labor.

Repórter Brasil — Are the labor and the environmental policy-makers joining efforts?

Kevin Bales — They are beginning to join together. Some very senior people in the environmental world have said that, in the moment, the environmental movement can’t seem to move forward. A lot of countries are beginning to turn against environmental protection, like the United States. We know that everyone is against slavery. Since slavery is being used to hurt the environment, then let’s focus on slavery and have a win-win protecting it from both directions.

The big thing that is missing in the entire solution is the role and resources of governments. It is a huge problem, but most governments devote virtually no resources to solving this. It is as big as murder in many countries, where there are more people in slavery than are people getting murdered. But, for every 100 dollars spent to fight murder, they will spend 1 penny on slavery – or less.

Interview part of a special feature: Wood and Slavery (English version of the special “Profissão Madeireiro”)

A matéria Current regulations unable to ban products from slave labor, expert says foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Read the full investigative news report at: http://reporterbrasil.org.br/loggers

A film by: Ana Aranha
Photography: Lunaé Parracho
Editing: Alex Duvidovich
Editing assistant: João Cesar Diaz
Research: Tania Caliari
Soundtrack: Pedro Penna/ Estúdio Casa da Árvore; De Ushuaia a la Quiaca, Roronca, Gustavo Santaolalla — CC
Sound mixing: Rafael Ramos
Production: Repórter Brasil
Support: Fundação Ford, Mongabay

A matéria Wood and Slavery – slave labor that threatens the Amazon rainforest foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

The dictionary definition of a settler, “one who emigrates to populate and/or exploit a foreign land,” does not just apply to the Brazilian colonial period. Even in the 21st century, the term settler is alive and well for families that have migrated from the south and northeast to the Brazilian Amazon, in the state of Pará. Lured by the promise of a prosperous life in agriculture made by the government during a period of military dictatorship, settlers arrived in droves in the 1970s. Nearly fifty years later, many of the descendants of these settlers have become hostages to working conditions analogous to slave labor.

This is one of the conclusions of the report “Underneath the Forest: Pará’s Amazon plundered by slave labor” produced by Brazil’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and the Carmen Bascarán Center for the Defense of Life and Human Rights. The culmination of an investigation into slave labor practices in Pará’s timber industry led by the Integrated Action Network to Combat Slavery (RAICE), the report’s findings show how the federal government played a role in pushing generations of workers into the trade of logging forests under conditions that align with slave labor practices as defined by Brazilian law.

“The promise was as great as the abandonment,” says social scientist Maurício Torres, who took part in the research for the report.

After being “abandoned” by the Brazilian government in a region surrounded by rainforest and lacking social support, these workers were thrown into a world without prospects, according to the investigation. Their only option was to accept the first offers that came in. In a place where the law at times goes unenforced, they became easy targets in the networks that exploit slave labor.

“The law of silence rules here,” said Egidio Alves Sampaio, of the Pastoral Earth Commission. “The peasant knows about this situation [of slave labor practices], but is afraid of reporting it for fear of consequences.”

According to testimony documented in the report, workers allege that logging camp bosses would hire gunmen to intimidate them into not demanding the payment they were owed.

Life in a forest under destruction

Data on settlers that work cutting down trees in the Amazon is limited. What little is known comes from federal labor inspectors and non-governmental institutions. According to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Federal Public Ministry and Ministry of Labor, 931 workers recruited to cut down trees have been rescued in the state of Pará since 2003 – just a bit more than one-fifth of total Brazilian rescues in the sector. The majority were between 15 and 30 years old, according to the inspectors’ records, but the elderly and children were also found to be taking part in this activity.

Lack of payment was a common element uncovered by investigations of sawmill sites. During one of the rescue operations conducted by the Ministry of Labor, inspectors asked the workers what they thought were the worst things that could happen to them while on the job. They expected to hear about fears of accidents or death, but most the workers replied they were most worried about not getting paid.

Investigators found it was common for workers to go through months of arduous and dangerous labor without receiving any wage. If the wood was not sold at the rate expected by the employers, their loss in profits was often recouped by not paying workers. Since the business was operating illegally, there was no one to whom the workers could turn for help.

In Pará, the mission of these timber operations is not to cut down large numbers of trees. Instead, their focus is on specific species that appeal to the international market – like ipê, or Brazilian walnut, a dark hardwood used for flooring, decks and veneers. When they no longer can support themselves from the land, the report found, settlers began to accept offers to make a living cutting down trees in protected areas. The work offers tended to come from neighbors, generally ex-employees of the loggers locally called “toreiros.”

Read the other reports:
Suppliers of Lowe’s in the US and Walmart  in Brazil linked to slave labor in the Amazon
Slave labor in the Amazon: risking lives to cut down the rainforest
Current regulations unable to control trade in products from slave labor, expert says

Without workers’ rights, the settlers-turned-loggers remained out of contact inside the forest for weeks to months on end, according to the investigation. The sun sets the workday. As long as it is light out, which is the case from 4:30 am to 6:30 pm, the chainsaws were running.

The risks inside the forest were significant due to poor working conditions, the researchers found. Logging was done without any type of protection, such as safety glasses, utility uniforms, helmets, work boots or insect repellent. This equipment is regarded as essential for protection, not just from accidents, but from poisonous animals.

“It happens a lot that any kind of jerky movement on the log or tractor can cut off the helper’s fingers or hand. Logs roll over and crush guys,” said one rescued worker quoted in the investigation’s report.

The most shocking scene for workers, said researcher Torres, were the makeshift structures used for housing. Lacking walls and built from small logs, they covered the workers with only a tarp. The stove was often a campfire made in a paint can or old cooking pot. The meat, caught or brought by the employees themselves, rested unprotected on string clotheslines. Hammocks hung from the tree trunks – often fewer in number than the workers, so for some, there was only the ground. Water, often captured from rainfall, was stored in improvised containers without a lid or treatment. After getting a layer of sludge in the first few days, it was used for quenching thirst and cooking during the long months of work.

Forced work, debt bondage, isolation, exhausting working hours and life-threatening conditions defined workers’ lives at many of the sawmill sites investigated by RAICE. These elements are included the Brazilian Penal Code and used by inspectors from the Ministry of Labor to define slave labor.

The beginnings of colonization

In the 1970s, families settled on tracts of land of up to 100 hectares, near recently constructed highways – the first ones in the region and by which the dreamed-of progress was to arrive. Over time, new migrants showed up, colonizing the forest yet remaining isolated within it.

Aggravating the situation was a lack of unawareness of the environmental conditions of the Amazon, both on the part of the settlers and of the government that divided the land among them. The farming experience they brought with them from northeastern Brazil did not bear fruit in Pará. To make matters worse, according to the report, lots were drawn up from the map in equal, rectangular shapes that did not take into account soil quality.

Without expansion of roads, schools, medical facilities, credit systems and technical assistance, the settlers became vulnerable, according to Larisa Bombardi of the São Paulo University Laboratory of Agrarian Geography. Bombardi said that in order to remain in the places they were living, the majority stripped themselves of dignity without noticing. It was under these circumstances that the logging companies showed up in the 1970s.

The loggers built roads out to the settlers and offered others small favors – like money to take the bus, Torres said. Under what the investigation’s researchers describe as an exploitative relationship disguised as benevolence, settlers came to see the logging companies as friends. Since then the cycle has repeated itself.

Today, the settlers live in small communities with little infrastructure, such as schools, access to health, basic sanitation and electricity.

“What chances do they have for not starving if they do not rely on the loggers’ favors, which makes them slaves?” Torres said.

Download here the report (in portuguese)  “Por Debaixo da Floresta: Amazônia paraense saqueada com trabalho escravo (Under the forest: the Amazon rainforest looted by slave labor)”, done by the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (Pastoral Land Commission (CPT)) and the Centro de Defesa da Vida e dos Direitos Humanos Carmen Bascarán (Center for the Defence of Life and Human Rights Carmen Bascarán)

Report part of a special feature: Wood and Slavery (“Profissão Madeireiro” english version)

A matéria Investigation reveals slave labor conditions in Brazil’s timber industry foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Logging activity inside indigenous land Cachoeira Seca, in the state of Pará (Photo: Lunaé Parracho/Repórter Brasil)

A rookie in the trade of cutting down trees, João* asked himself how life led him to this “terribly wrong” way to make ends meet. Camped out in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest in the state of Pará, 90 kilometers from the Trans-Amazonian Highway, João regretted taking the job, the first to come along in months.

He and his colleagues had finished cutting down the first of many massaranduba trees for the day when they heard the roar of cars. “Come on, let’s hide in the forest,” João heard from one of his more experienced colleagues, and followed. Peering through the leaves, they saw armed men appear clad in vests marked “Federal.”

“Oh God, get me out of here. Don’t let me die,” João pleaded as he ran further into the woods. His fear was rooted in stories told by his more-experienced colleagues, tales of how state authorities handle workers like him: with repression, prison and even physical violence.

After he was found by the inspectors, João said the idea of the state being there to protect him never crossed his mind. But this was, in fact, the goal of the team led by Ministry of Labor auditor José Marcelino and comprised of representatives of the Ministério Público do Trabalho (an independent branch of the Labor Justice Department), the Federal Public Defender’s Office and escorted by the Federal Highway Police. A team of journalists from Repórter Brasil also followed the team and interviewed the workers.

The operation was trying out a new strategy for bringing the law to the frontlines of rainforest destruction. Instead of treating workers as enemies, the idea was to recognize them as victims, even as possible allies in the fight against illegal logging.

When the group was finally found, João and his colleagues gave lengthy depositions, helping authorities understand how timber extraction works and unveiling myriad possible crimes committed by local sawmill owners. Because of the risks to their lives workers endured on the job and the degrading conditions in which they lived, the inspectors rescued the workers and framed the case as slave labor, in accordance with the Brazilian penal code.

João talked about how he would work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., off the books and without protective equipment. Even though logging is a risky activity, with one of the highest death and amputation rates in Brazil, neither guidance nor minimal protection was given. He described fatal accidents as banal events.

“There was this guy who did the same thing as me. He died. He got distracted while rolling up a cigarette. The tree fell off the truck and on top of him. He ended up in the cemetery,” João said.

Neither first aid nor medicine waited back at the communal tent. Just a rifle for protection and hunting. As well as an old motorbike to take the workers to the city, more than 100 kilometers on a dirt road away, in case of an animal attack or an accident. But workers did not count on the possibility of being rescued.

“There are no accidents over there, only death,” João said. “If you mess up, you’re all done for.”

João is a weathered worker with a long resume at some of the toughest jobs available for migrants like him.” He left a poor region in the northeast of Brazil still young and cut his teeth in construction sites and coal mines, where his lunges hurt when he coughed. Even so, he considered logging as his worst labor experience so far.

In the blue-tinged shadows of the tent, the workers had hung up their colored hammocks and backpacks with their belongings. Without walls and just a dirt floor, there was nothing kept out the cold morning wind or visiting insects and venomous snakes.

One of the workers who was rescued in the operation against slave labor (Photo: Lunaé Parracho/Repórter Brasil)

“Thank God everyone was already in their hammocks,” João said. “Then one of the men turned on their flashlight. There was a huge snake there, more than two meters long, thick. This guy grabbed a piece of wood and struck it on top, killing it.” Jaguars also occur in the area, with reporters observing tracks on the ground near camps.

With a nervous laugh, the group’s cook said she wasn’t scared and didn’t have anything to complain about. She described how she prepared meals on two camp stoves improvised from 18-liter cans. Rice, beans, and spaghetti were the most common meals, with occasional pieces of sun-dried beef that were hung to dry from a clothesline at the camp and frequently visited by flies. The camp water came from the city in barrels and, according to worker testimony, always had a little “grime on the bottom.”

The camp’s washtub was shielded by an impromptu partition made from palm leaves and a black tarp. The cook took her bath when the workers were in the forest. For all other necessities, the forest was the only bathroom.

Ministry of Labor raids have revealed that it is common for vulnerable workers in Brazil to experience serious labor violations, such as the ones described above. Based on the conditions at the camp, inspectors framed the case as slavery-like conditions in accordance with Brazilian legislation.

Ultimately, the Ministry of Labor found the sawmill company that operated the site, M.A. de Sousa Madeireira, responsible for the criminal conditions in which its employees worked and lived. However, in his dusty office in Uruará, company owner Manoel Araújo de Sousa asserted he was not responsible for the workers. He said he was aware of the extraction of wood, but he had nothing to do with the site’s operation since it was a self-directed effort by one of his former employees. He did admit, however, that he kept a portion of the harvested wood and that he was the “owner” of the land where they were working.

As proof that he could extract wood from the location, Araújo de Sousa claims to have a purchase contract, with no registered title or authorization for extracting timber.

As part of its penalty, M.A. de Sousa Madeireira had pay workers’ rights fees amounting to 31,000 reais ($9,950). The sawmill’s attorney declared her disagreement with the ruling holding the company responsible for the labor violations. Araújo de Sousa and his brother are allegedly working to raise the capital.

Crimes against the forest, workers and communities

Manoel de Sousa’s sawmill is a small fish in a sea of illegal activity operating in the region. The city of Uruará comprises one of the largest centers of expansion in the Amazon’s logging industry – and government investigations indicate illegal activities are growing more explicit.

Trucks without license plates carrying away loads of large native tree trunks are commonly seen entering the city by way of the Trans-Amazonian Highway.

According to data from the Ministry of Labor and Pastoral Land Commission, 931 workers were rescued from slave labor conditions while harvesting trees from 2003 to 2016. A relationship between employment practices analogous to slave labor and some illegal logging operations in the Amazon was uncovered by a research led by the Integrated Action Network for Fighting Slavery. The study  indicates that the conditions endured by João and his colleagues may affect many workers in the sector.

Worker talks to inspectors of the Labor Ministry (Photo: Lunaé Parracho/Repórter Brasil)

Places like the logging camp from which João was rescued often do not appear on maps that track deforestation. This is because they engage in selective logging that causes changes in canopy coverage that aren’t large enough to be detected remotely. This illegal practice has been growing in the past few years, specifically because it outwits satellite monitoring, as shown by several studies conducted by Greenpeace and Instituto Socioambiental (socioenvironmental institute (ISA)).

The illegal logging industry also takes specific measures to ensure the timber they extract isn’t traced back to where it was harvested. Previous investigations revealed that after the most market-valuable trees are cut down, the timber is taken to sawmills on trucks without license plates. At the sawmill, the illegal origin is “laundered” with handling documents that change the harvest location to legal sites.

In an area south of the Trans-Amazonian Highway, days before the operation that uncovered João and his colleagues, the same rescue team discovered small roads opened up by loggers within the Cachoeira Seca Indigenous Territory, where the Arara community lives. An indigenous group only recently contacted by the outside world, the Arara report hearing chainsaws and are avoiding hunting in portions of their land for fear of encountering loggers.

Along the makeshift logging roads within the indigenous territory, the inspectors and reporters saw logs piled up, swaths of scorched earth and tents just like the one João slept in – but they failed to locate any workers. When they came across someone on a motorbike going down the road, the inspectors were informed that they should give up in their search; the team’s presence had been made known through a radio system used by the loggers to communicate.

Place where the meals were cooked by the loggers inside indigenous land of Cahoeira Seca (Photo: Lunaé Parracho/Repórter Brasil)

The practice of worker-exploitation in the illegal logging industry appears widespread. While the inspectors were processing João and his colleagues, the team discovered another case and rescued seven more workers cutting down trees in slave labor-analogous conditions. This time, the employer was Eudemberto Sampaio de Souza (no relation to Manoel Araújo de Sousa), owner of Betel sawmill, which was found responsible for labor crimes and required to pay compensation to its workers up to 50.000 reais ($15,800).

Sampaio de Souza, however, placed the blame squarely on the workers.

“We ask for the documents for each supposed employee,” he told Reporter Brasil. “They say that they’ve lost them, or don’t have them, or will se about it later. You ask for their name, they give you a nickname. Plenty are boozehounds, many are drug addicts. They are people who come out of states like Mato Grosso, Maranhão, Bahia, and Pernambuco. Nobody knows their story, nobody knows their past. Many times, by taking them out to work, it’s saving their lives.”

