In this special international episode, we get the chance to talk to folks in Brazil about the farmworkers who are being trapped in slave-like conditions, and about a truly radical new government program that is trying to break the cycle of enslavement and exploitation. As Vitor Filgueiras, Professor of Economics at the Federal University of Bahia, writes, “Between 1995 and mid-2020, more than 55,000 workers were removed from conditions analogous to slavery by the Brazilian State, without any indication that there has been a reduction in this type of criminal exploitation of labour in the country. On the contrary, many workers are repeated victims of extreme exploitation.” As we discuss with Filgueiras himself in the second half of this episode, there have been numerous past efforts to liberate farmworkers from these slave-like conditions, but if workers don’t have other means or opportunities to economically sustain themselves, they are at high risk of falling right back into this exploitative system to make ends meet. And that is why the project “Vida Pós Resgate” (Life After Rescue) was created in 2017 through a partnership between the Federal University of Bahia’s Faculty of Economics and the Federal Labor Prosecution Office for the 23rd Region. The program is designed to take the fines that employers are forced to pay for violating workers rights and use that money to buy land, tools, seed, and other necessities for rescued farmworkers to develop self-sufficient farms that they own and operate themselves. While the program is still in its early stages, if it is successful, it could have wide-ranging implications for working people in Brazil and beyond.

In the first half of this episode, with Vitor Filgueiras translating, we speak with Marcos and John, two farmworkers who were rescued from slave-like conditions and are now among the Life After Rescue program’s first participants. In the second half, we speak with Filgueiras about where this policy came from, what it will take to make it work, and about the fight to return the land and the means of production to the people. Special thanks to Mike Fox for editing assistance.

Additional links/info below…

Vitor Filgueiras, Delta 8.7, “Slave-Like Labour in Brazil and the Vida Pós Resgate Project“Reuters, “Brazil Rescues Hundreds Held in Modern-Day Slave Conditions“Dom Phillips, The Guardian, “‘Fewer People Will Be Freed’: Brazil Accused of Easing Anti-Slavery Rules“Matt Sandy, Al Jazeera, “Heartache and Suffering: Slavery in Brazil” Working PeopleYouTube channel

Permanent links below…

Featured Music…

  • Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme Song

Post-Production: Jules Taylor

Transcript

Maximillian Alvarez:  All right. Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Working People: a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network, produced by Jules Taylor, and made possible by the support of listeners like you. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. So, if you’re hungry for more worker and labor-focused shows like ours, follow the link in the show notes and go check out the other great shows in our network.

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My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and we’ve got a really special, really important, international episode for y’all today. I want to jump straight into our episode today which I am incredibly proud and excited to share with y’all. I got a special opportunity to talk to folks in Brazil about the slave-like conditions that many farm workers have been subjected to there, and about a truly radical new government program that is trying to break the cycle of enslavement and exploitation. As Vitor Filgueiras, professor of Economics at the Federal University of Bahia wrote in a December 2020 article that we’ve linked to in the show notes of this episode, “Between 1995 and mid-2020, more than 55,000 workers were removed from conditions analogous to slavery by the Brazilian State, without any indication that there has been a reduction in this type of criminal exploitation of labor in the country. On the contrary, many workers are repeated victims of extreme exploitation.”

Now, as I discuss with Vitor himself in the second half of this episode, there have been numerous efforts to liberate farm workers from these slave-like conditions. But if workers don’t have other means or opportunities to economically sustain themselves, then they are obviously at high risk of falling right back into this exploitative system to make ends meet for themselves and their families. And that is exactly why the project, Life After Rescue, was created in 2017 through a partnership between the Federal University of Bahia’s Faculty of Economics and the Federal Labor Prosecution Office for the 23rd region in Brazil.

Vitor continues in this article, “To sustainably combat slave labor and allow survivors and their families the ability to resist exploitation, the Life After Rescue Project seeks to facilitate self-sufficient rural production. This production should be implemented, preferably, in survivors’ places of origin. The acquisition of land as well as the purchase of other necessary tools for production and distribution can be carried out using funds from public civil proceedings or the terms of conduct adjustment pertaining to lawsuits or extrajudicial procedures related to inspection activities carried out by the Federal Labor Prosecution Office and the Secretariat of Labour Inspection.”

Now, your eyes may have glossed over that last part, but I want to take a second to underline it in bold red pen because it’s important and radical what this program is proposing to do. What this program is designed to do is take the fines that employers are forced to pay when they break the law when they violate workers’ rights, when they entrap workers in these slave-like conditions, and they get fined for it, they get taken to court. This program is taking that money and using it to buy land, tools, seed, and other necessities for the liberated farm workers to own and operate themselves and to develop that land into self-sufficient farms. That is one hell of a program. If it is successful, imagine what this approach to labor and land policy could look like here in the US or other parts of the world.

