Slavery

I was watching Mary Full of Grace on Maori TV and I remembered the class we had on Music. On that class two of our classmates mentioned something that left me a little puzzled; one of them said that there is no slavery nowadays and the other one said that the modern type of slavery is “voluntary”.

I wrote this article to share a bit of what I know about two types of modern slavery.

The first one relies on people’s humility, lack of education, and most important of all, their poverty. The second one relies on people who once were members of the middle class, people who use to have professional careers but because of the many economical problems are now forced to live in poverty and under extreme conditions.

The first group experiences an illegal and more traditional way of slavery. They fall under the hands of human traffickers. What these people do is travel to these remote areas of the country promising people that they will give them a better future in countries such as Brazil. They tell them that they won’t need to worry about anything, everything will be done for them, and all they need to do is work as seamstress and they will be paid a promising amount of money. Many people feel tempted by the idea and accept the challenge believing that they will be able to help their families back in Bolivia. So the human traffickers sort out every thing for them, passport, bus fares, and pocket money for the trip.

Most of the time they are sent to big metropolitan cities, like Rio or Sao Paulo. Once they get there they are placed in huge warehouses and only then they are told the bad news. That they won’t get paid until they paid off all the money spent on them, bus fares, passport transactions… But that’s not the worse thing, once they get there their passports are taken away from them and are told that because they are illegal immigrants and they look like indigenous people and can’t speak Portuguese they are easy target for the Brazilian Federal Police and they will be sent to jail if caught walking on the streets. Now these people live in constant fear and because of their humility find it hard to complain or protest. They live under these conditions for months and sometimes years, without ever stepping outside these factories, working from 6:30am to 2:00am. They share small rooms and need to share a single toilet they live with very little food. Many times some of these people die of very easy to cure diseases.

These modern slaves spent years making clothes that will later be sold in various markets at very high prices. They live inconstant fear and live a life bordering death. This is a very common problem nowadays and is very hard to control.

Now the second type of slavery is a more legal one but equally problematic. Those Bolivian professionals who are having a hard time to find a means of making a living need to rely on extreme circumstances in order to survive. They do not choose to go and work “illegally” in countries such as Spain or the US, they don’t have a choice.

Here is how it works. I do not need money for an airplane ticket; I can get a loan from the travel agency. They will provide me with a return ticket for me to show at customs in the US. Under Bolivian law, if I would like to borrow money, I need a guarantor, and if I don’t pay he will be prosecuted. That is why once they are in the US they need to work at all costs to make money in order to pay for the money they borrowed. Because these people normally do not speak English and do not hold any visa they don’t care how much they get paid, they work 18hrs per day for $5 per hour, and live in extreme poverty trying to save every cent since they are the last hope for their families back in Bolivia.

If you understand Spanish I recommend you this article that exposes the problem very clearly.

I've got a few Bolivian movies that are very hard to get that explore many social problems, they are quite good, if someone wants to wacth them I can make you a copy. Just drop me an email and I will give them to you.

radio.zumbi@gmail.com