Satellite data from the Brazilian government show this area of Pará lost nearly 400,000 hectares of tree cover between 2001 and 2015. Small logging camps like that from which João and his colleagues add to this toll – but often log too selectively to show up via satellite monitoring.

Read the other reports:
Suppliers of Lowe’s in the US and Walmart  in Brazil linked to slave labor in the Amazon
Investigation reveals slave labor conditions in Brazil’s timber industry
Current regulations unable to control trade in products from slave labor, expert says

“Really scared”

Days later, still more workers showed up at the hotel where the labor inspectors were staying. This time, the reports were heavier, mentioning death threats and the hiring of hit men to intimidate workers.

“We came here, but we are scared. Really scared,” said one of the men who knocked on the inspectors’ hotel door. His face ticked nervously as he talked about how his boss hired a gunman after he tried to collect his payment.

“If the end of the month comes and a lot is owed, they will send someone out to kill you. I’ve seen that happen. It was inside the city itself. He came to collect and they shot him. There’s plenty more stories like that.”

Other workers also noted not being paid for the job, and then being threatened when attempting to collect upon what they were owed.

“It’s better to pay three thousand for a gunman than five or six thousand to an employee,” said another man, quoting his boss.

The entities that reportedly hired gunmen are currently under investigation, and their names could not be released at the time of publication in the interest of the investigation and for the safety of those involved.

While the definition of slave labor in Brazil extends beyond lack of payment, this group of workers only recognized their situation when they weren’t paid. According to one of the men, “even today slavery hasn’t ended. It just modernized itself. Back in the day you would get beaten, nowadays you don’t. But you don’t get anything for all of your work.”

Another worker interviewed also alleged corruption of local authorities has had a role to play in illegal logging activities.

“The military police here is dangerous,” said one of the men. “They go to his sawmill and grab money, they grab wood, both the military and civil police. If any one of us turns one of them in to the police, it’s suicide.”

The workers also spoke of the total isolation of the logging camps and the impossibility of leaving them.

“On election day [2016 municipal elections], we spent five days out in the woods without food,” said one of the men who worked as a tractor driver. “They didn’t come out to get us to go vote, nobody came out.”

Another worker claims his employer forced him to remain on-site, and didn’t allow communication from the camp to the outside world.

“There isn’t even a way to go out and come back, because the boss won’t allow it. If you don’t stay in the forest for thirty days you lose the job. Only the boss will come over and pass along messages, see how things are. We only receive news,” said the man who has young children in the city of Uruará.

Brazilian Federal Highway Police investigates truck that was carrying illegal logs to sawmills in the city of Uruará (Photo: Lunaé Parracho/Repórter Brasil)

These complaints and the conditions discovered by investigations of logging camps have led to an ongoing investigation into slave labor in the logging sector. Ministry of Labor prosecuting attorney Allan Bruno, who was also part of the operation, received the cases and sent them along to the federal attorney general’s office, which is investigating the possible crimes of withholding salary, threatening lives, as well as for environmental, landholding, and tax issues.

Auditor José Marcelino says labor inspectors are just beginning to understand how the illegal logging industry operates in the region. However, what is known is that it is a trade full of economic risk.

“Just cutting down the trees does not guarantee selling the wood,” Marcelino said. “And, since the entrepreneur doesn’t have adequate cash flow, he doesn’t meet the costs of paying the workers what they have the right to.”

Labor inspector, Marcelino (first to the left) and the rest of the group talking to one of the workers (Photo: Lunaé Parracho/Repórter Brasil)

This economic risk is coupled for the workers, who may have no choice but to resume working for these illegal operations. Even after receiving his compensation, João said he would go back into the woods, under the same conditions, if he could not arrange for other work in the following months.

Report part of a special feature: Wood and Slavery (“Profissão Madeireiro” english version)

*The names of the workers have been changed in an effort to avoid further violence as interviewees remain at risk.

A matéria Slave labor in the Amazon: risking lives to cut down the rainforest foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Products derived from timber extracted by workers living in conditions analogous to slave labor in Brazil are connected to a complex business network linked to the U.S. market – possibly reaching the shelves of large retailers and being used in renovation of landmarks – according to a new investigation conducted by Repórter Brasil. After purchasing from suppliers held liable for that crime by the Brazilian government, local traders exported timber to companies like USFloors, which supplies the retail chain Lowe’s, as well as Timber Holdings, which supplied timber for construction projects at Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

The commercial network linking retailers to sawmill companies was identified by a three-month investigation and confirmed by the companies. The wood products were mixed at Brazilian intermediaries, so the investigation was unable to track the exact destination of each piece of wood. However, its findings reveal that large retail and construction groups are sourcing the product from companies whose supply chains are contaminated by the alleged use of criminal practices, with the conditions of workers rescued from sawmill sites aligning with slave labor practices as defined by Brazilian law.

New York City’s iconic Brooklyn Bridge was recently renovated using wood from sources linked to slave labor. Photo by Tiago Fioreze via Wikimedia Commons (CC 3.0)

Read the other reports:
Investigation reveals slave labor conditions in Brazil’s timber industry
Slave labor in the Amazon: risking lives to cut down the rainforest
Current regulations unable to control trade in products from slave labor, expert says

Bonardi da Amazônia

The cases investigated by Repórter Brasil began at sawmill companies based in the state of Pará – an important hub for the timber industry in the Brazilian Amazon. One of them is Bonardi da Amazônia, a sawmill company that recruited nine people who were rescued from conditions analogous to slave labor exploitation in October 2012. The workers were located by the Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Bonardi da Amazônia was formally held responsible for the crime.

The investigation found that workers slept in shacks in the forest at night, in makeshift facilities made of logs removed from the forest itself and covered with tarps, 110 kilometers (over 68 miles) from the nearest town. There were no walls to protect them from the dangers of the forest such as snakes, scorpions and even jaguars. They bathed and washed their clothes in a stream shared with local animals; there was no bathroom. The workers had no formal contracts and told investigators they were paid based on their productivity.

Because of the degrading accommodation and hygiene conditions found by Labor Ministry inspectors, Bonardi da Amazônia was held responsible for using slave labor in accordance with the conditions for that crime outlined in the Brazilian Criminal Code.

Between August 2012 – two months before the crime was discovered – and July 2015, Repórter Brasil found Bonardi supplied timber to Tradelink Madeiras, a company belonging to the London-based Tradelink Group. One of the companies that buys wood products from Tradelink is USFloors – a leading floor manufacturer for the North American market. Tradelink confirmed the commercial relationship by email and, in reply to Repórter Brasil, stated that field inspections were conducted at this supplier but no labor irregularities were found at Bonardi da Amazônia in June 2012. That is, the Bonardi site was visited by Tradelink employees four months before criminal activity was uncovered by labor inspectors.

In justification of its business dealings with a sawmill held responsible for slave labor practices, Tradelink maintains that Bonardi pledged to change its labor conditions. According to Tradelink, the decision to continue purchasing from Bonardi was based on an agreement the company signed with the Ministério Público do Trabalho – an independent branch of Justice in Brazil (see Tradelink’s response).

When contacted by Repórter Brasil, Bonardi asserted that it met all authorities’ requirements (see Bonardi’s response).

Bonardi remained a supplier for Tradelink until July 2015, even after the sawmill was included in the government’s “transparency list” in March of that year. The list discloses the names of companies caught by the federal government engaging in working conditions analogous to slave labor. Companies are included on the list after the Ministry of Labor completes an administrative procedure on the results of inspections, which guarantees the right of defense to those held responsible.

The “transparency list” is used by several companies that have formally committed to fighting slavery in their supply chains. It was disclosed by the Ministry of Labor at the request of Repórter Brasil and the Institute of the National Pact for the Eradication of Slave Labor (Inpacto) through the Access to Information Act (see its latest update here).

USFloors and Lowe’s

Tradelink Madeiras’ products have international reach. In 2015, one of its clients in the United States was wood flooring producer USFloors. Its products have been sold by the retailer chain Lowe’s – the second-largest construction material chain in the U.S. Lowe’s has more than 1,700 stores in the country and also operates in Mexico and Canada.

USFloors confirmed by email that the timber purchased from Tradelink was subsequently sold to Lowe’s. However, both USFloors and Tradelink claim that this specific material did not come from Bonardi. In its response to Repórter Brasil, Tradelink states that the timber sold to USFloors came from a different sawmill. A USFloors representative who responded to Repórter Brasil stood behind Tradelink.

“I personally went to Tradelink factory in Brazil and we felt that among other factories we visited, Tradelink was the only company with adequate procedures for due diligence to ensure compliance with local and international regulations,” said Philippe Erramuzpe, chief operating officer of USFloors. He added that all of the company’s suppliers are required to “certify that the material is not harvested in violation of any local laws or requirements” (see USFloors’ full statement).

Repórter Brasil tried to contact Lowe’s by telephone and email several times, but the company did not respond.

Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park

Another regular client of Bonardi da Amazônia, from 2012 to the present day, is Ronardi Comercial Exportadora de Madeiras, a Brazilian trading company based in the state of Paraná. Its clients include U.S. companies such as Timber Holdings USA, a wood flooring manufacturer that has supplied raw material for major urban projects such as the Atlantic City Boardwalk in New Jersey, restoration of the Brooklyn Bridge, and construction projects in Central Park.

Many of these projects include the use of the Brazilian ipê, or Brazilian walnut (Handroanthus spp). With its colorful canopy, this tree stands out in the forest. But with a high value in the market, the ipê is ever more difficult to find in Brazil. It is the same type of timber that Timber Holdings purchased from Ronardi in 2016, and which Ronardi has also purchased from Bonardi.

In a statement obtained by Repórter Brasil, Ronardi stated it “vehemently repudiates any violation of labor laws.” The company says it requested clarification from Bonardi on the issue and reproduced the company’s statement in which Bonardi mentions to have improved working conditions and has no pending labor issues. (See Bonardi’s and Ronardi’s full statements).

Repórter Brasil also contacted Timber Holdings. In its first response, sent by email, the company stated it purchased two containers of ipê flooring with papers saying that the timber came from Bonardi da Amazônia. In a later email, however, the company changed its response, stating that the timber acquired from Ronardi came from other sawmills.

“Our company is completely against any kind of slave labor and illegal timber trade, and it should be noted that Timber Holdings was one of the first companies in the world to invest in an outsourced audit for every shipment of timber imported from Brazil,” Timber Holdings said in its statement. According to the U.S.-based importer, no shipment of timber is approved if a company with which it is dealing is listed on the Brazilian government’s “transparency list.” Timber Holdings stated it conforms to this standard at every stage of the supply chain, from the source to the direct seller. (See Timber Holding USA’s response to Repórter Brasil).

Tramontina and Walmart

Another supply chain investigated by Repórter Brasil revealed links between slave labor exploitation and Tramontina, one of the largest manufacturers of kitchen utensils in Brazil. The group’s products are sold to the nation’s top retailers, including Brazilian Walmart stores.

The case begins with Madeireira Iller, a company held liable for using practices analogous to slave labor in December 2012. The Brazilian Ministry of Labor rescued 31 people who worked in the processing, cutting and transportation of native wood for the company, in the city of Santarém, Pará.

Workers were living in similar conditions as those in the Bonardi case and most other cases linked to slave labor in the industry: tarp or straw shacks with no walls, meals prepared below minimum hygiene standards, no toilet, and water taken from the local stream.

Although they worked in an occupation in which the risk of accidents is high, Madeireira Iller workers were not wearing protective equipment at the time of their rescue, had no formal contracts, and their earnings were based off their productivity. They were not guaranteed the legal minimum wage – it all depended on the number of trees they harvested.

According to the Ministry of Labor, the company’s owner told 23 of the people working at the facility to flee and hide from inspectors, allegedly to avoid being caught committing violations. The inspectors’ account states the workers were forced to hide in the forest for five days.

Three years after the inspection, in 2015, Madeireira Iller was charged with environmental crimes and the company’s owners arrested. The government operation “Clean Wood” dismantled an operation allegedly engaging in illegal logging and land grabbing. Madeireira Iller was fined over $578,000 for having timber stored without proof of legal origin as well as for entering false information in the official forest control systems.

Repórter Brasil contacted Írio Luiz Orth, a member of the family that owns Madeireira Iller. According to labor inspectors, he was the primary representative in charge of the company’s administration when the slave labor case took place. However, Orth declined the request for an interview.

As with Tradelink and Bonardi, Tramontina’s press office stated that consultants personally assessed the supplier’s labor conditions in 2012 – the same year in which slave labor was found by the Ministry of Labor. The company reports that an internal evaluation showed a reality that is quite different from the one observed by federal inspectors: “During visits by Tramontina’s staff, it was possible to see the existence of eating facilities, accommodations, uniforms and personal protective equipment. In case there were workers in other places, the company was not aware of it,” the company said in a statement issued to Repórter Brasil.

Madeireira Iller continued supplying Tramontina until June 2015, according to Repórter Brasil’s investigation. The supplier was excluded only after it was found that it “probably processed timber from some legal projects and from other projects of dubious origin,” according to Tramontina’s statement.

Three months before that, however, Madeireira Iller had been included in the government’s slave labor “transparency list.”

When asked by Repórter Brasil if Tramontina used the “transparency list” when monitoring its suppliers, the company claimed that it does.

“We have always used it and will continue to use it,” said a company representative. Tramontina stated that from 2016 on, it started updating the records it provides for the de-accreditation of suppliers found to be involved in slave labor practices and environmental crimes every three months instead of the previously used six-month period.

Walmart, as well as two other retail groups in Brazil – Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar – have also pledged to restrict their business with companies included in the “transparency list.” They are signatories of the Brazilian Pact to Eradicate Slave Labor, a multistakeholder initiative created 12 years ago advocating this kind of restriction. As the three of them are all Tramontina clients, Repórter Brasil asked for their stance on the case. Carrefour says it rejects any form of labor similar to slavery or any practices that are not in accordance with environmental legislation. Walmart and Pão de Açúcar underscored that Tramontina had already taken steps to exclude Madeireira Iller from its supply chain. (Read the full statements from Tramontina, Carrefour, Pão de Açúcar and Walmart.)

Report part of a special feature: Wood and Slavery (“Profissão Madeireiro” english version)

Note from Repórter Brasil (March 18th): The link to the most recent version of the “Transparency List” was updated in March 18th.

A matéria Suppliers of Lowe’s in the US and Walmart in Brazil linked to slave labor in the Amazon foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Even before the end of the first half of 2017, three major tragedies in rural Brazil had left their mark in the country’s history. In the state of Mato Grosso in April, nine agricultural workers were killed with particular cruelty. In May, an attack on the Gamela indigenous people, in the state of Maranhão, left two victims with severed hands, five with bullet wounds and another fifteen injured. The third case, also in May but in the state of Pará, was a violent police operation that resulted in the killing of ten landless laborers. “The police turned up shooting,” said witnesses who managed to escape.

The three cases occurred within the context of land disputes, but this is not the only link between them. Repórter Brasil visited all three sites to investigate the attacks and discovered another common trait that is even more alarming: the foreboding tone. In each case, there were signs that the violence was waiting to happen. Some of the victims asked for help from the authorities before the crimes were committed. The survivors are still asking. In the cemetery in Mato Grosso, where five of the workers were buried, the gravedigger dug extra graves in preparation for the next massacre.

The cruelty of the attacks is shocking, but not surprising for anyone who has accompanied the escalation of rural violence.

To keep track of this situation, we have launched a multimedia special called Rural War. In it, we investigate the motivations for the attacks, the context in which the crimes have proliferated, the stories behind the numbers and the links between this violence and the productive sectors that supply the big cities of Brazil and the world. The series, illustrated in comic book language, also mixes photos, videos, audio and infographics within the reporting.

The year 2016 has already gone down in recent history as the one registering the highest number of deaths caused by rural disputes of the past 13 years. There were 61 fatal victims. The brutality of the conflicts in the first half of this year suggests that 2017 could be even worse. “We are seeing in rural areas of Brazil an escalation of the conflict that has always been present in the history of the country,” said Jurema Werneck, executive director of Amnesty International in Brazil.

Nearly a million people were involved in more than 1,500 conflicts over land, water or labor, according to the report Rural Conflicts published by the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT). This is the highest figure in Brazil since 1985 and is equivalent to the number of Syrians who are internally displaced due to the ongoing civil war.