So, again, in the second half of this episode, you’ll hear my one-on-one conversation with Vitor Filgueiras about where this policy came from, what it will take to make it work, and why it’s so important that it works. In the first half of the episode, you’ll hear my conversation with Marcos and John: two farm workers who were rescued from slave-like conditions themselves and are now among the Life After Rescue program’s first participants. I got to record that interview with Marcos and John from across the hemisphere, and we were able to do it, thankfully, because Vitor was there with them sitting in this remote community center in rural Bahia using his computer so we could talk, and was translating between English and Portuguese for us.

Now, the audio from that first segment isn’t great, so I apologize for that, but I am sure that you’ll all agree that the very fact that we were able to do this interview at all with Marcos and John after everything they’ve been through is pretty incredible. Without further ado, without any more from me, here are my conversations with Marcos, John, and Vitor about the radical and necessary fight in Brazil to liberate workers from slave-like conditions and to return the land and the means of production to the people.

Well, Marcos, and John, thank you both so much for joining us today on the podcast. I really, really appreciate it.

Vitor Filgueiras:  They thank you, too, for the opportunity.

Maximillian Alvarez:  It’s an honor to get to talk to you guys from so far across the world. And I know that our listeners want to hear more about you and what you’re going through down there in Brazil. I wanted to start by asking if you could introduce yourselves to the listeners here in North America. Tell us about your life, tell us where you came from, and tell us more about the work that you’ve been doing.

Vitor Filgueiras:  He’s saying good morning to the [inaudible]. He’s also said that he’s really happy to be talking to you as well. He’s from the state of Bahia, the name of the city is Conceição Do Coité, northeast of Brazil. He used to work here, in the region. He used to work the warehouse packing and dispatching bottles of different drinks, and then at some point, he was called to go to Rio Grande do Sul, outside the most southern states of Brazil. And he went there.

John is also from here, he’s also from Conceição Do Coité, Bahia, and like Marcos, he grew up in the rural area and he has always worked in the rural area, gathering and working with animals such as goats.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Can I ask if you guys could say a little more about what life is like in these rural areas in Brazil? When you’re born there and you grow up, how do you make a living, and what are the economic prospects like for people like you?

Vitor Filgueiras:  He’s saying that it’s normally a peaceful life, and he works on a daily basis in casual jobs. For example, nowadays, he works helping truck drivers going around the cities in the northeast of Brazil. He says that things are a little tough regarding economic life because there are very few opportunities for work. Normally when you find something it’s a casual job or working on a daily basis in one place, then the other place. There aren’t many corporations. The economic life here is hard.

John says that what Marco said is what happens, indeed. It’s very hard, the opportunities here, and life here is normally tough. There is a main rural product here, it’s a root from Brazil that’s used for different purposes. It’s called sisal. I can translate it using Google here in a second. But the production of sisal does not guarantee good living conditions, quite the opposite. Also, it’s a very dangerous working process, because they use old and unsafe machines to process. It’s a root called sisal.

Maximillian Alvarez:  I want to talk about the conditions on the farms in a second but I also wanted to pause real quick and ask if you guys could say a little bit about life outside of work, and where you come from. Because on this show we try to remind people that workers are not just the jobs we do, we’re human beings with families. So I wanted to ask what you do, where you find joy, and where you find meaning in life outside of work in these conditions.

Vitor Filgueiras:  He likes to play soccer with his kids the rest of the time. Otherwise, they like to play video games at home as well.

He says that during the weekends he likes to go for a swim in the river and to drink a beer as well.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s talk about the situation that rural workers are enduring on these farms because that’s why we’re here. The world needs to understand the slave-like conditions that you and others have had to endure. Can you explain to people who didn’t know that this was happening what the state of things is for farm workers in rural Brazil right now?

Vitor Filgueiras:  He was here in Bahia, northeast of Brazil. He was invited to go to a grape farm in Rio Grande do Sul, South Brazil. When he was invited, they told him they would have good conditions and so on, but when he got there it was completely different. They said that they would have good accommodations and everything would be nice, but the place that they had to stay was terrible, had no aspect, and was dirty.

The place they used as a bathroom wasn’t separated from the other areas. Everything was pretty much in the same place: the place where they had to rest, the place where they had to eat and go to the bathroom. Everything was pretty much in one area. 220 people at the same place. They told them that they had a normal schedule because of time to work and rest, no days off, and so on, but they got there and they had to work all day long from Sunday to Sunday.

