Sodré and the Dialectics of Brazil’s Social Formation
by Marcos Del Roio
Showing posts with label Modern Slavery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modern Slavery. Show all posts
July 18, 2019
Abstract, Sodré and the Dialectics of Brazil’s Social Formation
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Sodré and the Dialectics of Brazil’s Social Formation
by Marcos Del Roio
In the early 1960s, Nelson Werneck Sodré developed a complex and sophisticated theory of Brazilian reality and its historical dynamics. In the light of the criticism and distortion of his views of the intervening years, a clarifying summary of his most important work is in order. Such a summary suggests that the new absolute truths of Brazilian historiography and political sciences have elements that can be questioned and that in interpretations of Brazil one can never forget that science is also expressed as ideology and political practice.
Sodré and the Dialectics of Brazil’s Social Formation
by Marcos Del Roio
April 12, 2019
Political Report # 1391 Migrant Farm Workers are the Main Victims of Slave Labour in Mexico
By Emelio Godoy, Toward Freedom
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(IPS) - “They mislead the workers, tell them that they will be paid well and pay them much less. The recruiters and the employers deceive them,” complained Marilyn Gómez, a migrant farm worker in Mexico.
Gómez, a member of the Mixteco Yosonuvico of Sonora Cerró Nublado cooperative and the mother of two girls, told IPS that the migrant workers are forced to buy whatever they need in their employers’ stores - “where everything is super expensive” - because they aren’t allowed to leave the farm.
“There’s no social security, no contracts, we work very long hours. They take advantage of the fact that people need work,” said Gómez, who began to work in the fields with her family at the age of 13, picking grapes and vegetables in the northern state of Sonora.
The 27-year-old migrant worker and activist, who has worked sick and has frequently worked for more than 12 hours a day for just a few dollars, has harvested fruit and vegetables near the town of Miguel Aleman, part of the municipality of Hermosillo, about 1,600 kilometers north of Mexico City.
Her account illustrates the working conditions of migrant farm workers, who provide substantial returns to their employers and who put vegetables and fruit on the tables of Mexican and U.S. consumers.
They are generally peasant farmers who migrate temporarily or permanently from the southern states to harvest export crops in central and northern Mexico.
They routinely suffer violations of labor rights, and of their rights to housing, education, health and a healthy diet.
And they lack work contracts, adequate working conditions, social security and overtime pay, according to the report “Violations of the rights of agricultural day laborers in Mexico“, launched on Mar. 21 in Mexico City by the National Network of Agricultural Day Labourers, to which Gómez belongs.
In Mexico, migrant farm workers or day laborers are the main victims of slave or forced labor, according to this and other local and international studies. The National Network, made up of workers’, indigenous and academic organisations, has identified cases of labor exploitation, human trafficking and forced labor and/or services.
The latest National Survey of Occupation and Employment, from 2017, placed the number of migrant farm workers at 2.9 million, while the governmental Program of Care for Agricultural Day Laborers put the figure at 1.54 million, plus 4.41 million family members who follow them as they move about.
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February 22, 2018
Political Report # 1313 One in 10 senior politicians in Brazil funded by companies 'linked to slavery'
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More than one in 10 of Brazil’s high-ranking politicians, among them President Michel Temer, received campaign donations from companies linked to modern-day slavery, an investigation has found.
Party leaders, state secretaries and five of ex-president Dilma Rousseff’s governors are among the elected parliamentarians who received R$3.5m (£760,000) during the last general election, according to the NGO Repórter Brasil.
Temer’s election committee was found to have received R$700,000 (£150,000) from OAS, a Brazilian construction company found guilty of keeping 111 workers in slave-like conditions during the expansion of São Paulo airport, in 2013.
“This is just one of an ocean of shocking practices that Temer’s administration has exposed,” said Xavier Plassat, head of the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT).
President Temer is being investigated for corruption as part of the nationwide Lava Jato (“Car Wash”) enquiry following accusations that he received bribes from JBS, the meat-packing company. JBS was at the heart of a series of Brazilian corruption and meat-industry scandals last year, including investigations of reported slavery in its supply chain.