Part of the blame for the escalation of violence is the lack of action by the State. Or worse: the actions that only strengthen one side of the dispute, the rural landowners.

In December 2016, in the midst of the escalation in violence, the government of President Michel Temer abolished the National Agrarian Ombudsman, the only federal agency responsible for mediating rural conflicts. After protests from social movements, the agency was recreated under a new administration. In 2017, legislation was proposed by the agribusiness caucus in Congress proposing that agricultural laborers could be paid in just food or accommodation.

While violence is also on the rise against indigenous and traditional peoples, measures are being debated in Brasília to make changes that weaken these populations. In January, the Ministry of Justice created a group that gives powers to government representatives outside the National Indian Foundation (Funai) to determine the limits and deny recognition of indigenous lands. Until this point, the Ministry had followed the technical guidance of Funai. In March, the new Minister of Justice Osmar Serraglio, who has close ties to agribusiness, declared “land doesn’t fill people’s bellies” in an interview on the indigenous situation with the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. Serraglio later stood down as minister in May.

Set up in late 2016, the Congressional Inquiry Commission on Funai and the Colonization Land Reform Agency (Incra) released its final report in May of this year. The document recommended the indictment of more than 90 people, including anthropologists, indigenous representatives and even federal prosecutors who work on the defense of the rights of indigenous peoples and agricultural laborers.

Brazil is the world leader in murders of environmental activists, according to the NGO Global Witness, which for more than two decades has been studying the links between natural resource exploration and conflicts, among other things. Between 2002 and 2013, the NGO documented 448 killings of Brazilian defenders. The CPT report portrayed the same situation. The number of cases of violence against people jumped from 615 to 1,079 between 2007 and 2016. Cases of criminalization rose 185%. “They have institutionalized the struggle for rights as a crime in Brazil, as if people who protest are criminals,” said Cesar. “When the state is more repressive, it grants a license for violence and legitimizes paramilitary actions,” he said.

The brutality of the violence in rural Brazil was addressed in the United Nations in May 2017. “We are concerned about the increase in attacks in Brazil against human rights defenders. The State needs to deal with  the impunity,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The statement was made a week before Brazil was denounced in Geneva for its social policies in recent years. The UN adopted a strategy of “naming and shaming” by focusing on the violations committed in the country. In this case, it focused on indigenous rights, which are now facing the largest offensive since the military dictatorship. In June, special rapporteurs from the UN and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights declared that “the rights of indigenous peoples and environmental rights are under attack in Brazil”. The response of the Brazilian government, which is already weak internationally, was worse than the analysts could have predicted. In a press release, the Ministry of Foreign Relations called the statements of the rapporteurs “unfounded”.

“The situation is catastrophic,” said Márcio Meira, former president of Funai. “The government is committing atrocities with rights that have been secured at great cost since 1988.” In Meira’s opinion, indigenous peoples are always the first to feel big changes. “This means that, later, the tragedies will befall other vulnerable groups, such as agricultural workers.”

​According to Werneck, of Amnesty International, the solutions are not simple, but they do exist. She cited the Constitution of 1988, which established a time frame for the demarcation of indigenous lands. “Look how much time has gone by and nothing has come of this commitment by Brazilian society and obligation of the State. The land demarcation process is too slow and it is also being set back by endless legal appeals,” she said.

Combating impunity in rural conflicts is also a priority to stop the loss of life. According to data from Amnesty International, thirty of the forty municipalities in southern Pará have an impunity rate of 100% when it comes to murders of agricultural laborers over the past 43 years. “We need to stop the threats and insecurities, put an end to the impunity for crimes related to disputes over land and natural resources, and make progress on the land demarcation and titling processes.”

If you know of a story that needs to be told in this special series, email Repórter Brasil at contato@reporterbrasil.org.br and write “conflicts” in the subject line.​

A matéria Escalation of rural violence foretells climate of war in 2017 foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

A new testimony supports suspicions that civil police officers were working in association with private security guards on the Santa Lúcia farm, where the massacre of ten landless agricultural laborers took place in the state of Pará. They were murdered during a civil and military police operation on May 24 in the municipality of Pau D’Arco. It was the biggest rural massacre of the past 20 years.

The Santa Lúcia farm was inherited from Honorato Babinski by his wife Maria Inez Resplande de Carvalho and three children. The property is in the name of one of the sons, Honorato Babinski Filho.

This was not the first time that the police have killed people on the land owned by the Babinski family. In 2013, on the Pantanal farm, owned by Maria Inez Resplande de Carvalho, witness says the rancher paid a civil police officer to remove squatters from her land. Days later, during a police action on the same property, another group of civil police officers shot and killed the employee who allegedly made the payment.

The report of the payment of a bribe is one element of the investigation that aims to find out whether a group of Pará state civil police officers was working illegally to defend the interests of the Babinski family.

The witness, Elizete Gomes da Silva, spoke exclusively to Repórter Brasil. Her testimony was taken by the prosecutor Alfredo Amorim, who is leading the investigation of the massacre in the State Public Prosecutor’s Office. The case is also being investigated by the Federal Police.

Elizete is risking her life by denouncing the alleged police corruption in the city of Redenção, where she lives. She was the only person interviewed by Repórter Brasil who agreed to have her name associated with the reports about the police. Fear has gripped the witnesses and people who have information about the massacre. There are currently six survivors in the witness protection program.

Despite the presence of the Federal Police in the region, the conflict continues to claim lives. Last Friday, July 7, another murder was committed in connection with the Santa Lúcia farm. Rosenildo Pereira de Almeida was shot three times in the head in the city of Rio Maria, nearly 60 kilometers from Pau D’Arco. Rosenildo was one of the leaders of the camp set up on the Santa Lúcia farm after the massacre. According to the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), he had received threats to leave the camp.

On Monday, the state courts ordered the arrest of 13 of the 29 police officers who took part in the operation. Of these, 11 are military police officers. One of them is the deputy commander of the Military Police of Redenção, Carlos Kened Gonçalves de Sousa. According to information from local newspapers, Sousa and the head of the Police Department for Land Conflicts, Valdivino Miranda, who commanded the police action at the farm, have approached the Federal Police to negotiate a plea bargaining deal.

Witness says she delivered cash to the police in 2013

If proven, Elizete’s allegation is serious. She was married to Leomar Almeida da Silva, a security guard or “gunman” on the Pantanal farm. The terms security guard and gunman are used in the region to describe the men hired by landowners to protect their farms. It is an old practice, and a number of private security firms have sprung up in recent years with licenses to provide this service formally.

Elizete says her husband was hired by the rancher Maria Inez Resplande de Carvalho in 2013 to keep squatters off the Pantanal farm. According to her, one of the Leomar’s jobs was to pay the police to survey the farm. Following the orders of the landowner, he allegedly took the first installment of two thousand Brazilian reals to a civil police officer in Redenção. After the survey of the area had been conducted, Elizete herself personally delivered the second installment, of one thousand Brazilian reals, to the officer.​

A few days later, on October 18, 2013, the civil police went to the farm and shot at a group of men who had recently been hired to protect the area. Leomar was the only person killed in the operation. According to the investigation opened into the case, Leomar died in the farm caretaker’s house, where he was spending the night with the recently hired men.

At the time, the civil police told the local press that the operation was a response to reports of armed men on the Pantanal farm. Leomar was accused by the police of being the head of a gang “responsible for bank robberies, drug trafficking and occupation of farms”, according to a report in a local newspaper.

Elizete swears that Leomar was not involved in criminal activities and she came to her husband’s defense, denouncing the bribery scheme to the Internal Affairs Office of the Civil Police, which opened an internal administrative inquiry in January 2014. When contacted by Repórter Brasil, the Pará State Public Security and Social Defense Department said that “after the conclusion of the inquiry conducted by the Internal Affairs Office, the administrative case was shelved since it found the complaint to be groundless”.

A criminal investigation was opened into the death of Leomar, during which Elizete’s testimony was taken. The case is pending in the state courts.

When contacted for this report, the rancher declined to answer any questions about the Pantanal farm. Her lawyer, Olga Moreira, said that the case is still in the investigative stage and, as a result, her client preferred not to comment.

Association between the police and security guards

​Elizete’s testimony is not the only element to suggest that the Pará state police are working in concert with ranchers. Other evidence pointing in this direction is the fact that the security guards from the Santa Lúcia farm took part in the police action that resulted in the massacre on May 24. This has been confirmed by the prosecutor in the case, Alfredo Amorim. “The participation of security guards is completely irregular and at least one of them was armed. I know they were working for the farm,” said Amorim in an interview with TV Liberal.

Forensic officers at the Santa Lúcia farm. Photo by Antonio Carlos

Honorato Babinski Filho, the owner of the farm, said the responsibility for the management of his security guards lies with the company Elmo, which he contracted to handle the security of the farm. “I was not aware of the operation conducted by the police and likewise I did not know that the security guards had participated.”

The participation of the private security guards corroborates one of the suspected motives for the crime: revenge. This is because, on the day of the massacre, the police had gone to the farm to serve arrest warrants to ten landless laborers under investigation for the murder of Marcos Batista Ramos Montenegro, one of the farm’s security guards. Marcos died from a shot to the face on April 30 – less than a month before the massacre.

Survivors claim they heard the voice of the Civil Police Chief of Redenção, Antônio Miranda, ordering the executions. Officially, the police chief did not take part in the operation that resulted in the massacre.

“I heard Miranda saying: ‘kill them’,” said one witness who was hiding less than 70 meters away. “The others were crying. I heard them, they said: ‘I’m not going to run, for God’s sake’. They were alive. I heard the blows and then I didn’t hear them talking anymore. Just moaning, whimpering. Meanwhile, the police officers were laughing and shouting. Miranda’s voice was loud, excited, celebrating”.

Bodies of the victims at Redenção Hospital. Photo by: Antonio Carlos

When contacted for this report, the Pará State Security Department claimed that Police Chief Antonio Miranda was not present during the operation. “There is, therefore, no need for an investigation,” it said in a statement. The police chief was not relieved from duty.

The version of the confrontation initially released by the police was dismissed by the prosecutor investigating the case. Survivors said the police turned up shooting and then, after some of the landless workers surrendered, they were tortured and executed one by one.

The main line of investigation now is to discover which police officers fired their weapons, the reason for the executions and whether the police violence against those rural workers is associated with the payment of bribes by the ranchers. “One important aspect is to determine whether there is a record of systematic killings of rural workers by police officers in the region,” said Deborah Duprat, Deputy Federal Attorney General. “Another line of investigation involves the private security companies. I want to know if they are companies or organized militias”.

The workers that were camped at the Santa Lúcia farm and their relatives say that “everyone knows that the police receives money from landowners”. They claim that paying police officers to reinforce security on the farms is a common practice in the region.

One of the rural workers from the camp described, on condition of anonymity, how the occupations function and the alleged response of the farmers in association with the police: “Most of the farms here are created by land-grabbing [forging documents]. The group [of landless people] first determines whether the land is documented. If it isn’t, they gather their family together, set up camp and file a lawsuit. The farmer can either go to court, which is unlikely because in court he’ll spend more money. Or he’ll contract a different kind of service. Using security guards and gunmen, he’ll spend a lot less. The farmer turns up, pays and says ‘I want this done’. Then they [the police] go and do it”.

One month before the massacre, land repossession sparked an escalation of violence

Landless agricultural workers have been occupying the Santa Lúcia farm since 2013 on and off due to three land repossession cases. Before the massacre, the main leaders and most of the workers camped there all had close family ties. Of the ten people that were killed, seven were from the same family. They were not part of any formal movement, although they were engaged in dialogue with some organizations, including the Liga dos Camponeses Pobres (League of Poor Peasants).

One of the reasons leading the group to continue the occupation was a case opened by the  Colonization and Land Reform Agency (Incra), which was negotiating with the owners to purchase the farm for land reform purposes. Although the land occupied by the squatters was not being farmed, the Santa Lúcia property does raise cattle. The landless workers were challenging the farm’s documentation, alleging that the title was illegally obtained by forging land ownership documents.

In this land dispute that has been dragging on for four years, squatters who spoke to Repórter Brasil, on condition of anonymity, said relations with the security guards and the police have always been tense. But there was an escalation of violence a month before the massacre, starting on April 20 of this year, when the civil police went to enforce the third land repossession order at the Santa Lúcia farm.

At around this same time, the landowner Babinski Filho hired the security firm Elmo, which is now at the center of the investigation.

On the day of the repossession, according to the reports of the laborers, the police headed to the farm together with the private security guards. The name most mentioned by the laborers in their reports on this incident is, once again, the Civil Police Chief Antônio Miranda. “He called us a bunch of criminals occupying somebody else’s farm,” said one of the occupiers, only on condition of anonymity.

Also on the day of the repossession, another witness said the police officers and the private security guards oversaw the burning of the shacks: “One police officer got out of the car and told the gunman: “as soon as they’ve removed their belongings, set it on fire”. In a statement, one of the farm employees confirmed that two gunmen were hired specifically to burn the shacks.

One of the laborers reported that, although he tried to remove his belongings, his shack was burned while the police stood by. “The police were there with the gunmen, and they set it on fire. There were clothes, a mattress, food. We didn’t have time to save anything.”

Burning possessions is illegal and is indicative of the increased hostility towards the occupiers. To prevent such violations, the state government developed a protocol with a set of guidelines to be followed when enforcing land repossessions. This protocol was established in response to a massacre in the municipality of Eldorado dos Carajás in 1996, when 19 members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) were killed by the Military Police during a demonstration.

Left: funeral of the landless laborers killed in the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre; photo by João Roberto Ripper. Right: funeral of the agricultural laborers killed in the massacre; photo by Antonio Carlos

In April this year, however, the land repossession at the Santa Lúcia farm began by violating the first rule of the protocol: the operation should be carried out by a specialized police brigade from the state capital, Belém. Never by the civil or military police from the region.

The owner of the farm denies the abuses committed by the police and claims the repossession was peaceful. “All the formal and necessary procedures were observed. Including with the presence of a legal officer that notified the people,” said Honorato Babinski Filho, in an email sent by his lawyer.

Just days after the repossession, gunmen allegedly shot at the landless workers. The incident was recorded in police reports filed by three laborers at the Redenção police station. Repórter Brasil has all the documents.

One of the police reports was filed by Jane Julia de Oliveira. Her statement was taken on April 26 by Valdivino Miranda, the same officer who a month later commanded the operation that would take her life. Valdivino Miranda was still at liberty when we completed our reporting.

On April 30, one of the farm’s security guards Marcos Batista was shot in the face and killed. The investigation into the case is being conducted in secrecy and it is looking into the involvement of the laborers in the death of the security guard. Not long after the murder, the leaders of those landless workers started to receive anonymous threats by telephone. Friends and relatives said the pressure was mounting daily.

According to one witness, Jane – the leader of the occupation – feared for her life and she asked to stay at the witness’s house just days before the massacre. “She said ‘I’m going to stay here because there are two pickup trucks hanging around at home’,” said the witness. “They telephoned her from a restricted number and said ‘your day is coming, your time is coming’.”

State legislator Tércio Nogueira speaking at a rally in support of the police officers involved in the massacre. 13 of them were arrested this week

Rally in support of the police officers involved in the massacre

While the brutality of the case shocked human rights organizations locally and across Brazil, and the incident was addressed in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, authorities connected to the police in Pará staged a rally in support of the officers involved in the massacre.

Repórter Brasil covered the rally, which took place on May 29, three days after the funeral of the victims. At least two state legislators and one federal congressman made speeches, together with leaders of civil and military police associations.

“Farmers, rural producers, police officers and firefighters, you are not alone in this war,” said state legislator Tércio Nogueira, followed by applause. In the crowd, a banner made by the inactive military police officers of Redenção read “support for our colleagues of the Santa Lúcia episode in Pau D’Arco”.

Also present at the rally was the federal congressman Éder Mauro, who was investigated for torture in a case that was shelved by the Supreme Court. He was the most voted representative from Pará in 2014 and is a member of the pro-gun caucus in Congress.

After he returned to the State Legislature in Belém, Éder Mauro got into an argument and had to be restrained by his colleagues to stop the congressman from assaulting an opposition member, Carlos Bordalo. As president of the Human Rights Committee, Bordalo was one of the members responsible for drafting the report on the massacre.

