Father Ricardo Rezende, 70, is a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and coordinates the research group on contemporary slave labor. In the 1980s, they toured the lands of the state of Pará in the Brazilian Amazon and advised farmers to organize and defend their rights. Brazil was a dictatorship and “this region was the epicenter of the agrarian conflict and slave labor,” explains the priest, who was part of the Bishops’ Conference’s Rural Pastoral Commission, over the phone. His first complaints warned that farmers were being subjected to severe abuse at the so-called Volkswagen farm, a huge livestock farm run by the German multinational. Many worked as slaves for debts that only increased. The testimonies and documents that the priest collected four decades ago served as the basis for the Brazilian public prosecutor’s office to initiate proceedings against the company.
Rezende says the victims were workers who came to Pará from other states, poor people who were seduced by false promises of well-paid jobs. The reality is that on top of the debts incurred on the voyage, others accumulated due to the abusive pricing of tools, boots, the rest of the supplies and groceries. They lived trapped, victims of a system that made it virtually impossible to even the score. Experts call this debt bondage.
“A worker tried to escape but the gunmen caught him. As punishment, they kidnapped his wife and raped her. Another tried to run away and was shot in the leg. And another was tied up naked,” prosecutor Rafael García told France Presse. Others who reached the jungle in their escape were killed.
Dedicated to raising livestock, the Volkswagen farm covered 140,000 hectares and employed hundreds of people. Prosecutors are now accusing Volkswagen of “serious human rights violations” allegedly committed at the ranch, including “the lack of treatment for malaria, being banned from leaving the farm by armed guards or because of accumulated debts, unhealthy housing and precarious food.” it in a message. The state ministry summoned the company to a hearing in Brasilia on the 14th where the judiciary will demand that Volkswagen meet its responsibilities and reach an agreement. The multinational said through a spokesman in Germany that it was taking the case “very seriously”.
A cowboy tends to the cattle on the farm of the multinational company prosecutors are investigating for alleged abuse in the 1980s. Image Alliance (Image Alliance via Getty Images)
The company, consistent with Germany’s guilt for Nazism, has already examined its conscience about its complicity with the Brazilian dictatorship. Two years ago, he admitted helping to persecute several left-wing workers at his São Paulo factory and compensating them.
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And what did Volkswagen do with cattle breeding in the Amazon in the 1980s? With projects like this, Brazil’s largest automaker contributed to the dictatorship’s efforts to colonize and economically develop Pará, located in the eastern Amazon and twice the size of France. With generous tax exemptions, the military managed to install many companies.
This was lawless territory, the scene of bloody disputes over land ownership and use. “There were a lot of murders, the atmosphere was very rough,” explains the priest. “We could not rely on the police, the judiciary or the public prosecutor’s office, nor on civil society, nor on the press,” he says of the times of the military regime. For the generals, “the Catholic Church was communist, subversive. Our word was worth nothing in court.” So they worked carefully. It was important to document every complaint impeccably. Liberation theology was on the rise.
Pará remains hostile territory for human rights and environmentalists. And fertile ground for agrarian conflicts and deforestation.
Although it was known as the Volkswagen Estate, Rezende refers to it by its real name: Companhia Vale do Cristalino. He had heard many rumors about the atrocities happening there until he received the first evidence. It was the testimony of three men who, under the pretense of having been called up, managed to get permission to leave the court. In all, they interviewed “about 16 survivors” and obtained several volumes of documents. About 600 pages.
In 1983, Rezende filed a public complaint and managed to get Volkswagen to open the farm’s doors to a group of MPs. While the cattle ranch manager, a Swiss, was explaining to the lordships how modern everything was, a Brazilian worker appeared and called for help. This found only an echo in the foreign press.
“While Volkswagen was using slave labor in Pará, it paid historians to investigate whether it had used slave labor in World War II, acknowledged its crimes, and compensated the victims,” Rezende recalls. Like a meticulous detective, he continued to gather evidence. He is confident that one day “in Brazil the social and political conditions will be in place for the lawsuit to thrive,” as has happened in Germany. It was like this. Almost four decades later.
When the German multinational admitted its complicity with the Brazilian military regime, Rezende decided the time had come. His team traveled to Pará in search of farm survivors. They managed to find several who were still alive and in their right mind. They were interviewed and their testimonies filmed. With the updated material, they went to the State Department, which heard them. The accusation against Volkswagen published by the German media last weekend also made headlines in Brazil. The farm has long since been sold. Only the ruins remain.
The last country in America to abolish slavery 134 years ago is rocked from time to time by lurid cases like that of Doña Maria, who worked as a maid in Rio de Janeiro for 72 years without pay or vacation.
In the 1980s, Rezende had no intention of ending up as a university professor specializing in contemporary slave labor. Volkswagen’s is one of hundreds of folders he keeps, one for each company where he suspects serious abuse.
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