Though receiving donations is neither a crime nor forbidden by Brazil’s electoral commission, the report provides an insight into how closely connected lawmakers can be with companies and individuals linked to illegal practices.
Twenty-one of the 51 MPs who received donations from companies identified by the authorities as using slave labour are part of the extremely influential rural caucus in congress. This lobby has continually attempted to limit efforts to combat slavery in Brazil and, late last year, supported Temer’s attempt to restrict the legal definition of modern-day slavery.
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February 12, 2018
Political Report # 1310 Slave Labor, Deforestation and Greed Create Crisis in Brazilian Countryside
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Many believe agribusiness pulled Brazil out of the worst recession in its history. Estimates for 2017 register a scant 0.4% growth after four years of crisis, according to the Boletim Focus from the National Central Bank. Agribusiness represents almost 23% of Brazil’s GDP.
Although renewed growth is good news for the world’s 9th economy, progressive sectors of society worry that the rise of agribusiness hides severe labor and environmental costs.
In October the Brazilian Ministry of Labor narrowed the official definition of what qualifies as “slave-like work” to include only situations in which the worker is deprived of freedom, be it through submission under threat of punishment from armed security guards or retention of documents, or debts. The ruling caused an uproar because it eliminated important criteria that included workplaces where workers face degrading conditions, exhausting work hours, and forced labor.
The Ministry also announced it would cease publishing its “dirty list” of employers who subject workers to abusive and humiliating conditions. The government of conservative president Michel Temer decided that those names will only be made public if and when the labor minister decides to do so. Since 2003 when the list began, the list comprised mostly names of wealthy farmers. After widespread protests and national and international headlines, the government rescinded the controversial reforms to the criteria for slave work. Later in the year, the minister of labor, Ronaldo Nogueira, left the government to run for congress. Still smarting from the controversy and with unemployment on the rise, the nation still awaits the nomination of a new minister
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November 29, 2017
Abstract, Small Groups Don’t Win Revolutions: Armed Struggle in the Memory of Maoist Militants of Política Popular
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Small Groups Don’t Win Revolutions: Armed Struggle in the Memory of Maoist Militants of Política Popular
by Jorge Ivan Puma Crespo
Política Popular, an unarmed Maoist group operating from 1968 to 1979 in northern Mexico, developed as it did because of the attraction of the “mass line” in its interpretation as a direct-democratic model for political participation. This is why activists from the student movement of 1968 adopted Maoist ideas as an ideological guide. Maoism as a simple organizational catechism easily captured their imagination and persuaded squatters and workers to join them in challenging the authoritarian Mexican regime.
Small Groups Don’t Win Revolutions: Armed Struggle in the Memory of Maoist Militants of Política Popular
by Jorge Ivan Puma Crespo
Política Popular, an unarmed Maoist group operating from 1968 to 1979 in northern Mexico, developed as it did because of the attraction of the “mass line” in its interpretation as a direct-democratic model for political participation. This is why activists from the student movement of 1968 adopted Maoist ideas as an ideological guide. Maoism as a simple organizational catechism easily captured their imagination and persuaded squatters and workers to join them in challenging the authoritarian Mexican regime.
November 24, 2017
Abstract, Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil
by Daniela Issa
Modern slavery in Brazil exemplifies the culmination of reification as theorized by György Lukács, characterized by the commodification and dehumanization of labor and the extreme objectification of workers, who become “human commodities” in the capitalist system—“commodities” that produce other commodities. The concept of reification was incorporated into the 2003 Brazilian law on slave labor, where equating a human being with a thing in the performance of labor is a crime regardless of whether a worker is confined.
Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil
Modern slavery in Brazil exemplifies the culmination of reification as theorized by György Lukács, characterized by the commodification and dehumanization of labor and the extreme objectification of workers, who become “human commodities” in the capitalist system—“commodities” that produce other commodities. The concept of reification was incorporated into the 2003 Brazilian law on slave labor, where equating a human being with a thing in the performance of labor is a crime regardless of whether a worker is confined.