One of the conclusions of the report was the possible motivation for the violence against the laborers: “it is plausible to assert that the operation had the veiled purpose of undermining any ability to reorganize the occupation, benefiting the supposed landowners and ending the land conflict once and for all”.

The latest murder, of Rosenildo Pereira de Almeida on July 7, is a sign that the investigation has still not reached the perpetrators of the crime. According to the Liga dos Camponeses Pobres (League of Poor Peasants), the organization of which the victim was a member, Rosenildo had been working on the reenactment of the crime that took place days earlier with the federal, civil and military police.

A matéria Massacre in Pará: testimonies suggest that police were working in association with landowners foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Many years later, facing his younger brother, the sexagenarian Augusto Miranda Brasão was to remember that since the age of 12 he worked with his father cutting piassava to pay off debts to his bosses. This palm tree, whose coarse fiber is used to make brooms, has marked the life of Augusto, his brother, father and grandfather. For a hundred years, the different generations of the Brasão family have lived under a criminal enterprise that bind thousands of indigenous extractivists on the upper and middle Negro River, in the state of Amazonas. The brothers live in the community of Malalahá. Just like in the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, the life of piassava workers is repeated in cycles and has a dose of magical realism. They are trapped in a world of exploitation in which work is confused with debt payment, a situation that recalls times gone by.

Three generations. Like their father and grandfather, the Brasão brothers work in the extraction of piassava, whose fibers are used to make brooms. Photo by Fernando Martinho

The working relationship is based on a system of loans provided by the bosses who control piassava production. For enough food to last a month, the bosses charge nearly R$1,500 – some items cost 300% more than similar products sold in the town. A kilo of piassava, meanwhile, is worth around R$2. The workers receive what is left (when there is something left) after deducting the loans for the rancho – the name given by the local population for food, transport and basic working equipment. From the amount paid at the end of the month, the employer also withholds 20% for potential impurities. And in some cases another 10% is deducted for the “rent” of their place of work by those who claim to be the owners of the area.

Slave labor. Piassava workers spend weeks or months inside the forest to pay off debts contracted with their bosses, as the tradesmen on the river are called. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Working conditions. A piece of canvas tied to wooden posts makes their accommodation. There is no bathroom, sink, place to store food or safety equipment. The workers eat what they hunt. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Required by the boss. Before delivering the product, the piassava workers must first comb and trim the fibers and then tie them into bales. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Tons of piassava. The piassava bales are transported by ferry. This picture shows a batch of piassava bales in the community of Tapera. Photo by Fernando Martinho

“The goal is to keep the piassava worker indebted and subordinate their whole life,” explained the researcher Márcio Meira, former president of the National Indian Foundation (Funai), who has studied the cycle of bondage in the Amazon. The inhabitants of the Negro River call this system aviamento. But the official name for this form of contemporary slavery, according to the Brazilian Criminal Code, is debt bondage.

However, a decree that would not consider this type of exploitation as slave labor was published on October 13 by Labor Minister Ronaldo Nogueira, who wants to change the current definition. “The decree does away with the concept of contemporary slavery,” said Antônio Carlos de Mello, coordinator of the Programme to Combat Forced Labor of the International Labour Organization in Brazil. According to Rafael Garcia Rodrigues, a labor prosecutor and former national coordinator of Slave Labor Eradication at the Office of the Public Prosecutor for Labor Issues, the decree could “abolish” the concept of debt bondage. “It’s an unbelievable setback.” The decision of the government, without any prior discussion, comes ahead of a new impeachment vote in the Lower House of Congress and a week after the dismissal of the national coordinator for policing slave labor, André Roston.

Many piassava workers are the first to deny that their working conditions constitute slave labor. “What would happen if they reported it? How would they get back home with nothing? It’s a trap,” said Alexandre Arbex Valadares, a researcher at the Applied Economic Research Institute (Ipea). He explained that once they start, the worker has no other alternative than to survive and pay their debts.

These conditions, however, are viewed as normal by the piassava workers themselves. Augusto, trapped in the system for 48 years, says he is free and that he only works when he wants. “Nobody here forces me to do anything.” He and his brother spent that day, May 28, 2017, working to pay off a “little debt” of R$800 with nearly a ton of piassava. Cutting palm leaves in temperatures that can exceed 30º C in the fall and carrying 60 kilos at a time on their backs is only half the day’s work. While they wait for a tapir that they hunted to cook, Augusto explains that the boss requires them to cut, comb, trim and tie the fibers up into bales. “But we’re not slaves, like people say we are.”

In Brazil, according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), 1.5 million people are unable to leave their employment due to some kind of debt.

The cost. Former piassava worker Aelton José Pereira Muniz holds up a sheet of paper with the list of expenses he received from the boss. Some items were sold at three times their price. Photo by Fernando Martinho

The list of rancho. The name given by the local population for food, transport and basic working equipment. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Education in the community. In the community of Malalahá, the school, which has a broken blackboard and no walls, has just one teacher. One of the students, Bia, holds a spider monkey. Photo by Fernando Martinho

In the community of Malalahá where they live, the person giving the orders is the boss Edson Mara Mendonça, say the piassava workers in the region of the upper Negro River. But he is not the only one. Debt is encouraged by other bosses who travel to the communities in search of piassava workers. Jucileno Neves Pacheco, a 59-year-old from the state of Bahia, owes R$400 to another boss, but out of fear of reprisals he preferred not the reveal his name. “I’ve got product to pay for, but first I have to buy some oil and gasoline from him to collect the fibers”. In other words, in order to pay the debt, the worker must first take on a new loan. And then there’s the tape, remembers Pacheco. A 300 meter roll of tape used to tie up the leaves costs, on average, R$400. Tying the fiber into bales makes it easier for the boss to transport. “To begin with, we thought the tape was a good idea, because we thought it would be provided [by the boss]. But no. When they saw that they could make money, it started costing us more. And it doesn’t serve any purpose at all for us,” said Pacheco.

For one piassava worker with sad eyes, 41-year-old Alberto Neres da Silva, bondage appears to have robbed him of his capacity for emotion. “One by one, I lost my children,” he said calmly, about a story that should have been told like it is: a tragedy. In distant times in his life, and each time working in piassava extraction, he lost three children. They all died before they were one year old due to the precarious living conditions on the piassava plantations. Many, like Neres da Silva, take their whole family upstream with them. This allows them to reduce food costs and avoid living apart for three weeks each month.

Two of his children got sick inside the plantations and were buried there. The first time, the boss did nothing to help, said Neres, without expressing any indignation. The second, a manager refused to offer any assistance because “the boss had not given the order”. The third time, Neres made it to the local community in time. When his son started to show signs of recovering, the boss found him to tell him that the infant would be fine. “I owed money and I took it as a warning. I went back upstream and after two weeks, my son’s condition deteriorated. The boss only arranged for a speedboat after the boy was more dead than alive.” He got the tattoo on his arm after the third death: “God is powerful, I have faith”.

Evening on the river. The diesel-fueled generator in the community of Campinas do Rio Preto runs four hours per day, from 6 pm to 10 pm. Photo by Fernando Martinho

The debt economy was introduced to the Negro River during the rubber boom. One of the accounts of the Italian Ermanno Stradelli, who traveled up the dark waters of the river in 1881, states that debt gave the indigenous peoples – to this day the majority of the population in the state of Amazonas – the status of being “civilized”. In the words of the Italian, “the man who does not owe money is a man without value.” The statement appears in the book Baré, Povo do Rio, published by Edições Sesc. To avoid conflict with the boss, according to the researcher Elieyd Sousa de Menezes in her master’s thesis, foreigners encouraged interracial marriages.

In Malalahá, bondage has created a situation that is unusual to say the least. The piassava worker Olânio dos Santos Bento, aged 28, explained that his father, Olavo, aged 88, is his boss. “But he’s not like the other bosses,” he said. Olânio’s debt was R$800. He caught “leishi”, or Leishmaniasis, a disease caused by parasites. Prevented from working due to pain, his debt accumulated. “My father was a great boss. He had 60 men working for him,” he said with pride. Olânio’s brother is a “little boss”, a small tradesman, who on one of his trips upriver played soccer with the indigenous locals. Social mobility in the debt bondage chain is possible when a worker has the means of production, which is rare.

The naturalization of bondage. Olavo dos Santos, aged 88, is father and boss to his own son, Olânio, aged 28. Bondage is not frowned upon by the son. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Tragedy. Three children of the piassava worker Alberto Neres da Silva and Claudia died on separate occasions while he worked with piassava. The bosses did nothing to help. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Olavo, the father, has lived on a boat for 50 years. On the floor of the vessel is all kinds of food and accessories. Like his son, the grandson of his Portuguese father and Baré indigenous mother, Olavo was a piassava worker. Like his son, he doesn’t hesitate in saying “there’s not a single indian here” about the residents of Campinas and other communities. “Indians live in isolation,” he said. “The rest are caboclos.” And he doesn’t have a good word to say about them either. “A good piassava worker doesn’t have big eyes [greed],” he said, before citing an example of a good worker, in his opinion. “There was a guy who waited for everyone before getting his food. And he didn’t eat wheat products, biscuits. It was water, salt and whatever he could hunt.” Then, surprisingly, he said that “running up a tab makes life difficult” – precisely the system that he still uses with his workers. Asked about this, he was speechless for the first time.

“A good piassava worker doesn’t have big eyes [greed],” he said, before citing an example of a good worker, in his opinion. “There was a guy who waited for everyone before getting his food. And he didn’t eat wheat products, biscuits. It was water, salt and whatever he could hunt.”

Reference community. Campinas do Rio Preto is considered an educational hub on the river. Six teachers take turns giving pre-school to high school classes. Photo by Fernando Martinho

All across Amazonas, the pejorative expression “those who aren’t indians” used by Olânio and Olavo is a common way to refer to the Baré indigenous people. Like so many other indigenous groups, the Baré were persecuted in the early decades of the 20th century. In Baré, Povo do Rio, indigenous people and researchers mention illegal occupations, massacres both physical and cultural – such as the forced introduction of Catholicism – and imprisonment and slavery. To survive, they concealed their own identity. They lost their rituals and native tongue. The strategy to disappear worked so well that Funai declared the group extinct. In 1990, the recovery of their identity began.

“The alliance of so many peoples around an indigenous issue is, above all, an alliance for survival. They undertook this process so they wouldn’t be decimated,” explained the anthropologist Camila Sobral Barra, who studies the peoples of the Negro River for Instituto Socioambiental (ISA).

The search for identity is associated with the search for land. “With demarcation, the land returns to the indigenous peoples and stops generating profit for the piassava bosses, businesspeople [from the agribusiness and mining sectors] and for politicians,” said Barra.

Business on the river banks. Bosses look for workers in the communities and make false promises. Photo by Fernando Martinho

An appropriate response

In 2013, the Cooperative of Piassava Workers from the Upper and Middle Negro River (COOPIAÇAMARIN), known locally as the association of bosses, organized an anti-demarcation march in Barcelos. They used the report by the anthropologist Edward Luz, which was commissioned and rejected by Funai because it was drafted without hearing the indigenous people. Luz is an evangelist from the New Tribes Mission Brazil, an organization that was banned from indigenous communities in 1991, accused of trafficking children, slavery and sexual exploitation. In 2013, Luz left the Brazilian Association of Anthropology.

Four piassava workers told Repórter Brasil that COOPIAÇAMARIN had paid the fuel costs for them to travel downstream and join the anti-demarcation march. The effort brought together nearly a thousand people with signs and cars with loudspeakers – the banner “I am a piassava worker, I exist” is still there – and brought the town of 25,000 inhabitants to a standstill. The intention was to defend the interests of the bosses, but it had the opposite effect. The march drew the attention of the Office of the Public Prosecutor for Labor Issues (MPT). “We thought there were only a few extractivists and all of a sudden a thousand were there in front of us,” said the MPT prosecutor Renan Bernardi Kalil. Contacted several times, COOPIAÇAMARIN could not be located.

A year later, prompted by the stories they heard at the demonstration, the MPT, the Ministry of Labor, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the Federal Highway Police and the Army conducted a field raid.

Carried out in April and May 2014, the action rescued 13 piassava workers. They worked for a boss known as Carioca, the nickname of Luiz Claudio Morais Rocha, the owner of the company Irajá Fibras Naturais da Amazônia, whose legal name is L. C. Morais Rocha Comercial. One of the workers owed nearly R$20,000, a debt that had accumulated over thirteen years of bondage.

The final report concluded that the group was living in conditions akin to slave labor, and identified a total of twenty-six labor irregularities. The conditions were classified as debt bondage on account of illegal indebtedness and remuneration below the minimum wage – the same situation faced today by the piassava workers interviewed by our reporters.

“An example of how the repression of slave labor is ineffective when it is also the only strategy to combat the crime,” said the federal prosecutor Julio José Araújo Júnior, who participated in the rescue action in 2014. The Regional Federal Court of the 1st Region, in Brasília, accepted the civil lawsuit against the boss Carioca. The sentence of Federal Judge Jaíza Maria Pinto Fraxe on the labor violations suffered by the piassava workers was the subject of an award this year from the National Justice Council, a body that oversees the Brazilian judicial system.

The criminal proceeding had a different outcome. A new prosecutor took over the case and argued for the acquittal of Carioca. In August this year, Federal Judge Ana Paula Serizawa Silva Podedworny acquitted the boss due to lack of evidence. The press office of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office informed that the original prosecutor of the criminal case has appealed the judge’s ruling.

When contacted, Carioca denied the charges. By telephone, he said that the rescued piassava workers did not work for him and that he does not have shacks in that location. “They brought it from there and sold it to me. Sometimes, I traded gasoline. But they (the inspectors) said I can’t do that anymore.” About trading on the river today, he said: “After everything that’s happened, whatever I buy I’ll pay for up front.”

According to local residents, now that Carioca is out of the picture, the tradesman Antonio Lacerda has emerged as the new boss in the region. The Repórter Brasil team visited the community of Tapera, where the business is based. Tons of piassava bales were piled up on the banks of the river, on the river itself and even underneath the houses. All the residents would say, out of fear, was that Lacerda wasn’t there. The team of reporters tried to locate Lacerda up until the time of publication, but was not successful.

Piles of piassava. In the community of Tapera, there were bales stored even underneath houses. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Another use for piassava. The father of six living children, the former piassava worker Ailton Pereira struggled to free himself debt bondage. Today he uses the fibers to make handicrafts. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Dance of the piassava worker. In Campinas do Rio Preto, children and young people rehearse the dance steps. Pictured here is the piassava queen and the representative of the piassava workers. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Fear of leaving bondage

The piassava worker Ailton Pereira, aged 46, lost an uncle and a father-in-law after they were bitten by snakes in the plantations. Since the trunks are covered in fibers – in the Tupi language “hairs that grow from inside the heart of the tree” – the piassava is used as a nest by poisonous animals. “I’ve come close to being bitten several times myself, not including the mosquitoes,” he said. In piassava plantations, it is common to see barber bugs, which transmit Chagas disease, as well as transmitters of malaria. Umbilical hernias, low back pain and early rheumatism are also common occupational diseases.

The father of six living children, aged from 2 to 22, Ailton said he needed courage to leave the piassava plantations. Instead of making bails, today he makes handicrafts with the fibers and sells them in commercial centers. For a broom, he earns R$7. In the community where he lives, he is known as the author of a song about the life of piassava workers. “I got tired of cutting and carrying tons of piassava and always being hungry, for weeks at a time, in the middle of the forest.”

Fear is the greatest tormentor of those who stay. At least according to José Melgueiro de Jesus, aka Zezão, president of the Association of Communities of Rio Preto. “When I was a piassava worker, life was bad but I didn’t leave because I didn’t think I could survive any other way.” He glances at the river, where he left his past behind. “To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my wife.” Laudiceia Carvalho Balbino, aged 46, had been insisting for years that they make a change to their life.

The same water that trapped them set them free. Laudiceia recalls the day when Zezão was trying to control the canoe during a storm. Their two small children were hanging on by themselves because Laudiceia was holding their newborn.

The wind blew a branch that hit her on the head. The shock and the pain gave way to anger and she gave her husband an ultimatum. “I was crying and I swore that we’d be able to live differently,” said Laudiceia, while cooking cassava flour in a clay oven.

