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The hunt for slave outposts in the Amazon
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Most of them have been living in the forest for weeks, sleeping in hammocks with only flimsy plastic sheets for protection. They rise at 4 a.m. to eat a meager breakfast before heading out into the forest to cut down trees. They drink water and wash their clothes from the same muddy pools used by wild animals. They survive on a diet of rice and beans supplemented with the fish they catch in the river or the wild animals they hunt in the forest. They have no toilets and no electricity. If they want a break from their labors they must pay their boss nearly 200 reais ($68) to drive them to the nearest town. The catch? Most have not been paid more than a few dollars for their work.
Slavery's long history in Brazil
Slavery's roots run deep in the world's 14th-largest economy. Brazil was built on the backs of 4 million African slaves, roughly eight times the number brought to the United States. It was the last country in South America to officially abolish slavery, in 1888, but it has turned a blind eye to the practice for most of the past century.
That began to change only last year when Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took over as president. A former socialist who dropped out of school at 14, Lula came to power with a mandate to make Brazil a fairer place. One of his first campaigns has been to combat what he calls "Brazil's shame." He has more than doubled the Department of Labor Oversight's budget of 2.9 million reais (almost $1 million), and increased the number of Mobile Anti-Slavery Units like Silva's from four to seven.
The influx of cash allowed the antislavery police to add 16 new pickups to their aging fleet of 22 - and the International Labor Organization (ILO), based in Geneva, has backed the campaign with donations of satellite phones, communications equipment, laptops, and printers.
The mobile units are the operational arm of the campaign. With the help of the Roman Catholic Church's Pastoral Land Commission, where most escaped slaves go to denounce the practice, the police follow up the allegations by venturing into some of the most remote and inhospitable areas in the country. The program has freed 4,932 slaves in President Lula's first year in office, the most in any one-year period and twice the number freed during the previous 12 months.
"Under Lula, Brazil has become a reference [for other countries] in the fight to end slave labor," says Patricia Audi, coordinator of slavery eradication projects at the ILO's Brazil office. "Never have so many slaves been freed, never have so many people been forced to pay fines, never have so many people been brought to justice, and never have the public been made so aware of it."
Spending the night under the stars
In a normal month, Silva's team will spend two weeks in the rain forest following up leads and making arrests. This evening, Silva tells the bewildered men that he is here to help them and instructs them that tomorrow they will be free men. With the nearest town four hours away, he and his team have no option but to spend the night as the slaves do, swinging from hammocks strung under the stars.
Silva loves his job. A former cop, he gets his adventure fix from trips like this. He's also notoriously stingy. His colleagues call him "0800," the Brazilian prefix for a toll-free call, and joke that he spends the night in the forest in order to pocket the hotel per diem.
But it is bitterly cold, and even Silva doesn't sleep well. His blanket does not provide much sanctuary from the elements, never mind the constant noise of the crickets and frogs, or the snoring police officer in the hammock next to him. When he rises around 5 a.m., he can see his breath in the chill air and he walks briskly toward the bonfire kept alive by his fellow insomniacs.
As morning dawns on a short, uncomfortable night, Silva's team is eager to gather the slaves from the other eight camps and head for Vila Rica, the nearest big town. Two watermelons - bought from the back of a truck at a gasoline station the day before - are sliced and consumed for breakfast. Then, the investigators and machine-gun toting federal police are back in the middle of a forest clearing addressing the slaves. A gutted piranha with ferocious teeth hangs drying from a wooden pole and a can filled with water is boiling over an open fire. Shafts of sunlight start to pierce the trees.