November 22, 2017
Abstract, Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
by Ricardo Rezoned Figueira and Neide Esterci
The abolition of slavery in 1888 failed to eliminate the repressive and compulsory use of labor in Brazil. When pressure to reduce slave trafficking made African labor scarce, coffee producers in São Paulo recruited European migrants to replace it. Through indebtedness and compulsory work, migrants became captive to the landowners who hired them. As the occupation of the Amazon frontier became state policy in the 1960s, debt bondage was used against the thousands of migrant workers hired to clear the areas for agribusiness projects. Slavery had been prohibited since 1940, and in 1965 the Congress entered into two international agreements on slavery that included debt bondage. With the end of the military government in 1985, the category “slave labor” was incorporated into the regulatory framework for employment practices, and since then it has been broadened to include labor forced by violence, debt bondage, exhausting labor, and degrading working conditions. Tensions around the definition remain, however, and prosecutions under the law and guilty verdicts have so far been few.
Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
by Ricardo Rezoned Figueira and Neide Esterci
The abolition of slavery in 1888 failed to eliminate the repressive and compulsory use of labor in Brazil. When pressure to reduce slave trafficking made African labor scarce, coffee producers in São Paulo recruited European migrants to replace it. Through indebtedness and compulsory work, migrants became captive to the landowners who hired them. As the occupation of the Amazon frontier became state policy in the 1960s, debt bondage was used against the thousands of migrant workers hired to clear the areas for agribusiness projects. Slavery had been prohibited since 1940, and in 1965 the Congress entered into two international agreements on slavery that included debt bondage. With the end of the military government in 1985, the category “slave labor” was incorporated into the regulatory framework for employment practices, and since then it has been broadened to include labor forced by violence, debt bondage, exhausting labor, and degrading working conditions. Tensions around the definition remain, however, and prosecutions under the law and guilty verdicts have so far been few.
November 20, 2017
Abstract, The Tip of the Iceberg: Media Coverage of “Slave Labor” in Argentina
:::::: Abstract ::::::
The Tip of the Iceberg: Media Coverage of “Slave Labor” in Argentina
by Marina Kabat, Agustina Desalvo, Julia Egan
The Argentina media often report “slave labor” conditions in clothing production and seed nurseries. A critical assessment of the types of coercion (economic and noneconomic) that hold workers under these brutal conditions indicates that instances of extraeconomic coercion are merely the extreme manifestation of a general situation in which economic coercion predominates. The determinants of the deterioration of working conditions in these two sectors include relative overpopulation and technological backwardness.
The Tip of the Iceberg: Media Coverage of “Slave Labor” in Argentina
by Marina Kabat, Agustina Desalvo, Julia Egan
The Argentina media often report “slave labor” conditions in clothing production and seed nurseries. A critical assessment of the types of coercion (economic and noneconomic) that hold workers under these brutal conditions indicates that instances of extraeconomic coercion are merely the extreme manifestation of a general situation in which economic coercion predominates. The determinants of the deterioration of working conditions in these two sectors include relative overpopulation and technological backwardness.
November 15, 2017
Abstract, Migrant Smuggling on Mexico’s Gulf Route: The Actors Involved
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Migrant Smuggling on Mexico’s Gulf Route: The Actors Involved
by Simón Pedro Izcara Palacios
Migrant flows crossing Mexican territory into the United States along the Gulf route are mainly driven by a demand for cheap labor. The decrease in the number of migrants wishing to cross the border to escape the violence in Mexico has turned undocumented migrants into a rare and valuable commodity. The increasing costs of migrant smuggling as a result of organized crime and the activities of the immigration authorities have prompted employers to finance this activity to ensure that they receive enough workers. In-depth interviews with 70 migrant smugglers shed light on the function and participation of the different actors involved in migrant smuggling.