“After I stopped working with piassava, I could get to know my wife and children again,” said Zezão, talking about one invisible impact of bondage, in which men, through no choice of their own, become mere spectators of their own future. They moved to Campinas do Rio Preto. They took a course in family farming and planted cassava on a piece of land 20 minutes by boat from the community. The workday starts at dawn and ends in the late afternoon. Zezão and Laudiceia cannot count how many times they have had “tremors”, a classic symptom of sunstroke. “Physical work is a sacrifice, but it is blessed. People who plant land don’t go hungry”. Today, they help their neighbors who are trying to get out of bondage by telling them about their own journey and giving them food.

Demarcations on the Negro River

The cost of beating the system of debt bondage has been high for Zezão, who is now a community leader in Campinas where he lives. In May, the Federation of Indigenous Organizations of the Negro River (Foirn), an umbrella organization of 89 associations and more than 35,000 indigenous peoples, held a meeting in the town with local leaders to talk about the demarcations. At the meeting, the Yanomami indigenous group accused Foirn and all of Campinas of being enemies. According to Zezão, the Yanomami think that demarcation will close off the rivers and prevent them from working. “But they didn’t dream that up. There are people behind all this. What they want is indians fighting indians,” said Marivelton Barroso, president of the federation.

Even Mayor Araildo Mendes do Nascimento, say the residents, has given conflicting versions about the demarcations. In the community of Campinas, Careca – the nickname of the mayor – has promised to check on the progress of the demarcation processes. In the community of Malalahá, a different promise was made. “[The mayor] told the minister not to sign,” said Olânio, of Malalahá, referring to a private conversation he said he had with the mayor. Careca is from the center-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the same party as the former Justice Minister Osmar Serraglio and President Michel Temer. Serraglio, who has connections with agribusiness, has made countless statements critical of the demarcations. When contacted, Careca did not answer the telephone calls made by our reporters.

Bondage on the river. Aerial view of the community of Campinas. Six families still live off piassava extraction. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Recent occupant. For two years, the resident of this house, the piassava worker Alberto Neres, has been trying to free himself from debt bondage. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Barroso, aged 26, has been an activist for the indigenous cause since he was a teenager. Without hesitation, he calls the environmental agenda of President Michel Temer a “setback” and accuses the government of negligence. He has the determined voice of someone who has already denounced the government in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and this, he said, has assured him a long list of anti-demarcation enemies – from bosses to politicians. According to Barroso, demarcation will guarantee the autonomy of indigenous peoples in the production and sale of piassava.

On the upper and middle Negro River, it has not been a matter of hours, days or months. For years whole families have been subjected to exploitation through debt bondage in the extraction of piassava. Although many still cannot understand – or admit – the violations they suffer, there is a growing movement that is eager to create, for the first time, a new beginning in the dark waters of the river.

Literacy on the river. Two pre-school classes take place simultaneously in Campinas. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Taste of Amazonas. In the communities along the river, açaí berries are picked for home consumption and for sale. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Translated by Barnaby Whiteoak

A matéria 100 years of servitude foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

In Rio Branco, a wall painted with the face of Chico Mendes. He was killed in 1988 for standing up to a rancher in defense of the interests of local rubber tappers. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Dressed in red trousers and a black shirt and wearing an indigenous necklace, the representative of the German Development Bank KFW, Christiane Ehringhaus, praised the pioneerism of Acre to an audience of local residents on the final day of the “Seminar to Assess the Results of the REDD Early Movers Program in Acre”. The event, complete with a group photograph, took place in July at the Resort Hotel in the state capital Rio Branco. On the agenda were the results of the model program of the government for what is conventionally called the green economy, a term used worldwide to combine economic development with environmental preservation. A handful of indigenous people and residents of local communities shared the room with a number of state and national lawmakers and a few others. One was Senator Jorge Viana, president of the Joint Commission on Climate Change in the National Congress, former state governor and brother of the current governor Tião Viana. The Viana brothers are responsible for selling Acre’s model of green economy to the world.

“We are very excited to be able to use these valuable lessons from Acre,” said Ehringhaus, “and we are already taking advantage of these lessons to establish the program in other states”. Mato Grosso has already signed up.

Acre, a state treated with contempt by so many Brazilians, wants to set an environmental example for the world. On the border with Peru and Bolivia, the state has just over 800,000 inhabitants and is ranked 25th in terms of Gross Domestic Product. “We’re not concerned about vanity. If our experience can show Brazil and the world that it’s possible to preserve and develop at the same time, that will be terrific,” Governor Tião Viana told the Repórter Brasil team. The green development plan was introduced when the two brothers from the leftist Workers Party (PT) came to power in 1999. In 2010, a law was passed to regulate the System of Incentives for Environmental Services, a long-winded plan covering 30 pages, front and back, that both praises an alleged decade-long environmental pioneerism in Acre and lists a number of new projects. The first item on the list is the promotion of environmental carbon services (reduction of CO2 emissions in exchange for incentives). KFW, the German government’s development bank, appears as one of the partners in the plan. In 2012, the government received 25 million euros from the German bank, the equivalent of almost R$90 million for projects to reduce CO2 emissions.

At the same event, the state environment secretary Carlos Edegard de Deus claimed that another goal shared by the latest administrations is the “inclusion of the neglected: indians, rubber tappers, riverside peoples and land reform settlers. We have always fought for the inclusion of everyone, provided they adhere to the principles of sustainability.” Intentional or not, the use of the word “provided” reveals the existence of a condition for these people to be included in the government policy. And this condition is to follow the rules of sustainability created and defended by the Viana brothers. These rules, which all place restrictions on human activity, were taken from international agreements that guarantee financing for projects that preserve forests and that also enable the sale of carbon to polluting companies in other parts of the world, particularly in developed countries.

The first complaints about the “wonders of the green economy” did not take long to surface, said Winnie Overbeek, international coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement (WRM). In 2011, several organizations, including WRM, participated in an investigation conducted by the Dhesca Platform in Acre and identified “a series of negative socio-political, economic and environmental impacts, in particular on traditional lands and populations”.

Just ask the traditional peoples. They have no idea where Acre invested the thousands of euros it received from the German government – Winnie Overbeek, International Coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement

“We found a series of environmental and social injustices caused by a government plan that aspires to be a model for the world,” said Overbeek. “Just ask the traditional peoples. They have no idea where Acre invested the thousands of euros it received from the German government.”

The lack of dialogue with the people who live in the forest is one of the criticisms of the program made by scholars, local leaders and extractivist communities. They say the plan does not contribute to the preservation of the forest. Besides not helping, these groups claim the program is a burden, by creating new pressures on the traditional inhabitants who are forced to make changes to their lifestyle, since they are prevented from hunting, fishing or using the forest for their livelihood.

The program is the exact opposite of the philosophy of Chico Mendes, according to the agronomist Elder Andrade de Paula, one of the main opponents of the environmentalism of the Viana brothers. The history of the rubber tapper and union leader is key to understanding the land conflict in Acre that endures to this day. The son of rubber tappers, Mendes was the leading figure in the creation of a union, association and council in defense of the extractivists. He proposed that a lifestyle integrated with the forest was the best way to preserve it – and he always opposed encroachment by large landowners. He was killed in 1988 in front of his house in Xapuri. The rancher Darly Alves da Silva was found guilty of ordering the crime. One of his farms had been expropriated to form an extractive reserve.

Expansion of Deforestation

In the penultimate week of May, in Xapuri, indigenous and extractivist leaders met for three days to denounce the impacts of the Acre government’s green economy. In a letter released after the meeting, they said the policy was imposed “in an authoritarian manner and without consulting the communities in advance”. Since they oppose the expansion, they say they face pressure and threats from the “owners of power in Acre”.

The agronomist Andrade, a professor and researcher at the Philosophy and Human Sciences Center of the Federal University of Acre, said that by presenting itself as a model for environmental policies the state government is being hypocritical, since it is masking old problems in the Amazon region. “The green economy, the new term that has replaced the overused ‘sustainable development’, is an excuse to continue doing what has always been done: produce unsustainably in a social and environmental sense.”

The researcher’s criticisms are backed up by environmental data, which show that Acre is reducing deforestation at a slower pace than the rest of the Amazon region, while the number of cattle continues to rise.

Last year, Acre did the second most amount of deforestation in the Amazon, according to the National Space Research Institute. The felling of forests rose 47% in the state. Despite the increase, the figure was in line with government targets, which are to keep total annual deforestation below 434 square kilometers.

In 2016, the Amazon lost nearly 8,000 square kilometers of forest, the most since 2008. This increase prompted Norway, the main contributor to a trust to conserve the forest, to cut its transfer of funds to Brazil almost by half. The country is the world’s 15th largest producer of oil – which contributes to global warming. This is why it has become an important donor for forest preservation, but only for green economy projects.

In addition to deforestation, the increase in land occupation is another indicator that the economy of Acre is not so green. In 2001, Acre had more than 18,000 farms registered on 2.9 million hectares of land. Large landowners (who have more than a thousand hectares) represented 2% of the farms and they occupied 58% of the hectares. In 2016, the number of registered properties nearly doubled – to 37,000 – and the amount of occupied land quadrupled – to 11.6 million hectares. Despite this increase, the concentration of land has remained the same: large landowners still represent 2% of the farms and they occupy 56% of the total area. “Concentration leads to deforestation and an expansion of grazing land. In other words, latifundia,” said the agronomist Andrade. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), 85% of the deforested land in Acre is used for grazing.

The government’s technical advisory office disputed the data from the Land Reform Agency (Incra) presented by the agronomist illustrating the concentration of land ownership. It said it was not possible to know with any accuracy how many farms there are in the state. On the deforestation, the governor said the increase was a “one-off bounce”, and blamed small farmers. “They’re the ones that are still driving the deforestation,” he said. Viana claimed that Acre is one of the most preserved states: 87% of the forest is standing and since 2002 it has reduced deforestation by 64%, according to data from the Space Science Institute.

As far as Governor Tião Viana is concerned, livestock farming is compatible with environmental preservation. He wants to triple the number of cattle without increasing the grazing area, which would mean raising up to 10 animals per hectare. Currently, the land holds less than 2 cows per hectare.

One of the showpieces of the green economy in Acre is a program that regulates REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), an international carbon retention system. Since 2010, the government has committed to cut deforestation and therefore emit less CO2, one of the main causes of global warming. Everything below the target is considered non-emitted carbon and can be sold, for example, to companies that pollute the environment, even in other parts of the world. The measurement of the carbon amount is conducted using internationally established mathematical calculations and this imposes a series of restrictions on the use of the forest by communities that depend on it for their survival. A deal is currently being negotiated that will permit Californian companies to exceed the pollution targets in the United States and offset up to 4% of the excess emissions buying CO2 credits that Acre did not emit.

“Carbon trading is nothing more than purchasing the right to pollute,” said Andrade. “In the case of the agreement with California, the population there loses because they will continue to live in a polluted environment, and the traditional peoples of Acre also lose, because their traditional lifestyle is altered.”

Even when large areas are not deforested, complaints of forest degradation are received due to the selective felling of certain species of trees. Degradation is not measured by satellite surveillance, but it is felt first hand by the people who live off the forest. Besides the impact, these populations are prevented by the sustainability rules of the green economy from exercising their subsistence activities.

The rules of sustainability do not affect large farmers or private businesses, but instead the traditional populations – Winnie Overbeek, International Coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement

Sitting next to Andrade by a lake inhabited by capybaras on the campus of the Federal University of Acre in Rio Branco, the coordinator of the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) in Acre, Darlene Braga, said that the pressures imposed by the green economy prevent traditional peoples from hunting and requires them to take part in an economic system that many of them do not understand. “What we see are families being driven out, scared of losing the piece of ground where they live and the right to use the land”.

Overbeek agrees: “Our research shows that this is the case the world over. The rules of sustainability do not affect large farmers or private businesses, but instead the traditional populations. Why? Because they don’t have political power.”

Extractivism vs. planted forests

The latex condom factory Natex is located at the entrance to Xapuri, a small town that is calm and well looked after with colorful wooden stilt houses suspended over the cloudy water of the Acre River – where Chico Mendes was born, lived and was killed. The factory, which opened in 2008 and belongs to the Acre State Technology Foundation, is a source of pride for the government when it talks about policies for rubber tappers. The project is supposed to stimulate the system of “planted forests” without completely ending rubber extractivism, which many traditional rubber tappers refuse to give up. But it has been the target of criticism.

“There are various ways to introduce this idea of a green economy without it appearing as such,” said Andrade. Production by Natex, which supplies the Ministry of Health in northern Brazil, is based on local latex whose price is subsidized (in part with money from the agreement with Germany). Andrade said that last year, Natex paid around R$7.80 per kilo of latex, of which R$3.80 was for the product and R$4 in subsidies. However, to receive the subsidy, rubber tappers had to sign a contract with the government “to observe the rites of the control mechanism of the territory”, said Andrade, pointing out that this is one of the mechanisms used by the state government to institutionalize the philosophy of the program. When contacted, Natex informed that the contracting of the rubber tappers is conducted by the local cooperative Cooperacre, which is responsible for the payment. It did not comment on the contract. The cooperative did not respond to the contact of our reporters.

Dercy Teles Cunha, aged 62, is the first woman to be president of the Rural Workers Union of Xapuri, which was founded by Chico Mendes. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Rubber tapper extracts latex from a tree in one of the forests planted with the support of an Acre government program. Photo by Fernando Martinho

“Rubber extractivism has died and the government, to date, has not presented an alternative form of income generation to replace the one that rubber extractivism provided,” said 62-year-old Dercy Teles Cunha, leader of the rubber tapper movement. Cunha is the first woman to be president of the Rural Workers Union of Xapuri. According to her, most of the latex purchased by Natex comes from rubber plantations (the government denies this and claims that 70% of the rubber comes from native trees). This, she explains, has left the traditional rubber tappers without a trade and does not contribute to the preservation of the Amazon.

The Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve (Resex) was founded in 1990, two years after the death of the rubber tapper and trade union leader, and to this day it serves as a model for the federal government when it comes to this type of conservation area. According to the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), a federal agency, some 10,000 people live in the reserve on an area of more than 900,000 hectares that spans seven different municipalities and includes 46 rubber tapping areas. Resex was created during a turbulent time of conflict between rubber tappers and the expansion of livestock and to this day it faces various forms of pressures of threats.

The forest is a patchwork of species that man could never hope to rebuild – Dercy Teles Cunha, President of the Rural Workers Union of Xapuri

“The forest is a patchwork of species that man could never hope to rebuild,” said Cunha, sitting in front of her house on a dirt street, refuting the idea of “planted forest”. The rubber tappers and their children still use the forest for hunting, gathering nuts and other activities. The clearest impact of the threats on the forest, explained Cunha, can be seen in the extraction of Brazil nuts. The tree needs to be pollinated by a flying beetle – the mamangá – to survive. Since it can only fly short distances, it needs the lower trees to climb up to the high canopies of the Brazil nut tree. In other words, without the forest, there are no Brazil nuts.

Cunha said she is worried that the countryside will turn into a wasteland. “Then what will be left for the people who live in the forest? Working to pay for the latest generation mobile phones that young people want? What pays for them are the calves that you can sell when they are seven months old for R$700 or R$800.” The expansion of livestock farming is obvious to anyone who visits Xapuri. Grazing land competes with the forest even in the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve.

The community forest management plans, encouraged by the government and authorized by associations inside Resex in partnership with ICMBio, are also the target of criticisms. According to the government, only the trees with the highest commercial value are removed, in a rotational system whereby after specific trees are felled the area is left untouched for 30 years to “recover”. The agronomist Andrade says the government calculations are vague, as is the process. “Who certifies that any given tree is more than thirty years old? Who measures the forest degradation, which does not appear on the deforestation map?”

Operating in Acre is Agrocortex, the only logging company authorized to explore mahogany in the country. The extraction and sale of this wood, which is red and resistant, became a symbol of the forest devastation in the 1980s and 1990s and it was banned until 2011. In that year, Batisflor Florestal LTDA, the owner of the Fazenda Seringal Novo Macapá farm, managed to secure the approval of the environmental watchdog Ibama for a management plan for thirty years. In 2014, Agrocortex started to operate as the executor of the activities, a status it maintained until 2016. In April of that year, it became the owner of the project. At the moment, Agrocortex is the only company authorized to conduct mahogany management in Brazil.

