| Brazil's "Slave Labor" (2007) Josino Moraes Latin America Economic Researcher www.josino.net email: josinomoraes@hotmail.com I. The Myth of Slave Labor in Brazil Recent news reported in Brazil (Folha de S. Paulo, 11-28-2006, B7) that two Democratic congressmen, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), are heading a commission to verify the existence of slave labor in Brazil. What is the origin of such an absurd investigation? It is the insanity of the Brazilian media. And what is the origin of such insanity? A little more than a century of influence of Comte's positivism and Marxist ideas. The political face of positivism developed into fascism as well as marxism into classical communism. So, the main ground of the Brazilian media is a mix of fascist and communist ideas, to put it into a simple and concise way. Are the two American congressmen barking at the moon? No, of course not, the only source of information they have is the Brazilian media reproduced in the USA by the American media focused on Latin America. That reminds me of my experience when in touch with an American university trying to get a fellowship with a proposal of a comparative study between Portugal and Brazil on labor relations based on my twenty-year experience as a businessman in Brazil and reported in a recent book. The proposal was interesting and the two recommendations were excellent. Mailson da Nobrega, a rare case of a talented and well-educated former minister of finance, said that he had learned a lot when reading my book, and Professor Keith S. Rosenn, University of Miami, said among another things about my work: "He writes extremely well, and he sees Brazil through a quite distinct and original perspective..... He is very much his own person and an original thinker". I lost the application and afterwards when reading more carefully on the site of the American university I found out that its main objective was to strengthen the ties with the Brazilian institutions, i.e., the academic nomenklatura. No way! I use the concept of the nomenklatura as inspired by the late phenomenon of the Soviet Union to name the class of people that lived with privileges - see Wikipedia. But if you think about it a little more, it is quite comprehensible: the American university looks at the Brazilian university as its equal, its alter ego. The same way as the American media looks at the Brazilian media. This is the most important reason explaining why American researchers on Latin America will never say anything interesting. In fact, the Brazilian national university is just one of the segments of nomenklatura. The professors begin their career looking forward to their huge, premature and hereditary public pensions. They are naturally lazy and, for instance, never think about how to win a Nobel Prize. There is no competition among them. The idea of the existence of "slave labor" in the Brazilian media came up in the last few years while referring to farm work. What was reported a "slave labor"? It was the informal work on our farms. What is considered informal work? All work that does rigidly not obey the rules created by the Mussolini's Carta del Lavoro ( Work Letter ?) copied here by the Brazilian dictator Getulio Vargas in the distant 1930. An intricate question is the fact that in our cities 60% of the work force is informal as reported by most sources. And, it is not considered "slave labor". One of the very few exceptions was a report from The New York Times that denounced the existence of "urban slaves" in S. Paulo (O Estado de S. Paulo, 3-12-04, A14). A possible explanation for this nonsense reasoning is that there were real black slaves on our farms in a distant past, as well as in the United States plus the lack of intelligence of the local media. One of the highlights that the media focused on in those reports was the economic figure of "O Gato".(The Cat). He is the intermediary between the farmer and the work force. He recruits people to easy the process of working, so the farmer can hire the wnole team, not just one after one. That would almost make the process impossible. Why did people choose the figure of a cat to this particular economic function? Because in the Brazilian culture, the cat is associated with someone who steals. The business of foods is sometimes associated with thieves, for instance. Stimulated by the media, people think the consumer should be in direct contact with the producer. That is part of the local culture working against the idea of an efficient free-market economy. II. Memories of "Slave Labor" The first time I heard this expression in this context was in a debate with lawyers and judges about Labor Justice System. Yes, in Brazil there is a specific federal branch of justice charged with "disputes" in labor relations. Brazil is the absolute world champion on this issue (O Estado de S. Paulo, 12-02-07, B3). There are two million of such lawsuits a year. It is quite obvious that the Labor Justice System is the source of such "conflicts". What really matters is that it generates a lot of sinecures! Brazil is also the absolute world champion of labor regulation as showed in the Working Paper 9756, The Regulation of Labor, Juan Botero et al., from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Besides, this idea of "slave labo" reminds me of the soybean crop of 1982/3. My late father recommended applying herbicides. I probably did not accept that due to my old left ecological ideas. There was a marvelous summer, plenty of rain. Weeds threatened the crop. The only solution was to hire help to weed to try to save the crop. I went to the two villages nearby. We had a small truck and I put a cover on the bed of the truck so I could carry people a little more safely. I properly did not use the figure of "the cat", but there was a guy in the group with some leadership who helped me pick up people early in the morning. Most of the time I got 20 people together - men and women. I drove leaning on the left door so we could have one more squeezing into the cabin. I drove slowly fearing an accident. They came happy, joking. There were not such groups as the current Movimento dos Sem-Terra (Movement of Landless) who fights for a nonsensical