MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil: 4 Argentine workers rescued from slavery conditions

The four victims had been promised monetary compensation for cutting down eucalyptus trees

Four Argentines working in slavery conditions were rescued by Brazil's Federal Police Saturday in Nova Petrópolis, 90 kilometers from Porto Alegre, according to an O Globo report which also mentioned that the group had been abandoned by their employers in a rural property without resources or food. Among the victims was a 14-year-old minor. A suspect was arrested.

Federal police, military, and prosecutors from the Ministry of Labor and Employment were deployed. They found four people living in a makeshift camp in unsanitary conditions lacking drinking water, restrooms, and electricity.

The man arrested was taken to the Federal Police headquarters in Caxias do Sul to face charges of reduction to servitude.

Labor Ministry acting spokesman Vanius Corte told Hora Zero that two of the workers arrived in the area last August and two others on March 1 this year. They never received a salary, he said. They had been promised payment at the end of their work cutting eucalyptus trees.

The situation was denounced by two of the workers who said they had been abandoned by their employer, with no money and no place to sleep.

The two complainants, one of them 24 years old and the other 45 years old, made the complaint to the Military Police of the municipality of Bom Principio. There they said that they had been hired to cut down trees in Nova Petrópolis since August 2022.

On March 31, after they complained about their working conditions, they were transferred and abandoned. They also reported that they were threatened with death if they told the police. The other two workers -a man and his 14-year-old son- were found in the camp. All four workers had entered the country illegally and had no ID on them.

Enslaving foreign workers is not new in Brazil. A group of Paraguayans was also rescued last month in Rio de Janeiro

Read also: Enslaved Paraguayan workers freed in Rio de Janeiro