Migrant Smuggling on Mexico’s Gulf Route: The Actors Involved
by Simón Pedro Izcara Palacios
Migrant flows crossing Mexican territory into the United States along the Gulf route are mainly driven by a demand for cheap labor. The decrease in the number of migrants wishing to cross the border to escape the violence in Mexico has turned undocumented migrants into a rare and valuable commodity. The increasing costs of migrant smuggling as a result of organized crime and the activities of the immigration authorities have prompted employers to finance this activity to ensure that they receive enough workers. In-depth interviews with 70 migrant smugglers shed light on the function and participation of the different actors involved in migrant smuggling.
November 13, 2017
Introduction, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
:::::: Introduction ::::::
Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
by Daniela Issa
Very few scholars in Latin America deny the existence of modern slavery today, but when the literature began denouncing and analyzing it in the late 1990s1 as a practice very much present in the world the phenomenon was met with astonishment. Because of slavery’s being a historical practice, “vestiges” of it seemed a more plausible explanation than the purported reality of “modern slavery”—a construction seemingly leading to an oxymoron in the social imaginary. For one thing, this astonishment presupposed the incompatibility of slavery in any form with the promises of Post-Enlightenment modernity associated with emancipation and individual liberties. Further, modernity’s scientific and technical progress is invariably associated with the moral and ethical progress of humanity and the implication of a better world, a different stage of historical development. In the past couple of decades, however, the literature has come to be quite homogeneous in its acceptance of the phenomenon in spite of the apparent paradox of the modern, neoliberal world order: assurances of more freedom, in particular individual liberties, on the one hand and extreme exploitation of labor on the other.
Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
by Daniela Issa
Very few scholars in Latin America deny the existence of modern slavery today, but when the literature began denouncing and analyzing it in the late 1990s1 as a practice very much present in the world the phenomenon was met with astonishment. Because of slavery’s being a historical practice, “vestiges” of it seemed a more plausible explanation than the purported reality of “modern slavery”—a construction seemingly leading to an oxymoron in the social imaginary. For one thing, this astonishment presupposed the incompatibility of slavery in any form with the promises of Post-Enlightenment modernity associated with emancipation and individual liberties. Further, modernity’s scientific and technical progress is invariably associated with the moral and ethical progress of humanity and the implication of a better world, a different stage of historical development. In the past couple of decades, however, the literature has come to be quite homogeneous in its acceptance of the phenomenon in spite of the apparent paradox of the modern, neoliberal world order: assurances of more freedom, in particular individual liberties, on the one hand and extreme exploitation of labor on the other.
November 10, 2017
Abstract, Small Groups Don’t Win Revolutions: Armed Struggle in the Memory of Maoist Militants of Política Popular
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Small Groups Don’t Win Revolutions: Armed Struggle in the Memory of Maoist Militants of Política Popular
by Jorge Ivan Puma Crespo
Política Popular, an unarmed Maoist group operating from 1968 to 1979 in northern Mexico, developed as it did because of the attraction of the “mass line” in its interpretation as a direct-democratic model for political participation. This is why activists from the student movement of 1968 adopted Maoist ideas as an ideological guide. Maoism as a simple organizational catechism easily captured their imagination and persuaded squatters and workers to join them in challenging the authoritarian Mexican regime.
Small Groups Don’t Win Revolutions: Armed Struggle in the Memory of Maoist Militants of Política Popular
by Jorge Ivan Puma Crespo
Política Popular, an unarmed Maoist group operating from 1968 to 1979 in northern Mexico, developed as it did because of the attraction of the “mass line” in its interpretation as a direct-democratic model for political participation. This is why activists from the student movement of 1968 adopted Maoist ideas as an ideological guide. Maoism as a simple organizational catechism easily captured their imagination and persuaded squatters and workers to join them in challenging the authoritarian Mexican regime.
