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Brazil Rescues 4,600 Slaves in 2008

By Neal Colgrass, Newser Staff

Posted Jan 2, 2009 7:24 PM CST

(Newser) – Brazil freed more than 4,600 slaves this year after storming a record number of remote farms, the Guardian reports. Often teaming up with federal police, the government's anti-slavery task force raided 255 farms, but advocates say thousands of poor are still being trapped into debt slavery. "It is a very sad situation that leaves you feeling impotent," said activist Leonardo Sakamoto.

Many of the slaves come from Brazil's poverty-stricken backlands, where middlemen promise people jobs and cart them off to remote plantations and ranches. Slaves work in squalid conditions and are often killed if they make demands. The government has offered money to the rescued slaves, Sakamoto said, but is yet to tackle the poverty and unemployment that make slavery possible.

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (1)]

A Brazilian family at dinner on a coffee plantation, circa 1820. The woman feeds scraps to a small black child, whilst a female slave cools the air with a large fan. (Getty Images)

Passengers walk to a raft they will use to cross the Madre de Dios River in Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios department, Peru, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2007. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

A hut found on the edge of the Amazon river. (Shutterstock)

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The federal government has acted—but having slave labour in a country where the wealth is so evident is a very painful contradiction. - Leonardo Sakamoto, head of a Sao Paulo-based NGO

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