Trabalho escravo contemporâneo na cafeicultura da mesorregião Sul/Sudoeste de Minas: entre a lei e a realidade

Abstract

Contemporary slave labor can be found in different Brazilian employment activities, lasting for years without punishment. In the coffee growing of the South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais, contemporary slave labor benefits many farmers at the expense of the exploitation of migrant workers and the region itself, known as coffee catchers. This research aimed to understand the incidences of contemporary slave labor in coffee plantations in the South/Southwest mesoregion of Minas Gerais and the ways in which the State and other social movements act in the face of this mode of exploitation. For the development of the academic study, in addition to the bibliographic review on the subject and documental analysis of secondary data, interviews were also conducted with the coordinator of ADERE-MG (Articulation of Rural Employees of the State of Minas Gerais), with a representative of the Public Ministry of Labor of Varginha - MG, with a fiscal auditor of the Regional Labor Secretariat of Poços de Caldas - MG and with an advisor to the Media Organization Conectas Human Rights. The study showed that the rescued workers are migrants from northern Paraná, Northern Minas Gerais and some states in northeastern Brazil. These victims are often subjected to extremely precarious and unhealthy living and working conditions in medium and small rural properties in the region, in which their owners believe in the slowness of justice and impunity, repeat the crime every crop. With the Covid -19 pandemic, the situation has become even more complex, considering the non-compliance of sanitary measures to control the disease in coffee trees and the intensification of the devaluation of the work of the harvesters, further encouraging informal work and contemporary slavery in this employment sector.