Sunday April 02, 2023 | 7:06 p.m.
Four Argentines who worked in slave-like conditions were rescued this weekend in southern Brazil. One of the victims, the son of one of the workers, is a minor. The newspaper OGlobo reported it.
The group was rescued on Saturday in the Nova Petrópolis region, 90 kilometers from Porto Alegre, in the south of the country, on the border with Argentina, by agents of the Federal Police.
How was the operation that led to the rescue of four Argentines who worked in conditions of slavery in southern Brazil
According to the newspaper, the investigation began when the Military Brigade received complaints about a group of workers abandoned by their employers on a rural property without resources or food.
Then federal police, military and prosecutors from the Ministry of Labor and Employment went to the property. There they found four people living in a makeshift camp and in unsanitary conditions. According to the report, they lacked drinking water, toilets and electricity.
The police arrested a man responsible for the workers.
The suspect was taken to the Federal Police headquarters in Caxías do Sul accused of reduction to servitude. He will be transferred to the Penitentiary System and made available to the Federal Justice.
Who are the Argentines rescued in southern Brazil?
The regional manager of the Ministry of Labor and Employment, Vanius Corte, told Hora Zero in Porto Alegre that two of the workers arrived in the area last August and another two on March 1 of this year. According to him he said, they never received a salary. They had promised to pay him at the end of his work. They all worked cutting eucalyptus trees.
The rescued minor is 14 years old, according to the Gaúcho newspaper.
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, filed a complaint with the Military Police of the municipality of Bom Principe. There they told that they had been in a wooded area of Nova Petrópolis since August 2022, hired to cut down trees.
According to what they stated, on March 31 they complained to their employer about the working conditions and then they were transferred and abandoned to their fate. In addition, they denounced that they received death threats if they notified the police. The other workers, a man and his 14-year-old son, were found in the camp.
None of the four had documents and had entered Brazil illegally. The identity of the four workers was not disclosed.