They had to wake up at 4:00AM every morning and they had to leave to start working and head to the place at 4:00AM every morning. They were obligated to work from 5:00AM up to 10:00PM every day. They were told that they would be able to rest every Sunday, but then they had to work every day without rest. The food was terrible, was disgusting. Many of his colleagues were beaten there, beaten down. Some of them had their arms broken. Even when they had work-related accidents or any injury, they were forced to work, otherwise they would get beaten.

Everything that Marcos has said is true. They were together there, so he experienced the same thing. There was no privacy, no privacy in the accommodations. They were all living at the same place, all 220 workers were eating at the same place. Everything was dirty. They didn’t have proper [inaudible] so they could take a shower or meet their physical necessities. The food was terrible. They were served rice in rotten conditions. And it was exactly the opposite of what was promised to them.

They could only have something different when their relatives would send money so that they could escape for a while from this accommodation place where they were held and buy something different. Otherwise, they had to eat the stuff. They all had to work. They would be forced to work in every condition, even if the weather was terrible or it was rainy. And we’re talking about the South of Brazil, so the weather is very different from here. It rains a lot, it’s much colder than here.

If one of them tried to get a medical note saying they would need to stay at the accommodation instead of going to work, they were to be beaten up. So they would be forced to work. Even if they managed to meet a public doctor —  In Brazil, you have this free public system — If they were able to attain an appointment and get a note from the doctor saying they had to stay and get healed, they would be beaten up.

Maximillian Alvarez:  My God, this is horrifying to hear. And I’m so heartbroken because I have heard similar stories even here in the US where you have Guatemalans, Mexicans, and migrants from Central America who are living like slaves at the farms where our tomatoes come from. For people who are listening, to get a clearer picture here, can I ask if you guys could say a little more about the people who end up working at these farms and who own these farms? Who are the people who are beating and exploiting you?

Vitor Filgueiras:  Almost all of them are from Bahia, from Retirolândia, this city, and other cities here. Conceição Do Coité, it’s called região Sisaleira because it’s linked to this product that I was talking about, sisal root, and pretty much all of the 220 people are from around here. They are saying that the farms are from big, actually, huge national wine lands. Aurora, Salton, and he is forgetting the other one, but we’re talking about huge players here in Brazil in terms of wine.

There are the main brands, and they are also talking about intermediaries, the contracting, the middle guys, and so on. So the thing is there are three main brands there, corporations, that produce the grapes and make the wine. And they were hired through intermediaries, they were talking about the name of the intermediaries. They were there working on the dispatching of the boxes of grapes, gathering the grapes, loading the trucks, and unloading the boxes with the grapes. They would pick the grapes, then put the grapes in the box, then load the trucks, and then unload at the place that made the wines.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Can I ask a little more about that? Because on this show we talked to workers about the work that they do and the labor that goes into that. Could I ask if you could talk a little bit more about what a typical day on one of these farms looks like and how much you get paid for that?

Vitor Filgueiras:  We had to go to the place to start working at 4:30AM and they had a specific time to stop. They could go, like you said, even up to 10:00PM.

When they got there, there were sign-up contracts that said they would be paid once a month. But after the first month, they said they would only be paid when the service would be finished. They would be paid after picking up all the grapes that they were supposed to, after the season.

So they are saying that the working days were very similar. They would start working at 5:00AM. They would start working on picking up the grapes, then they would fill the boxes, load the boxes, put everything inside the trucks, then go on the trucks through the wine factories and unload the boxes there. Then started the process all over again. On a daily basis, they were doing this from 5:00AM to 10:00PM.

Maximillian Alvarez:  What toll does that take on your body doing that work day after day? Does your back hurt? Do your knees hurt? Are you getting sunburned? I wanted to ask a little more about what doing that work does to you as a person.

Vitor Filgueiras:  All over the body. He says that everything hurts. Everything hurts. He says that they would take their mobiles and their cell phones from them in order to allow them to talk to their families. They couldn’t sit. They could not sit. They would have to stay up all day, so the back hurts a lot. Also the knees. But like he said, he’s stressing here that all their bodies would hurt.

They are saying that this box that they were talking about would be like 70 pounds. Because he’s saying kilos in Brazil, so 30 kilos is like a 70-pound box. So it would hurt a lot. It hurts a lot. They would feel a lot of pain in their backs, and also in their necks. It hurts a lot. He is saying that they worked like machines because everything was hurting. Their ankles also hurt a lot, and they would get to the evaluation points and take a nap. And then 4:00AM, another day, wake up and start all over again.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Man. I’m so sorry that you guys have gone through this. And everyone listening to this I know is sending you nothing but love and solidarity, and we are furious that our fellow workers in Brazil are being treated like this. I want to talk about the efforts to rescue farm workers living in slave-like conditions in Brazil. Because I know there’ve been a number of efforts from the government to try to address this situation, and now there’s a new effort that’s more radical and that is going to try to address where the previous attempts have failed. So can you tell us a little more about these past and current attempts to rescue workers from these slave-like conditions in Brazil?