Agrocortex is the only logging company authorized to explore mahogany anywhere in Brazil. Photo by Fernando Martinho

The Repórter Brasil team visited the headquarters of the company in Acre. Agrocortex, which belongs to the Portuguese group Domínio Capital, has authorization to explore mahogany and other woods in an area of 190,000 hectares in the municipalities of Manoel Urbano, in Acre, and Boca do Acre and Pauini, in the state of Amazonas.

The international market is the main buyer, so much so that the company’s website is in English. The cubic meter of mahogany fetches twice or three times the price of other native woods with similar characteristics. The mission of Agrocortex, according to the company’s own website, is “to be a world reference in the sustainable management of tropical forests within a perspective of multiple use of the forest”. All the mahogany extracted by the company is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). When questioned about income and management of mahogany, Agrocortex did not respond to our contact by the time of publication.

Acre’s management plan, one of the pillars of the green economy, was investigated by Overbeek, of the World Rainforest Movement. “It is not a sustainable practice in the sense of not damaging the forest and neither does it benefit the communities. The big logging companies are the ones that benefit,” he said.

Afterwards, you can’t cut down a single tree or even take a stick to make a hoe handle – João Zacarias de Souza, Son of rubber tappers

The logging companies are responsible for the management and restrictions are placed on the use of the forest by the communities. This is what happened in Resex, where the son of rubber tappers João Zacarias de Souza lives. There, things have not turned out to the satisfaction of Souza and his neighbors. They say the company charged for the service of removing and transporting the wood and, when everything was done, very little was left for the traditional inhabitants of the land. The only ones to profit, they said, were the logging companies and it was all done under the guise of sustainability. The rubber tappers said that, for allowing the forest management on an area of 40 hectares, a family received nearly R$6,000 for a 1-year period. “Afterwards, you can’t cut down a single tree or even take a stick to make a hoe handle,” said Souza.

The inhabitants of the land say they earn R$60 per cubic meter of wood, while this same cubic meter is sold for R$1,000. Although the difference is huge, the government justifies the amount. According to the deputy environment secretary João Paulo Mastrangelo, the amount paid for standing timber varies from R$30 to R$70, while sawn timber with the lowest commercial value is sold for nearly R$500. However, he also pointed out that the company bears all the production costs and that only 20% to 55% of each log is actually turned into timber. This, said Mastrangelo, results in a profit of 10% for the company that explores forest management.

Despite the low return, many people accepted. The government offered, as an incentive, 40 hours of excavator work to dig small dams. The idea was to turn the region into a fish farming hub. But nothing ever came of it. The excavators worked less time than promised and the dams were too shallow. “The government people come here and they think everything is just fine. They say these dams worked out well,” said João Zacarias de Souza.

When questioned on this matter, Governor Tião Viana said the problem was a misunderstanding by the residents. “The plan was for a partnership. They would get 40 hours but they had to provide the fuel. But they didn’t have the money for the fuel,” said Viana, for whom the promotion of fish farming is one of the campaigns of his government.

Stretch of the Purus River at the Manoel Urbano port, where few people have heard of the green economy. On the road to the town, there is almost no forest to be seen, only grassland. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Exit rubber tappers, enter livestock

Nearly 400 kilometers separate the towns of Xapuri and Manoel Urbano, and most of this distance is covered by the BR-364 highway. On this main artery running through Acre, a single lane paved highway with almost no curves, the craters are big enough to shred truck tires or swallow small cars whole. On the stretch that separates the two towns, there is almost no forest to be seen, only light green grassland dotted with beef cattle. In Manoel Urbano, a small town with potholed roads and unkempt plots of land, people work almost exclusively in public service and very few have even heard of the green economy.

But close by, about an hour upriver, is one of the most controversial examples of Acre’s environmentalism: the Purus project, a private initiative of REDD covering 35,000 hectares. The project is not directly associated with the state government, but it is hailed as a symbol of the green economy. It was created by the former mayor of Sena Madureira, Normando Sales, formerly of the center-right Democrat Party (DEM). The program is certified by foreign companies and the non-emitted carbon is purchased by various business projects. Part of the credits purchased by FIFA to offset the Rio World Cup, for example, came from there.

The first controversy involves the land where it is installed: three traditional rubber tapping areas where 24 families depend on farming and the forest for subsistence. Since the arrival of the project, some of these traditional inhabitants say they are facing pressure to stop planting, hunting and clearing land.

Antônio Leite Cardeal (center) on the veranda of his house that overlooks the land known as Seringal Itatinga. He said the project did not take into consideration the community’s traditional way of life. Photo by Fernando Martinho

“We are caboclos of the forest, but that doesn’t mean that city people can come here and cheat us,” said the 69-year-old former rubber tapper Antônio Leite Cardeal on the veranda of his house that overlooks the land known as Seringal Itatinga. Cardeal, who moved there in 1964 when he was a teenager, said that about 10 years ago some lawyers from the project approached him to offer a deal. Their proposal, which did not take into consideration the community’s traditional way of life, was to partition a hundred hectares and give it to the squatters who have lived in the region for years.

You wouldn’t be allowed to light a fire, you wouldn’t be allowed to hunt, you wouldn’t even be allowed to light a cigarette – Antônio Leite Cardeal, Former rubber tapper

However, their adult children who had already set up home in the area were not included in the deal, which as far as the former rubber tappers were concerned made the offer unattractive. To receive the carbon credit, they would not be able to raise animals or plant crops on the land. “You wouldn’t be allowed to light a fire, you wouldn’t be allowed to hunt, you wouldn’t even be allowed to light a cigarette,” he said. When he refused, he received offers of upgrades and a “salary” of R$300 for his wife with whom he fathered 11 children. The amount is less than a third of the national minimum wage, which currently stands at R$937.

As a result of the resistance, the founders of the project, according to the former rubber tapper, filed complaints to the state environmental agency over their use of fire to clear land, which resulted in a fine of more than R$13,000. “We have a culture here,” said Cardeal. “Now tell me why it’s fair to fine us for clearing land when the headquarters of the project is full of cattle?” What’s more, said Cardeal and the other rubber tappers, the project went ahead without the consent of the local residents, which was a prerequisite for the project to be certified. In July of this year, there was a hearing between the residents and the “owners” of Purus. Cardeal said that the former mayor Normando Sales, of Purus, told the prosecutors that they had already reached a consensus. “That never happened,” said Cardeal, who together with the other residents started to learn about the sale of carbon credit in order to resist.

It really was a mistake having cattle there – Normando Sales, Former mayor of Sena Madureira

On the day when the Repórter Brasil team visited the headquarters of the project, one tradesman, who identified himself only as Agostinho, was at the site assessing 46 head of cattle that were loose in the grazing land that had been opened in the heart of the forest maintained for capturing carbon. It was the second time that he had visited the site. On the first occasion, six months earlier, he said he had assessed 100 animals. But no sale was made. “It really was a mistake having cattle there,” said Normando Sales three days later, in his office in Rio Branco. He did not say how much he earned from selling credits nor which companies purchase them.

The Repórter Brasil team found cattle inside the Purus project. The tradesman in the picture assessed the cattle – but did not buy them. Photo by Fernando Martinho

Besides the cattle, local residents say the website of the project uses photographs of healthcare treatment provided at the headquarters of the project and schools that, in fact, are municipal services that do not serve the local population. In response, Sales said that at no point did he claim the activities pictured on the website were directly linked to the local population.

“Let’s take a look at what’s going on at Purus,” Governor Tião Viana told an advisor in the presence of the Repórter Brasil team, after being informed about the existence of cattle at the headquarters. Although it is not directly associated with the state government, the project is hailed as a symbol and its flaws are another stain on the green economy.

A matéria Acre against Chico Mendes foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Maria Madalena, a resident of the Ilha Mercês quilombo (maroon) community

“My parents and grandparents died here. How can Suape call us trespassers?” asks Maria Madalena da Silva, aged 65, a resident of the Ilha Mercês quilombo (maroon) community where 90% of the population live off farming and fishing. She knows the answer. The construction of the Suape Industrial Port Complex, a mega-project covering 13,500 hectares on the south coast of the state of Pernambuco, began in 1978 on lands inhabited for generations by traditional communities.

By law, these residents have the right to stay. However, this is not the case for families that have lived there for over a century. More than 25,000 people lived in the region before the project began, according to data from the Suape Forum, an organization that offers assistance to local quilombo, riverside, fishing, shellfishing, coconut breaking and farming communities. Today, there are fewer than 7,000 and they are all treated like trespassers inside the traditional territory.

What has been responsible for the forced exodus, say the families, is the Governor Eraldo Gueiros Industrial Port Complex, better known as Suape. It is a mixed corporation with an estimated share capital of more than R$1.2 billion and the majority partner is the Pernambuco state government.

The petrochemical plant installed in the Suape Industrial Port Complex, in Pernambuco. Of the 25,000 people who used to live in the region, more than 18,000 have left

For the municipalities of Ipojuca and Cabo de Santo Agostinho, Suape serves as a port and a business hub, providing infrastructure on large plots for companies interested in expanding on the regional market or increasing their exports. These include Unilever, Fedex, Toyota, Deca, Campari, Pepsico and Solar Coca-Cola. The more than 100 companies installed in the complex exceed R$50 billion in private investments and employ more than 18,000 people, according to the government.

It was under the administration of former governor Eduardo Campos, who was killed in an aircraft accident in 2014, that the complex expanded and acquired the status of the “Engine of the Northeast”. The current governor is Paulo Câmara, the political protégé of Eduardo Campos. In January this year, the then state housing secretary Marcos Baptista took over as chairman of the complex and vice governor Raul Henry was made head of the state economic development department, which is responsible for Suape.

{ One of the houses demolished in the Ilha Mercês community. The case is being investigated by the Federal Prosecutor’s Office

The benefits publicized by Suape – income generation and employment coupled with environmental preservation – are posted on billboards around the industrial zones. But you don’t have to go far to find the direct impacts that are absent from the marketing of the complex.

Residents who resist tell of serious violations, including threats – sometimes with the use of guns – made by employees of the complex. They also talk about restrictions on access to the land, unauthorized charges and demolitions without warrants – and a number of other complaints. At least three traditional communities have filed complaints against Suape to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office.

“The state of Pernambuco, through the Suape company, is currently the leading violator of human rights in the country,” said Heitor Scalambrini, who has a PhD in energy and is the coordinator of the Suape Forum. Since it violates the UN Sustainable Development Goals, civil society organizations have chosen Suape as a symbolic case in Brazil. In the past, another complaint made it to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

A sign praises the alleged merits of Suape. More than 100 companies are installed there

A new report by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation that will be published in December cites Suape and Belo Monte as anti-examples of what Brazil should already have learned from the construction of large projects. “In both cases, the communities did not participate in the decision-making and there was no transparency in the resettlement of these populations,” said the lawyer Flavia Scabin, coordinator of the Research Group on Business and Human Rights at the Foundation.

Nearly forty years after its creation, the complex appears to be living up to its name. In the Tupi-Guarani language, Suape means crooked paths.

Pipelines run through people’s backyards in several communities. The population says it didn’t know the risks

A militia of ‘colonels’

Otacília Rodrigues da Silva’s house was destroyed by a storm two years ago. She says the security guards from Suape stopped her from building a new one

The memory of Otacília Rodrigues da Silva, who has white hair and a desolate look in her eyes, only fails when it comes to remembering her own age. A resident of the Ilha Mercês quilombo community, she can still hear the sound of the storm that knocked down the walls of her house two years ago. This is not her only trauma. “Suape says I can’t build another house. My greatest fear is dying without having my house back”. In tears, she shows us how she has been able to sleep since then: a 10-milligram pill of the tranquilizer Diazepam per day.

Just like Otacília, other families have also been prevented from rebuilding their own houses or from making renovations by the company’s security guards, which the population calls a militia. A video recorded earlier this year shows a resident pleading with the security guards not to tear down a recently built fence. It didn’t do any good. “They are unspeakably violent,” said Scalambrini, of the Suape Forum.

One neighbor of Divanilda Maria da Silva, aged 45, a resident of the Engenho Tiriri community, confronted Suape and was evicted. Her parents, aware that they had no choice, left before. They are still waiting for compensation to this day. “My mother had a huge plantation. She lost everything. It’s hard to explain. How can someone else understand if I can’t feel my own pain?” Vera Lúcia Melo, aged 48 and a leader of the Engenho Ilha community, entered the People Protection Program after she received threats. “They sent me the message that the people from Suape wanted my head.”

Vera Lúcia Melo, aged 48, entered the People Protection Program after she received threats from Suape employees

Repórter Brasil had access to 22 police reports filed against Suape. Among the accusations are property damage and threats. The witnesses claim that security guards were working together with employees from the municipal government of Cabo de Santo Agostinho and even with armed military personnel from GATI, a tactical battalion that specializes in high-risk missions. Despite all the complaints, the residents say the number is under-reported because some police officers refuse to make the report – which is illegal.

Romero Correia da Fonseca is inspection supervisor at Suape, but residents say he is the head of the militia who controls the security guards. Two companies are responsible for surveillance at the Complex: TKS Segurança and Liserve, which together have 260 men. According to testimonies, Fonseca goes into the communities armed and asks to be called “chief” or “colonel”.

The website of the Pernambuco state Judiciary features at least ten investigations against this employee of Suape. Our reporters contacted the Civil Police, the Military Police and the Army to check his background in these institutions. But the name Fonseca does not appear in any of the databases. In a statement, Suape informed that his job is “only to receive information from the field inspectors.”

Fonseca reports to Sebastião Pereira Lima, the Land and Property Management Officer at Suape. Although he is also called “colonel” – even on the website of the Pernambuco State Legislature – Lima is a second lieutenant in the Army, four ranks below colonel. Our reporters requested information from the Army on the background of the Suape officer. However, it told us that the information cannot be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Law. The request was refused. We have appealed the denial.

Repórter Brasil had access to 22 police reports filed against Suape. The photo shows the port area of the Complex that covers 13,500 hectares

In a statement, Suape said that it condemns “the use of violence against the native families in the region”, that its employees do not carry weapons when they are working and that the demolitions only occur after agreements are approved in court.

Liserve is also named in one of the police reports. The company is run by the businessman Agostinho Rocha Gomes, a board member of the Business Leaders Group (LIDE) founded by the mayor of São Paulo, João Dória.

By email, the lawyer for Liserve, Emmanuel Correia, denied the charges against the company and informed that the work of Liserve’s employees is to supervise the 170 guards of TKS Segurança.

The Suape Complex, however, informed that the employees of Liserve do indeed inspect the territory, in addition to supervising the security guards. Later on, by telephone, the Liserve lawyer admitted that the employees photograph the houses of “trespassers” or those of residents who put extensions on their houses. Correia said that the guards never get involved in problems with residents, that he was unaware of the accusations and that he would look into the cases. When contacted again, he did not reply before the publication of this article.

The civil inquiry opened by the State Public Prosecutor’s Office to determine the existence of a militia in the Complex was shelved by the prosecutor Janaína do Sacramento Bezerra. Our reporters attempted to contact the Prosecutor’s Office on several occasions up until the time of publication, but were not successful. In a statement, the communication office of the Civil Police denied the accusations and refused to comment on the involvement of GATI in the operations. It said that besides the investigation by DECCOT (Bureau for Combating Crimes Against the Tax Order), another one is underway on the alleged Suape militia. The municipal government of Cabo Santo Agostinho did not respond until the publication of this article.

Quilombo under threat

Residents of Ilha Mercês recovered memories of the community to obtain federal recognition as a quilombo community

“I may not be able to read, but I know how to speak,” said Maria Madalena da Silva, a 65-year-old shellfisher and farmer. There is no serenity in the blue eyes of the sexagenarian who said she was brought up working from an early age and with sackcloth for clothes. Just like other areas around the complex, the community where Silva was born and raised is also the subject of a dispute with Suape. And like so many communities scattered around the country, Ilha Mercês recovered its forgotten identity in search of protection.