land reform based upon increasing taxes to support them. They are the rabble of the nomenklatura. There were some sad days because it began raining and so they could not work no money. What a horror would say the Marxists - one of the main Latin America plagues - who think wealth is generated by taxes, not production. Other days we had to stop working because of the rain. It was quite difficult for me to keep pace with them when working on my row and when I got behind one of them helped me. Hard times. I payed them weekly in cash. Just now I found out I hired "slave labor"! I did know my great-grandfather had black slaves on his coffee farm as well as he hired Italian immigrants escaping from hunger in Italy, one of them being my great-grandfather also. The country had prospects for the future. Nowadays we export illegal immigrants, among them prostitutes and travesties. How awful was the victory of Fascist ideas as a result of the victory of Vargas in 1930. Why is the topic of "slave labor" so interesting to the Brazilian media? Because it has opened an enormous field to denounce characteristic misery of a "capitalist" society and to explain the Marxist theory of the exploitation of man by man. They show photos of "poor workers in this miserable situation" (if you look carefully they are quite normal and healthy workers, one of them is even smoking , see photo below). That is a consequence of the perennial media Marxist education. Universities are still impregnated with Marxist thinking. As pointed out by Lord Keynes "the difficulty is not to accept new ideas but to get rid of the old ones". III. Objectives and Consequences of this "New Finding" The main objective and generally not transparent in this matter is to attack private property, one of the pillars of economic development. Brazil like most of Latin American countries has a long tradition in this matter. In fact, there is a project in the Brazilian House of Representatives purposing the dispossession of farms where "slave labor" might be detected. Already now, the president using his legal imperial powers - a heritage of fascism - has done that in some cases. There is a book by a young journalist, Nelson Barreto, Trabalho Escravo, Nova Arma Contra a Propriedade Privada (Slave Labor, a New Arm Against Private Property) about this subject. The right of private property has always been limited in Latin America. In most of the original Spanish colonies such as Venezuela, for instance,where the subsoil as well as other natural resources - mines above all, not trees, of course - belonged to the King of Spain. After independence, the "Libertadores" hurried up to make sure they continued under the control of the new state. Here, there is a tip of the roots of Latin America nomenklatura. However, in the case of Brazil, subsoil etc. continued as private property until the Vargas' Constitution of 1934 when it was confiscated. Since then things have got a lot worse. In the last constitution, 1988, the political nomenklatura added the figure of the need of a "social function" (?) to beatify the rights of private property. That gave origin to the vague notion of productive and non-productivies farms and opened the way to the presently powerful MST (Movement of the Landless) who occupies hundreds of private properties and maintain themselves at government expense, i.e., a new burden for taxpayers. In the current days, the MST exports this new "technology" to the rest of Latin America (Currently, Brazil also exports new kinds of evangelical sects to these countries including the United States in this case.). The Department of Labor together with the Federal Police set up new teams to look for the existence of "slave labor" in the field. They have begun a new crusade to ban this new kind of "slavery". The International Labour Organization (ILO) enthusiastically greeted the initiative and made estimates about the number of "slave workers" in Brazil. Probably, since it was a long time ago - 1948 , they have forgotten that Brazil, due to its Fascist legislation, did not sign their Convention 87 that asks for freedom of association. In fact, I do not know what some international organizations are good for besides the creation of sinecures for international bureaucrats and members of Latin American and African nomenklaturas. This tropical crusade has resulted in human tragedies. Senator Joao Ribeiro told the country the sorrow he felt about his farmer friend Joao Rosa who went into depression after the Department of Labor and Federal Police had fined him for hiring "slave labor". His crime was to hire 17 people in a free market way, not using the Fascist letter of labor, just as I did in 1982/3. The case came up in the local press and feeling he had been humiliated he committed suicide saying his life did not make sense anymore. In Unai, a small town not far from Brasilia and the most important country beans producer, three labor officers and their driver were killed. The purpose of the ambush would be to get one of the officers who was considered the most strict one, but the others were also killed for "file burning" as it is usually said here. The main suspect was an association of farmers, and the killers ordinary hired assassins, whose supply is plentiful here. What about the economic consequences of this new imbroglio in labor relations in Brazil? First of all, the huge fines that have been applied to farmers and agricultural companies have led to a lethal strike to their economic life, or, perhaps in some cases to total ruin. In addition, an English newspaper,The Daily Telegraph, accused Brazil of subsiding beef export through "slave labor"! What does the reporter know about beef cost structure in extensive lands holdings? Labor is less than 5% of the cost. The two American congressmen possibly coming to Brazil are concerned about slave labor used in the production of charcoal by very small companies that is used in the production of pig iron, the main input in the later-stage production of steel that Toyota and General Motor have been buying from Brazil. Thus, the investigation is quite rigorous looking at the whole production chain, however, the main practical consequence is more unemployment and poverty. |
