During the darkest years of the Brazilian military dictatorshipwhen the regime promoted at all costs the colonization of the Amazon under the flag of development, one of the largest multinationals on the planet expanded its automobile empire in Latin America. At the same time, he directed an ambitious livestock project deep in the jungle.
That multinational was Volkswagen, and in 2019 a priest He revealed a tragedy.
Awakening from a forgotten memory. The story was told this week The Washington Post In an extensive report. When in 2019 the priest and academic Ricardo Rezende Figueira read that Volkswagen Brazil was willing to Recognize and repair His complicity with the Brazilian military dictatorship for the political persecution of workers in factories, felt something missing.
There was no mention of Vale do rio crystallinethe huge livestock farm of the company in the Amazonian jungle. That land of more than 140,000 hectares, where hundreds of workers were recruited under deceptionisolated, indebted, mistreated, tortured and forced to work in degrading conditions for more than a decade, it seemed to have been History erased.
There are evidence. But Rezende, who in the 80s documented those abuses as part of his work with the Pastoral Commission of the Earthstill It kept the evidence: More than a thousand pages of testimonies, notarial statements, police reports and press clippings accumulated in your personal archive.
After reading the news, the priest telephone to prosecutor Rafael Garciaspecialist in slave work at the Ministry of Labor. That call would resurrect one of the darker chapters of corporate advance in the Amazon.
A jungle turned into hell. The documents that he rebounded delivered to the authorities offered a devastating radiography. Between 1974 and 1986, in full military dictatorship, Volkswagen Brazil (then the largest automotive in Latin America) promoted a Titanic livestock project With regime support: disassemble the jungle in Pará To raise 100,000 cattle, as part of a corporate ideal that the world not only needed cars, but also meat.
To do this hired a subsidiaryVale do rio crystalline SA, whose leaders included the president of Volkswagen Brazil himself, Wolfgang Sauer. The company turned to the sadly famous cats (Informal recruiters) who promised good salaries to poor peasants, advanced money and transferred them in trucks to the jungle’s heart.
Images of the Brazilian parliamentary delegation during his visit to the farm in 1983
A prison. Once there, the workers were locked in camps remote, forced to work under threat of armswithout medical attention, drinking contaminated water, exposed to malaria, living under plastics and indebted by food and medicines.
Not just that. His movements were constantly monitored by armed inspectors. Thus, trying to escape was to face punishment, the disappearance or death.
The file that challenged oblivion. For years, Rezende collected Men’s testimonies They escaped from that hell. The records talked about beatings, broken teeth, bare men in the jungle, bodies thrown in cavernseven workers Burned alive.
A young man, Valdeci Alves Fumeiro, story Having spent seven years caught in the hacienda, sewn without anesthesia after a fall and forced to continue working.
Volkswagen’s announcement in 1977 in Brazil urged other companies to become “neighbors” of their farm in the Amazon
Silence. But despite multiple complaints, intelligence reports and official statements that recognized the existence of slave work on the property, never presented A single position penal.
I remembered the post that the structure of complicity between companies, state and repressive force guaranteed impunity for decades. Rezee, however, persisted in his conviction: the file had to survive time, because one day he would return to light. And so it was. The prosecutor Garcia, when reviewing the documents, recognized in them the basis for an unprecedented judicial action.
A rebuilt truth. The Prosecutor’s Office initiated a national search to locate the workers mentioned by Rezende. The effort fell to the young researcher Matheus Faustinowho toured remote communities for months until he found 14 of the 69 identified. Some, such as Francisco Rezende de Souza, had been devastated by experience: alcoholism, isolation, inability to reintegrate into life.
Others, such as the Batista de Souza brothers, were separated and sold by cats even after Volkswagen will leave the project. One of them, Juldemar, was silent for life.
Testimonies When in 2023 The trial began in a Federal Labor Court in Redenção, several of these men testified for the first time. “They sold us”, One said. “We slept under plastics,” I commented another. “Everyone was armed, we had to work.” Rezende also went up to the podium. He recalled the complaints since 1977, Volkswagen’s complicity for omission, and the systematic inaction of the State.
What does the company say. For its part, Volkswagen Brazil He has flatly denied The accusations. He alleges that his role was merely the shareholder of a company that subcontracted others, and that at the time It did not detect irregularities. In his judicial writings, he argues that it is the government who must hold recruiters and not hold the company.
But prosecutors argue that Volkswagen’s subsidiary It was an integral part of the parent company, and that the abuses were systematic and known. Internal documents They show that Volkswagen even organized visits to deny the complaints, while avoiding allowing inspections in the camps. According to the postthe most cynical statement came from the Swiss director of the ranch, Friedrich Brüggerwho in one Interview in 2017 He blamed the workers of his debt and justified the violence of cats as necessary to maintain order: “The Brazilian is a bad person,” declared.
The company in Germany has kept silence.
Fight for memory. Today, The judicial casewhich requires compensation for 30 million dollarsmarks the first time that the Brazilian State tries to legally hold A multinational by slavery Modern in the Amazon. But for Rezende, which exceeds 70 years and coordinates a Chair of Human Rights in Rio de Janeiro, it is not just a remuneration justice. It is a battle against oblivion.
He underlined In the newspaper That each folder in his office tells an exploitation story, and almost none has had legal consequences. He Volkswagen case It is just a start. The priest knows that the more than a thousand pages that retain are incomplete. They only contain the stories of those who managed to flee, and of the few who dared to speak. What happened to the men who never returned?
Rezende Zanaja the story With a dream: Back to the hills of Santana Do Araguaia to finish what began.
Image | RafaelSantiagomachadoMPT, VEJA
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