Thanks to the matriarch’s memories, residents came together and restored fragments of the community’s history: a pestle used to grind coffee, the flour mill of a former resident, an old abandoned slave quarters, the birth certificate of a freed slave and the baobab, a large tree native to Africa around which people would celebrate. In October 2016, the Palmares Cultural Foundation, which reports to the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, officially recognized the area as the Ilha Mercês Quilombo Community.

In the Ilha Mercês quilombo, residents subsist on fishing and farming

In theory, the federal recognition should protect the community from encroachment by Suape, but this is not what has happened. In September 2017, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Public Defender’s Office recommended to Suape that it suspend its intrusions into the community without the consent of the residents, its attempts to purchase land, its bans on the renovation of houses and its unauthorized charges. None of the recommendations were followed.

The Rota do Atlântico Concessionaire, for example, the company that manages the roads leading to the quilombo, still charges tolls from some residents who should all be exempt from this charge. “Anyone who resists the company is made to pay the toll,” said Silva’s son, José Reis da Silva, aged 45 and a leader of the quilombo. When asked, the company said that it fully complies with the conditions established by the Pernambuco state government.

Babobá, a large tree native to Africa around which people would celebrate.

Suape informed that “it is engaged in dialogue with the authorities involved in order to adjust its provisions to the reality of the region”.

Eminent risk

Joana Silva, a resident of the Serraria community

The memories of the land where the quinquagenarian Mario Francisco Silva was born and raised, like his great-grandfather, are under threat. A rickety barbed wire fence separates the Massangana community, home to farmers and extractivists, from a thermal power plant run by Energética Suape II S/A, one of the companies installed inside the Complex.

“One of the walls of my house collapsed and when we asked for help, they told us to contact Suape,” said Silva incredulously. Just like in the other houses in the community, the cracks in the walls, he explained, are caused by the operation of the thermal power plant. “When all the turbines are turned on, it feels like the house is going to fall down.”

There is also no shortage of medical reports of respiratory problems, allergies, fainting and lack of appetite – all caused by the gases that are expelled from smokestacks, say the residents. Installed 10 kilometers from the tourist destination of Porto de Galinhas, Suape II is the largest oil-fired thermal power plant in Brazil and its gas emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect.

The bad smell reaches the communities neighboring the plant, such as Serraria. The 22-year-old daughter of Francine Maria dos Santos Silva gives the warning: “Mom, I can smell gas in the yard”. It also leaves a bad taste in the back of your throat.

By email, Suzana Wolf Jordão de Barros, of the legal department of Suape Energia, told us that “properties occupied by a single family in the area around the project are the responsibility” of Suape.

In practice, say the residents, the companies installed in the Complex exempt themselves from any co-responsibility for the environmental and social impacts. Our reporters visited four houses in the community of Massangana. Disregarding the way of life of the traditional populations, where families live on adjoining land, is not exclusive to the thermal power plant. Suape does the same thing, say the residents.

In the community where Francine Maria dos Santos Silva lives, Suape and the municipal government closed the school without consulting the residents

To undermine the resistance of the communities, the Suape Forum lawyer Luisa Duque said community leaders are now being criminalized. Melo, from Engenho Ilha, is one of them. This year, she was accused of subdividing land and selling plots where she lives. She denies it. The investigation against Melo and other leaders is being conducted by DECCOT. The same thing happened in Massangana.

When contacted, the state government, through its press relations agency, denied the interview request, since it said Suape had already sent a statement with clarifications. The statement [available here in full], however, did not answer the questions.

Survival is harder

The complaints against Suape made it to the UN this year

“Before, I used to catch 40 crabs in an hour’s work. These days, it takes me all day to catch five or six. The only reason we don’t go hungry is because we help each other out,” said the shellfisher Divanilda Maria da Silva about the environmental impacts that have affected life in the communities.

In the Ilha Mercês quilombo, the mangroves have rust colored stains and fruit trees have died – the result, say residents, of a project in the Port of Suape. Making it harder to survive on the land, said Magno Manuel de Araújo, a quilombo leader, is another strategy of Suape. “They (Suape) shut off the river and sea so we die of hunger.”

The lawyer Caio Borges, from the human rights organization Conectas, also visited the Complex recently. I heard a number of questions from the residents that have still not been answered. “Where does the sewage go from all the companies installed here?” and “How much diesel contamination is there in the sea from the ships in the port?” are two of them. The environmental impact studies that have been conducted are clearly flawed, said Borges, and there are no studies on the cumulative impacts.

Plate reveals what reaches the mangrove, effluents (liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river or the sea)

The Pernambuco State Environment Agency, responsible for environmental licensing, issued 26 notices of infraction against the Suape Complex between 2010 and 2014 for environmental irregularities – 17 were fines. Between 2008 and 2010, the federal environmental watchdog Ibama applied fines totaling nearly R$2 million, according to a statement from the institution. Of this amount, R$105,000 has been paid and the rest “is under administrative analysis”.

The director of the agency, Walber Santana, played down his ability to ensure that the complex observes environmental regulations. Since 2011, he said, the state agency has required offsetting measures from Suape for an area of 1,075 hectares and the creation of two conservation units. Asked about the impacts observed by the reporters, Santana said officials from the agency monitor the region frequently and residents can file complaints with the Ombudsman’s Office. Although he promised to send us documentation, Santana did not send any until the time of publication.

In a statement, Suape said that “investments [in environmental policies] are in line with an environmental and social sustainability policy in place in the region” and that the “Ecological Preservation Zone occupies 59% of the territory”.

From island to asphalt

Fishermen who lived on Tatuoca Island were transferred to a housing project far from the sea

The expansion of Suape that had the most impact on local fishing communities was the deepening of the channel at the port, the construction of the Promar and Atlântico Sul shipyards and the siltation of Tatuoca Island. More than 80 families were removed from the island to make way for progress – those who refused were evicted. These residents, who made a living fishing and farming, currently live far from the sea and they have no land to farm in Vila Nova Tatuoca, a housing project built by the federal government’s Minha Casa, Minha Vida (My House, My Life) social housing program. There aren’t even any trees in the streets. They accuse Suape and the company Diagonal − Transformação de Territórios, which was contracted to handle the resettlement, of lying or omitting information.

One of the promises was that every resident would receive the deed for their new house within two weeks. But this wasn’t what they received. Edson Antônio da Silva, aged 45, said employees from Diagonal and from Suape tried to mislead them with a right of use contract proposed by Suape. His uncle signed the document with his thumbprint. In practice, the contract states that the resident has a license from Suape to use the house without making any improvements to the residency, while it also permits the company to make internal inspections without authorization.

International organizations, such as Conectas, say that Suape did not take the way of life of the traditional communities into consideration

In the life of one family, the impact has been immeasurable. One of the matriarchs returned to the island and shortly afterwards committed suicide. “The way of life of these populations was not observed, respected or reestablished. Not even the minimum was done to guarantee their economic and social livelihood,” said Borges, the lawyer from Conectas. From among the eighty or so resettled families, only eight people are employed, said Silva.

In a statement, Suape said it is unaware of any such complaint and that Diagonal-Ceplan “has no authority to make promises on behalf of Suape”. Diagonal, meanwhile, informed that “the company did not make ‘promises’ but instead advised the community, as provided for in the contract.”

In the rainy season, streets turn into rivers. In the rich neighborhoods, the situation is different

According to Silva, just over a month ago Romero da Fonseca – the employee who likes to be called ‘chief’ or ‘colonel’ – was in Vila Nova Tatuoca to tell them they would be transferred to Vila Claudete, another housing project with 2,675 40-square-meter houses in rows, located in the outskirts of Cabo de Santo Agostinho, the tenth most violent city in the country. “This is why Suape and Diagonal did not give us the deed to the house,” said Silva.

In a statement, Suape informed that it offered the residents the definitive use of the property, which “grants all rights to the resettled families, except the right to sell the property”. Suape did not comment on the other unkept promises.

This year, Suape offered fishermen and women from one of the three existing associations the chance to go back and fish in off-limits areas of the port, as permitted by Brazilian law, provided they accepted a “private fishing license”, which is illegal since only the federal government can issue this permit. “Is it fair to the other fishermen and women? No. But what else can we do to keep from starving?” asked one of the fishermen who accepted the offer. Suape was asked about this, but its statement did not address the issue of the fishing license.

Four institutions – two national and the two international organizations Conectas and Both Ends – denounced Suape and the Dutch company Van Oord, which was contracted to dredge the port, to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Our survey found that Suape violated a series of international rights before, during and after its construction,” said Caio Borges, of Conectas. It is the first time that a company installed in the complex has been held accountable for the damages.

The Pernambuco state government, which is the majority partner of Suape, built another housing project, with 40-square-meter houses, to accommodate the displaced families. Whole communities resisted the move

In the Netherlands, the complaint also affected the company Atradius Dutch State Business, which had granted more than R$400 million in credit to Van Oord to carry out the construction works. The complaint claims that Van Oord failed by not “engaging in responsible consultations with all the affected families” and by not being transparent about the impact of the works on the communities and the environment. Contacted several times, Van Oord informed that “the parties in this process are engaged in a mediation process that is subject to confidentiality.”

While complaints of violations committed by Suape find their way to the UN, Unesco, the educational arm of the UN, signed a R$1.3 million international technical cooperation agreement with Suape and the state government in 2016. In the agreement, it states that the environmental oversight programs and the inspection activities are systematized. When contacted, Unesco said that the technical support “does not involve any direct action of Unesco in the day-to-day management of Suape”.

If on the one hand the crooked paths of Suape still affect the daily life of nearly 7,000 people, on the other hand, the threats they suffered have united them. Together, they want to show Brazil the invisible marks of progress in Pernambuco and defend the right to live on the lands where their ancestors grew up.

Suape did not build a retaining wall on the embankment in Nova Tatuoca, say the residents. There is a risk of collapse

Translated by Barney Whiteoak

A matéria The crooked paths of Suape foi publicada primeiro em Repórter Brasil.

Even with the company’s name included in the “dirty list” of slave labor, a group of farms belonging to Succítrico Cutrale received one of the most important socio-environmental certifications in the world: Rainforest Alliance’s “good practices” seal.

The certification – one of the core requirements for exporting orange juice to the European market – was granted by Rainforest Alliance after the process was challenged by another certifier group – Brazilian organization Imaflora.

The seal is especially important for Cutrale, one of the world’s largest orange juice traders. According to the company, 98% of its production is exported to countries in North America, Europe and Asia. The Rainforest Alliance seal is respected worldwide and is identified by a frog. Its campaigns encourage the habit of consuming products that bear the frog on their labels. While consumers would pay more for it, they would be sure to buy a product that values ​​environmental protection, social equality, and economic viability. The campaign’s motto is “Follow the Frog”.

Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, Imaflora’s agricultural certification manager, explains that Cutrale’s inclusion in the “dirty list” was the reason why his organization challenged the recommendation. The list is released by Brazil’s Ministry of Labor and includes companies that were caught using slave labor.

After Imaflora’s refusal, Rainforest Alliance did something unusual in certification processes and unprecedented in the company’s policy in Brazil: it authorized replacing the certifier during the certification process: Imaflora was replaced with IBD, which then granted the certificate.

Rainforest Alliance’s senior manager global media Donita Dooley said the organization’s evaluation standards include “a critical criterion prohibiting all forms of forced, compulsory, or slave labor”. The seal’s standards, however, include no obstacles that are specific to the dirty list of slave labor.

Therefore, since March this year, Cutrale is the only company included in the list of slave labor that markets products under the Rainforest Alliance seal, according to the organization.

Asked about it, Cutrale argued that the farms certified are not in the slave list. In a statement released by its press office, the company says it has received the certification “of the Rainforest Alliance Seal for having demonstrated to the companies accredited and qualified to carry out audits that it complies with all the requirements contained in the current standard”.

Cutrale exports 98% of it’s production to North America, Europe and Asia

Although all farms officially belong to Cutrale, the certified properties are not the same as those where slave labor was found. Cutrale is included in the “dirty list” due to problems found in 2013 at the Vale Verde and Portal farms, in the Triângulo Mineiro area, while the certified farms are located in Araraquara, state of São Paulo, and the audit was carried out in 2017.

Rainforest Alliance’s website lists four certifications granted to Cutrale’s farms and farm groups: two of them were awarded in March this year (included the one challenged by Imaflora) and others were granted in 2015 and 2017.

Does slave labor matter?

Pinto was one of the auditors in the process conducted by Imaflora. He points out that Cutrale’s inclusion in the dirty list prompted the refusal of the seal. “It’s a contradiction for a company to be granted recognition for sustainability by a certifier while it is included in Brazil’s most important list of bad socio-environmental practices. It is a disservice to society and the market”, he says.

The “dirty list” of slave labor was created in 2003 and it is a database on companies caught exploiting workers in situations analogous to slavery. Cutrale entered the list in November 2017, according to a document leaked by the press before official disclosure.

Rainforest Alliance says that the request for replacement came from Cutrale. IBD directors Luís Henrique Witzler and Alexandre Harkaly informed Repórter Brasil that they had been approached by Cutrale to take over the certification process and, since the situation was unprecedented, they sought to know the stance of Rainforest Alliance, which would have authorized IBD to move forward with the process.

Cutrale’s farm worker photographed by the Regional Prosecution Office

The IBD directors say there are no obstacles to certification because the farms are different. According to Witzler, “from [their] point of view, each farm is a different company because it has its own manager, its HR team, its management. The certification is granted tor farms, not groups”.

Harkaly also stressed that certification is a “tool for change”: “We consider it a mission to enter into management processes that are not clear and making them transparent. It’s natural that a company seeking certification begins to undergo changes”.

Following Repórter Brasil’s inquiries, however, the IBD directors stated that they will open an internal audit process to re-evaluate the certification granted to Cutrale’s farms.

Asked again about the importance of the dirty list on the national scene, Dooley stated that the Rainforest Alliance “realize the importance of the list and agree it can be a valuable tool to drive positive change”.

She argues that the seal encourages companies to improve their practices: “The fact that this company now has a certified farm means that change is possible – it is our hope they can use this farm as a model for bringing the rest of their farms into compliance. We state often that certification of itself cannot solve any country’s entrenched socioeconomic problems”.

Cutrale seeks a way out of the list

Companies in the “dirty list” of slave labor can reach settlements with the government to get out of it. They must establish commitments for change by signing the so-called Conduct Adjustment Agreements. They then enter an observation list which they might leave after one year, provided they have fulfilled their responsibilities.

Cutrale did not make that agreement. Instead, the company tries to overturn the decision in court.

Asked about the steps it is taking to be excluded from the list, Cutrale only replied that “it challenges its inclusion for such a serious charge, with which it does not agree” and that “it is taking steps to remedy, to overcome, such an unfair inclusion”.

The company’s press release mentions its 50 years of operation in the market and states that it has more than 21 thousand employees “legally registered during harvest season”, “who, in addition to labor rights, receive benefits under collective labor agreements signed in the several municipalities where it operates”.

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It is in the arid forests of the Chaco, a rich environment naturally adapted to the intense heat and the scarcity of water, that the Paraguayan government plans to consolidate the country as the world’s slaughterhouse. Driven by Brazilian investors, the State’s long-term agenda was pushed forward by the outgoing president Horacio Cartes – himself a big rancher in this biome that once used to cover more than half the land in the country. Over the course of the next decade, the goal is to create a herd of 20 million head of cattle, or three times the Paraguayan population.

Brazilian money is crucial to this process, not only from meat processing companies but also from ranchers who are drawn to the land due to it’s cheap price. To understand the scale of the influence on the smaller neighboring economy, the two largest meat packing companies operating in Paraguay are Brazilian and they are responsible for nearly 70% of the country’s beef exports.

First rescue of workers from slave labor conditions in Chaco’s history occurred in November last year. Photo: Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office

Although they are of concern to environmental and indigenous organizations, the large-scale investments indicate that the Brazilian meat industry has come to the Chaco to stay. Based in Barretos, in the state of São Paulo, the Minerva group – which in 2013 received an investment of US$85 million from the IFC (International Finance Corporation), an arm of the World Bank, to expand its business in Paraguay – is now the market leader, followed by the company Concepción, which is owned by the Brazilian businessman Jair Antonio de Lima.