November 1, 2017
Abstract, Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil
by Daniela Issa
Modern slavery in Brazil exemplifies the culmination of reification as theorized by György Lukács, characterized by the commodification and dehumanization of labor and the extreme objectification of workers, who become “human commodities” in the capitalist system—“commodities” that produce other commodities. The concept of reification was incorporated into the 2003 Brazilian law on slave labor, where equating a human being with a thing in the performance of labor is a crime regardless of whether a worker is confined.
Reification and the Human Commodity: Theorizing Modern Slavery in Brazil
Modern slavery in Brazil exemplifies the culmination of reification as theorized by György Lukács, characterized by the commodification and dehumanization of labor and the extreme objectification of workers, who become “human commodities” in the capitalist system—“commodities” that produce other commodities. The concept of reification was incorporated into the 2003 Brazilian law on slave labor, where equating a human being with a thing in the performance of labor is a crime regardless of whether a worker is confined.
October 30, 2017
Abstract, Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
by Ricardo Rezoned Figueira and Neide Esterci
The abolition of slavery in 1888 failed to eliminate the repressive and compulsory use of labor in Brazil. When pressure to reduce slave trafficking made African labor scarce, coffee producers in São Paulo recruited European migrants to replace it. Through indebtedness and compulsory work, migrants became captive to the landowners who hired them. As the occupation of the Amazon frontier became state policy in the 1960s, debt bondage was used against the thousands of migrant workers hired to clear the areas for agribusiness projects. Slavery had been prohibited since 1940, and in 1965 the Congress entered into two international agreements on slavery that included debt bondage. With the end of the military government in 1985, the category “slave labor” was incorporated into the regulatory framework for employment practices, and since then it has been broadened to include labor forced by violence, debt bondage, exhausting labor, and degrading working conditions. Tensions around the definition remain, however, and prosecutions under the law and guilty verdicts have so far been few.
Slavery in Today’s Brazil: Law and Public Policy
by Ricardo Rezoned Figueira and Neide Esterci
The abolition of slavery in 1888 failed to eliminate the repressive and compulsory use of labor in Brazil. When pressure to reduce slave trafficking made African labor scarce, coffee producers in São Paulo recruited European migrants to replace it. Through indebtedness and compulsory work, migrants became captive to the landowners who hired them. As the occupation of the Amazon frontier became state policy in the 1960s, debt bondage was used against the thousands of migrant workers hired to clear the areas for agribusiness projects. Slavery had been prohibited since 1940, and in 1965 the Congress entered into two international agreements on slavery that included debt bondage. With the end of the military government in 1985, the category “slave labor” was incorporated into the regulatory framework for employment practices, and since then it has been broadened to include labor forced by violence, debt bondage, exhausting labor, and degrading working conditions. Tensions around the definition remain, however, and prosecutions under the law and guilty verdicts have so far been few.
October 25, 2017
Abstract, The Tip of the Iceberg: Media Coverage of “Slave Labor” in Argentina
:::::: Abstract ::::::
The Tip of the Iceberg: Media Coverage of “Slave Labor” in Argentina
by Marina Kabat, Agustina Desalvo, Julia Egan
The Argentina media often report “slave labor” conditions in clothing production and seed nurseries. A critical assessment of the types of coercion (economic and noneconomic) that hold workers under these brutal conditions indicates that instances of extraeconomic coercion are merely the extreme manifestation of a general situation in which economic coercion predominates. The determinants of the deterioration of working conditions in these two sectors include relative overpopulation and technological backwardness.
The Tip of the Iceberg: Media Coverage of “Slave Labor” in Argentina
by Marina Kabat, Agustina Desalvo, Julia Egan
The Argentina media often report “slave labor” conditions in clothing production and seed nurseries. A critical assessment of the types of coercion (economic and noneconomic) that hold workers under these brutal conditions indicates that instances of extraeconomic coercion are merely the extreme manifestation of a general situation in which economic coercion predominates. The determinants of the deterioration of working conditions in these two sectors include relative overpopulation and technological backwardness.
