Brazil slave ring broken

Press, 30 January 1984, Page 10

Brazil slave ring broken

NZPA-AFP Fortaleza A slave ring that sold peasants to wealthy landowners at 400.000 cruzeiros ($560) a head has been broken in Brazil's northeastern Ceara province by a local militia chief. The slave traders were arrested when Captain Francisco Medeiros stopped a lorry carrying 150 men from Taua in’Ceara to Araguaina. in the central Goias Province, where they were to be sold. Five years of drought in north-east Brazil have led local peasants to welcome any offers of work further south, and the “slavers” are offered 6000 cruzeiros ($8.40) a day plus guaranteed food

and shelter. But when they arrived in their new homes, the peasants were kept under guard, and board and lodging and the cost of transporting them to their new workplace were deducted from the wages, and they found they owed the employer money. One man who escaped said the workers were undernourished and forced to live in huts in the forest. "It is almost impossible to leave, because your debts increase with every day that passes," he said. "In a few days the debt can reach 150,000'cruzeiros ($210), and nobody can afford to pay that.”