In 2017, Minerva reported record revenues of R$12.1 billion. The historic result is partly due to the acquisition in July last year of nine units of the Brazilian company “JBS”, the world’s largest animal protein processor, in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Over the past five years, Minerva has been increasing its network of suppliers and acquiring meat packing plants in South America. In June this year, the market was unsettled by rumors of a possible merger with another leading Brazilian meat company: BRF, the owner of the brands Sadia and Perdigão. To date, the tie-up between the two groups has not been confirmed.

The cattle farming business in Paraguay has been growing at a pace as striking as the advance of illegal deforestation and reports of forced labor involving indigenous people, including children. As a result of this, the local government and the productive sector have come under mounting pressure to keep a close eye on the Chaco region, the western part of the country where cattle farming has been expanding in recent years. Although it covers nearly 60% of the Paraguayan national territory, an area equivalent to the Brazilian state of São Paulo, the Chaco is home to just 3% of the country’s population.

“The Chaco is today the ecoregion that is suffering the most devastation in the world,” said Alberto Yanosky, executive director of the environmental organization Guyra. “We are cutting down original forests to produce beef,” he added.

In addition to the rich biodiversity, Chaco’s vegetation is very resistant to the high temperatures and the scarcity of water typical from the region. Photo: Repórter Brasil

Deforestation peaked in November last year. Over the course of the month, a remarkable average of 2,000 hectares of native vegetation was cleared each day – the equivalent of 2,600 Maracanã soccer stadiums. According to satellite surveillance conducted by Guyra, at least a third of the Chaco has already been transformed into grasslands to feed half of all Paraguay’s cattle population.

On the subject of working conditions, the news is just as discouraging. In September, the United Nations is expected to release a much-awaited report on forced labor and debt bondage among indigenous communities in the region. In addition to the recurring complaints by unions and social movements, the few inspections that have been conducted recently have set off warning signals.

“The authorities have always tried to hide these shortcomings,” criticized Melanio Morel, director of the union CUT-Autêntica. “The Ministry of Labor has not taken any effective measures to solve the problem,” he added.

“The Chaco is today the ecoregion that is suffering the most devastation in the world,” said Alberto Yanosky, executive director of the environmental organization Guyra

The contractor discount food and workplace material costs from the worker’s wages, said Isabelino Bogado, Guarani-Ñandeva community leader. Photo: Repórter Brasil

Indeed, the first inspection in the history of the Chaco which rescued indigenous workers from forced labor took place in November 2016. A group of 35 indigenous people were found producing charcoal in inhumane conditions at a cattle ranch in the department of Boquerón, in the north of the country. In a climate where temperatures can reach up to 50 degrees, the workers were not given access to drinking water and they were only rescued after a call for help was submitted to Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office.

“I can’t say for sure that this is happening at all the farms in the Chaco. But whenever a complaint is inspected, this is what we find,” said Teresa Martinez, a prosecutor at the Public Prosecutor’s Office responsible for rescuing the 35 workers.

Slavery

Located 450 kilometers from the capital, Asunción, the town of Filadelfia is the entry point to the Chaco. It was founded nearly 90 years ago by Mennonite, Christian and Protestant colonists who migrated from Europe and settled in the western portion of Paraguay. The town is the headquarters of one of the three Mennonite cooperatives that drive the local economy – consisting of meat, dairy and leather processing plants – and that create the most jobs in the Chaco.

In March this year, the Paraguayan Ministry of Labor opened an office in the center of Filadelfia specifically to receive complaints from indigenous people who work in the region’s cattle ranches. The official in charge is Erundina Gómez, an indigenous woman whose father “worked for 20 years at a farm and never got paid a dime”.

“The indigenous people earn little, work hard, eat little and don’t sleep well. There’s not enough water. This happens everywhere. And everyone knows it”, said indigenous community leader

According to Gómez, the office does not have the capacity to make field trips nor the autonomy to conduct on-site checks of irregularities. This is because, in Paraguay, government inspectors can only enter farms with a court order. As such, the workers not only have to go to the office in Filadelfia to personally file a complaint, but they also have to give their boss the official notice summoning the employer to provide explanations.

Already a third of Chaco’s territory was turned into grasslands. The government’s goal is to reach a cattle livestock of 20 million. Photo: Repórter Brasil

“The Ministry has not invested anything [in this office],” criticized Gómez. “I need to print my paperwork elsewhere.”

The most common complaints of the indigenous people heard by Repórter Brasil concern low wages, which are invariably below the legal minimum. It is common for temporary services, such as land clearing and fencing, to be offered by “contractors” – labor recruiters who usually pay the indigenous people a part up front and the rest when the work has been completed.

“The contractor charges for everything: boots, clothes, food. The workers have to pay for everything,” said Isabelino Bogado, a Guarani-Ñadeva community leader. “The indigenous people earn little, work hard, eat little and don’t sleep well. There’s not enough water. This happens everywhere. And everyone knows it,” he said. In the indigenous communities around Filadelfia, the complaints have been made primarily against the Mennonite colonists, most of whom are involved in cattle farming.

Patrick Friesen, communication manager at the Mennonite cooperative Chortitzer that is based in a town close to Filadelfia, said that the 6,500 members are instructed to operate in accordance with the country’s labor laws. The cooperative owns Trébol, the most popular brand of dairy products in Paraguay, and it also controls Frigo Chorti, the only beef processing plant located inside the Chaco itself. The majority of the plants operating in Paraguay are found in the area immediately surrounding the capital, Asunción.

“Some slept on mattresses on the ground, others on wooden boards. They hung a tarp from the trees to protect them from the sun”, said Teresa Martinez, from the Public Prosecutor’s Office

“The Chaco is very big. And the region where we are located may be very different from another located 400 kilometers from here, where business owners can employ people on their land under forced labor conditions or without proper payment,” said Friesen.

Far from the main urban centers of the Chaco, the first rescue of people working in slave labor conditions by the Paraguayan authorities, in November 2016, occurred in the northernmost part of the country, near the border with Bolivia. The owner of the ranch where 35 workers were rescued from slave labor conditions was a Mennonite colonist and a member of Chortitzer. He was convicted of the crime of human trafficking.

Exposed to temperatures of up to 50ºC, the workers did not have enough water or protection from the extreme heat. Photo: Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office

“The conditions are very precarious. Some slept on mattresses on the ground, others on wooden boards. They hung a tarp from the trees to protect them from the sun,” said Teresa Martinez, from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, who coordinated the operation. “They were supposed to work for six months, but after three months they couldn’t take it anymore. Because they came from another region of the country, in the east, and they weren’t used to the climate of the Chaco and the lack of water,” she added.

The workers were Ache indigenous people recruited in their native community, some 800 kilometers from the farm where they were found filling charcoal kilns with the trunks of native trees – a process that generally precedes the planting of grassland for cattle raising.

Months after the rescue operation near the border with Bolivia, a second inspection found teenagers engaged once again in the production of charcoal, working in inhumane conditions. The prosecutor Teresa Martínez did not hesitate to claim that, if more inspections were made, new cases of slave labor would almost certainly come to light. “Things are not changing. And they need to change,” she said.

Risk investment

Unlike the Mennonite colonists historically settled in the Chaco, who mostly farm medium-sized estates of around 400 hectares, Brazilian ranchers who invest in land in the region generally acquire properties up to 30 times larger.

Coal burners were loaded with native trees by indigenous people of the Ache community. Photo Paraguay’s Public Prosecutor’s Office

In addition to the Mennonites and the Brazilian investors, the region has also attracted Argentine and Uruguayan cattle farmers. “The price of land in the Chaco has risen 4,000% over the past decade,” said Alberto Yanosky, the executive director of Guyra. “We secured a conservation unit for ourselves about ten years ago and we paid US$20 per hectare [equivalent to 10,000 square meters]. Today, this same land is worth US$800 per hectare,” he said.

The cattle boom in the Chaco has attracted the attention of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Last year, the agency published an extensive monitoring report on the environmental and social impacts of the US$85 million investment that the World Bank, via the IFC, made in May 2013 in Minerva to expand the Brazilian company’s business in Paraguay.

“Large beef exporters, such as Minerva, operate under strict sanitary controls,” said the USAID report. “There is, however, limited-to-no experience of large beef processors in Paraguay applying environmental and social criteria in supply chain management”. The report points out that the investment in Minerva was classified as Risk A – the highest category, according to the IFC’s own standards. Among the potential negative impacts highlighted in the report are precisely a rise in environmental devastation, an increase in cases of forced labor and the encroachment of cattle farming on indigenous lands.

Four years after the approval of the IFC financing, the USAID technical staff concluded that there are still no concrete mechanisms in place to guarantee that cattle purchased from producers in the Chaco have not grazed on illegally deforested land or to make sure that indigenous workers are not subjected to slave labor conditions.

With the purchase of the JBS’s meat processing plants, Minerva took the top spot of meat exporters in the country. Photo Repórter Brasil

As exports increase, so does the pressure to improve the “traceability” of beef from the Chaco. “We are aware that international buyers want to know and to be confident about the legitimacy of their product,” said Patrick Friesen, the manager at the Mennonite cooperative that controls Frigo Chorti, Paraguay’s third largest exporter. “But we need to accept that Paraguay’s branding is in the hands not only of the private sector, but also of the government,” he added.

Repórter Brasil submitted a number of questions to Minerva on its operations in Paraguay, including whether the company has acquired cattle from farmers charged with using forced labor in the Chaco. However, through its press relations agency, the company said it would not comment.

The IFC, questioned, sent us a note saying that the corporation “believes that the path to a sustainable cattle sector in Paraguay is to develop market driven strategies to increase productivity on already cleared land, while protecting the remaining forest in private hands. ” and that they are “currently working with Minerva to improve its supply chain management in Paraguay to achieve best industry practices over time; the company is also engaged in an ongoing process seeking continuous improvement of its environmental and social practices in all geographies it operates”. To read the entire response, click here.

This journalistic investigation was made possible with the support of Ituc (International Trade Union Confederation)

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The dictionary definition of a settler, “one who emigrates to populate and/or exploit a foreign land,” does not just apply to the Brazilian colonial period. Even in the 21st century, the term settler is alive and well for families that have migrated from the south and northeast to the Brazilian Amazon, in the state of Pará. Lured by the promise of a prosperous life in agriculture made by the government during a period of military dictatorship, settlers arrived in droves in the 1970s. Nearly fifty years later, many of the descendants of these settlers have become hostages to working conditions analogous to slave labor.

This is one of the conclusions of the report “Underneath the Forest: Pará’s Amazon plundered by slave labor” produced by Brazil’s Pastoral Land Commission (CPT) and the Carmen Bascarán Center for the Defense of Life and Human Rights. The culmination of an investigation into slave labor practices in Pará’s timber industry led by the Integrated Action Network to Combat Slavery (RAICE), the report’s findings show how the federal government played a role in pushing generations of workers into the trade of logging forests under conditions that align with slave labor practices as defined by Brazilian law.

“The promise was as great as the abandonment,” says social scientist Maurício Torres, who took part in the research for the report.

After being “abandoned” by the Brazilian government in a region surrounded by rainforest and lacking social support, these workers were thrown into a world without prospects, according to the investigation. Their only option was to accept the first offers that came in. In a place where the law at times goes unenforced, they became easy targets in the networks that exploit slave labor.

“The law of silence rules here,” said Egidio Alves Sampaio, of the Pastoral Earth Commission. “The peasant knows about this situation [of slave labor practices], but is afraid of reporting it for fear of consequences.”

According to testimony documented in the report, workers allege that logging camp bosses would hire gunmen to intimidate them into not demanding the payment they were owed.

Life in a forest under destruction

Data on settlers that work cutting down trees in the Amazon is limited. What little is known comes from federal labor inspectors and non-governmental institutions. According to data from the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), Federal Public Ministry and Ministry of Labor, 931 workers recruited to cut down trees have been rescued in the state of Pará since 2003 – just a bit more than one-fifth of total Brazilian rescues in the sector. The majority were between 15 and 30 years old, according to the inspectors’ records, but the elderly and children were also found to be taking part in this activity.

Lack of payment was a common element uncovered by investigations of sawmill sites. During one of the rescue operations conducted by the Ministry of Labor, inspectors asked the workers what they thought were the worst things that could happen to them while on the job. They expected to hear about fears of accidents or death, but most the workers replied they were most worried about not getting paid.

Investigators found it was common for workers to go through months of arduous and dangerous labor without receiving any wage. If the wood was not sold at the rate expected by the employers, their loss in profits was often recouped by not paying workers. Since the business was operating illegally, there was no one to whom the workers could turn for help.

In Pará, the mission of these timber operations is not to cut down large numbers of trees. Instead, their focus is on specific species that appeal to the international market – like ipê, or Brazilian walnut, a dark hardwood used for flooring, decks and veneers. When they no longer can support themselves from the land, the report found, settlers began to accept offers to make a living cutting down trees in protected areas. The work offers tended to come from neighbors, generally ex-employees of the loggers locally called “toreiros.”

Read the other reports:
Suppliers of Lowe’s in the US and Walmart  in Brazil linked to slave labor in the Amazon
Slave labor in the Amazon: risking lives to cut down the rainforest
Current regulations unable to control trade in products from slave labor, expert says

Without workers’ rights, the settlers-turned-loggers remained out of contact inside the forest for weeks to months on end, according to the investigation. The sun sets the workday. As long as it is light out, which is the case from 4:30 am to 6:30 pm, the chainsaws were running.

The risks inside the forest were significant due to poor working conditions, the researchers found. Logging was done without any type of protection, such as safety glasses, utility uniforms, helmets, work boots or insect repellent. This equipment is regarded as essential for protection, not just from accidents, but from poisonous animals.

“It happens a lot that any kind of jerky movement on the log or tractor can cut off the helper’s fingers or hand. Logs roll over and crush guys,” said one rescued worker quoted in the investigation’s report.

The most shocking scene for workers, said researcher Torres, were the makeshift structures used for housing. Lacking walls and built from small logs, they covered the workers with only a tarp. The stove was often a campfire made in a paint can or old cooking pot. The meat, caught or brought by the employees themselves, rested unprotected on string clotheslines. Hammocks hung from the tree trunks – often fewer in number than the workers, so for some, there was only the ground. Water, often captured from rainfall, was stored in improvised containers without a lid or treatment. After getting a layer of sludge in the first few days, it was used for quenching thirst and cooking during the long months of work.

Forced work, debt bondage, isolation, exhausting working hours and life-threatening conditions defined workers’ lives at many of the sawmill sites investigated by RAICE. These elements are included the Brazilian Penal Code and used by inspectors from the Ministry of Labor to define slave labor.

The beginnings of colonization

In the 1970s, families settled on tracts of land of up to 100 hectares, near recently constructed highways – the first ones in the region and by which the dreamed-of progress was to arrive. Over time, new migrants showed up, colonizing the forest yet remaining isolated within it.

Aggravating the situation was a lack of unawareness of the environmental conditions of the Amazon, both on the part of the settlers and of the government that divided the land among them. The farming experience they brought with them from northeastern Brazil did not bear fruit in Pará. To make matters worse, according to the report, lots were drawn up from the map in equal, rectangular shapes that did not take into account soil quality.

Without expansion of roads, schools, medical facilities, credit systems and technical assistance, the settlers became vulnerable, according to Larisa Bombardi of the São Paulo University Laboratory of Agrarian Geography. Bombardi said that in order to remain in the places they were living, the majority stripped themselves of dignity without noticing. It was under these circumstances that the logging companies showed up in the 1970s.

The loggers built roads out to the settlers and offered others small favors – like money to take the bus, Torres said. Under what the investigation’s researchers describe as an exploitative relationship disguised as benevolence, settlers came to see the logging companies as friends. Since then the cycle has repeated itself.

Today, the settlers live in small communities with little infrastructure, such as schools, access to health, basic sanitation and electricity.

“What chances do they have for not starving if they do not rely on the loggers’ favors, which makes them slaves?” Torres said.

Download here the report (in portuguese)  “Por Debaixo da Floresta: Amazônia paraense saqueada com trabalho escravo (Under the forest: the Amazon rainforest looted by slave labor)”, done by the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (Pastoral Land Commission (CPT)) and the Centro de Defesa da Vida e dos Direitos Humanos Carmen Bascarán (Center for the Defence of Life and Human Rights Carmen Bascarán)

Report part of a special feature: Wood and Slavery (“Profissão Madeireiro” english version)

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