October 20, 2017
Abstract, Migrant Smuggling on Mexico’s Gulf Route: The Actors Involved
:::::: Abstract ::::::
Migrant Smuggling on Mexico’s Gulf Route: The Actors Involved
by Simón Pedro Izcara Palacios
Migrant flows crossing Mexican territory into the United States along the Gulf route are mainly driven by a demand for cheap labor. The decrease in the number of migrants wishing to cross the border to escape the violence in Mexico has turned undocumented migrants into a rare and valuable commodity. The increasing costs of migrant smuggling as a result of organized crime and the activities of the immigration authorities have prompted employers to finance this activity to ensure that they receive enough workers. In-depth interviews with 70 migrant smugglers shed light on the function and participation of the different actors involved in migrant smuggling.
Migrant Smuggling on Mexico’s Gulf Route: The Actors Involved
by Simón Pedro Izcara Palacios
Migrant flows crossing Mexican territory into the United States along the Gulf route are mainly driven by a demand for cheap labor. The decrease in the number of migrants wishing to cross the border to escape the violence in Mexico has turned undocumented migrants into a rare and valuable commodity. The increasing costs of migrant smuggling as a result of organized crime and the activities of the immigration authorities have prompted employers to finance this activity to ensure that they receive enough workers. In-depth interviews with 70 migrant smugglers shed light on the function and participation of the different actors involved in migrant smuggling.
October 18, 2017
Introduction, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
:::::: Introduction ::::::
Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
by Daniela Issa
Very few scholars in Latin America deny the existence of modern slavery today, but when the literature began denouncing and analyzing it in the late 1990s1 as a practice very much present in the world the phenomenon was met with astonishment. Because of slavery’s being a historical practice, “vestiges” of it seemed a more plausible explanation than the purported reality of “modern slavery”—a construction seemingly leading to an oxymoron in the social imaginary. For one thing, this astonishment presupposed the incompatibility of slavery in any form with the promises of Post-Enlightenment modernity associated with emancipation and individual liberties. Further, modernity’s scientific and technical progress is invariably associated with the moral and ethical progress of humanity and the implication of a better world, a different stage of historical development. In the past couple of decades, however, the literature has come to be quite homogeneous in its acceptance of the phenomenon in spite of the apparent paradox of the modern, neoliberal world order: assurances of more freedom, in particular individual liberties, on the one hand and extreme exploitation of labor on the other.
Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
by Daniela Issa
Very few scholars in Latin America deny the existence of modern slavery today, but when the literature began denouncing and analyzing it in the late 1990s1 as a practice very much present in the world the phenomenon was met with astonishment. Because of slavery’s being a historical practice, “vestiges” of it seemed a more plausible explanation than the purported reality of “modern slavery”—a construction seemingly leading to an oxymoron in the social imaginary. For one thing, this astonishment presupposed the incompatibility of slavery in any form with the promises of Post-Enlightenment modernity associated with emancipation and individual liberties. Further, modernity’s scientific and technical progress is invariably associated with the moral and ethical progress of humanity and the implication of a better world, a different stage of historical development. In the past couple of decades, however, the literature has come to be quite homogeneous in its acceptance of the phenomenon in spite of the apparent paradox of the modern, neoliberal world order: assurances of more freedom, in particular individual liberties, on the one hand and extreme exploitation of labor on the other.
October 17, 2017
November 2017 Issue, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking in Latin America
Issue Editor: Daniela Issa
Issue 217 | Volume 44 | Number 6 | November 2017
Modern slavery and human trafficking affect an estimated 1.8 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean today yet remain significantly understudied given their devastating human consequences. This issue addresses this gap in the slavery and trafficking scholarship by taking a critical look at it across the region and situating it within the transnational capitalist economy. Articles include theoretical analyses of the phenomenon as well as recruitment practices, populations susceptible to being enslaved/trafficking, and the role of violence. Additionally, it seeks to provide regional balance in the literature on slavery and trafficking in Latin America, which has disproportionately centered on Brazil; it highlights three underresearched areas—slavery outside Brazil, nonsexual slavery, and smugglers/traffickers rather than victims exclusively.
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