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"Despite the clammy heat, I feel a cold shiver down my
back as I sense something of Albertino's pain and terror. Lured
into the jungle by false promises, treated with casual brutality,
he was worked to the limits of endurance, forcibly held prisoner,
and discarded as one might stamp on a cockroach."
From Trapped: Modern-day slavery in the Brazilian
Amazon
Slavery is alive and well in the 21st century -- globally, the illegal
trade in humans is surpassed only by that in drugs and arms. Deep
in the Brazilian Amazon, thousands of impoverished men are trapped
in a system of debt bondage, lured away from small villages in the
interior and squalid city slums to work on huge ranches with promises
of a decent wage. But on arrival
they are presented with a bill for their transportation, and so
begins a vicious cycle of deceit
and brutality.
Binka Le Breton first encountered slavery while investigating the
murder of a Catholic priest who worked on land reform issues. Since
then she has made repeated journeys into remote areas of the Amazon
where even Brazilians -- and few women -- dare to set foot. Aided
by
the Pastoral Land Commission (CPT in Portuguese), an organisation
that works to help freed slaves, she interviewed and secretly recorded
conversations with migrant workers. Her
work has been part of an effort that has succeeded in securing a
commitment to end slavery
by Brazil's new government, announced in March 2003 by President
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula).
Trapped is that rare book: vividly-written reportage by
a tenacious writer on a practice that has implications for us all.
It is also an impassioned call to put an end to an underworld many
of us would prefer to ignore. "If you and I are to call ourselves
human beings," writes Le Breton, "we must pledge ourselves
to wipe slavery from the earth."
About the Author: Born in Wiltshire, England, Binka Le Breton
was for 15 years a concert pianist (her specialities were Brahms,
Beethoven and Chopin), touring internationally. Marriage and her
husband's work took her to live in Kenya, Indonesia, India, the
United States and Brazil -- where Binka now lives. She and her husband
run an experimental rainforest farm, together with the Iracambi
Rainforest Conservation and Research Center (www.iracambi.com)
which is visited by foreign researchers and hundreds of Brazilian
schoolchildren alike.
Asked why she took up the cause of poor, usually illiterate workers
at such personal risk, she says: "I always felt that, as
a European and an educated person, I was protected from being a
victim. The people I met in the Amazon had no protection. They live
in a land without law, and this is what I've investigated: how do
you live in a land without law?"
Le Breton is also the author of Voices of the Amazon (Kumarian
Press, USA, 1993), and
A Land to Die For (Clarity Press, USA, 1997). Trapped
first came out in Portuguese and is being published in German, Italian
and French.
Binka Le Breton is an articulate and impassioned speaker. She will
be in the UK from the 19 to 25 May and is available for interview.
Trapped: Modern-day slavery in the Brazilian Amazon (£13.99)
is published by Latin America Bureau on 24 April 2003.
A launch will be held on 22 May at Friends House, 173 Euston
Road, with the author and CPT activist Xavier Plassat in attendance.
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