Vitor Filgueiras:  So in Brazil over the last three decades, there’s been a public policy held out by a group of public institutions such as the Ministry of Labour, the federal policy, and so on, that they investigate and they go around the country working and try to catch people being treated like slaves, people forced to work in slave-like conditions. And this public policy has faced many challenges but it’s pretty stable in terms of working. So we have to admit that this public policy that troubles slave-like conditions is successful at some points in terms of reaching people, catching the situations, and rescuing people from slave-like conditions. The thing is that those people, those workers that are rescued, they haven’t been graded, they haven’t been addressed in terms of what to do afterward.

So the arrest schemes, what’s important is some feedback, otherwise, they keep being treated like that. And they normally are from different parts of the country. So the workers go back home and all the corporations had to pay for them to go back. The workers normally get their payments, everything that the company is obligated to pay, but it’s a temporary solution. There hasn’t been any other assistance that can deliver something for them in terms of going on from a sustainable perspective, in a sustainable point of view. So I was rescued, that’s very important. What now? What I’m going to do with my life? And what the Brazilian government’s trying to do now is a new public policy precisely trying to give alternatives, sustainable alternatives, for those workers.

Maximillian Alvarez:  That’s great context, that makes sense that if you can still rescue people from these slave conditions but they don’t have another job that can sustain them, they might fall right back into another company that treats them like this. And so, for people listening, this new program is attempting to go a step further and not only liberate workers from these conditions but to then provide them with economic support so that they can live their lives, can sustain themselves. And so, Vitor, I wanted to ask if you could ask these guys to say a little bit about what it was like to be able to leave these terrible farms, leave those slave-like conditions, and where things stand now. What do they hope to get out of this program? What is going to need to happen so that these guys can live their lives?

Vitor Filgueiras:  There is data that shows that many of the workers that are rescued are rescued more than once because there isn’t a stable public policy to offer them something that’s sustainable, some alternative. And what you’re trying to do now, talking about the problem is to give the means of production for those workers in a way that they rely on the function of the labor markets in other ways, other terms. In a capitalist society, you don’t need production, you have to sell your workforce. The person, even if they are qualified for some job if the job is not there, they’ll starve to death. So the main issue, the main role of this program is to give the minimum of production for those workers. They can be by themselves without relying on the labor markets. There wasn’t anything like that.

This working group that I was talking about, the federal police, the labor inspections, they got to the accommodation place at 2:00AM and rescued them, and he was so relieved. It was a huge relief for them when the labor inspectors came and federal police came and told them that the situation was terrible and they wouldn’t allow them to keep those conditions, they were relieved.

When his working group, federal police, and the labor inspectors got there, the security guards of the company told all of them to go to the basements to hide so that they wouldn’t see them, but one of them was able to leave the place. And this one worker told them that all the others were inside, hidden. Just one guy. The guy was able to leave the place, told the federal police and the inspector, and because of this guy, he went there and found all the workers in the basement.

Even the police were terrified of the situation that they had just found. The situation was terrible. The police had to bodyguard them from Rio Grande do Sul to Bahia. We’re talking about 2,000 miles. So they came in an airplane from Rio Grande do Sul to São Paulo, guarded by the federal police. Then the federal police arranged a bus to take them from São Paulo up to Bahia.

Maximillian Alvarez:  So where do things stand now, what happens now?

Vitor Filgueiras:  He is expecting that with this project, he won’t have to leave the city anymore or work for bad guys like these. He said that now that they have found the association, they are very keen to be able to work by themselves without lawyers, without anyone telling them what to do. And hopefully with some support from the government through educating them and giving them tools, they’ll be able to live freely by themselves in a nice way, a good life. He is expecting to have a good life and, in turn, enough that he doesn’t need to leave once again. And with this association, they’re seeking and they’re looking forward to crating goats and producing milk and meat.

They are saying that they’re not looking to start working. Right now, they are looking for a farm, a place that the program can buy from the association. And when this place is arranged for the association, they are looking forward to crating the goats, not only for the milk and for the meat, but to produce cheese and yogurt. They’re looking forward to doing this. They really like goat cheese and yogurt. Working together without anyone telling the other what to do, not democratically, without having this is something that we are looking forward to as well.

They are saying that they are very thankful for the program, expecting to start as soon as possible, and thanking you, Max, as well, for the opportunity. It’s really nice talking to you.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Brothers, the pleasure was really all mine. And I wanted to say again that all of us here in the US are with you, and we hope that you get that good life that you deserve.

Vitor Filgueiras:  He said the same to you guys, and he is really, really happy for each of you. And like we say in Brazil, [speaking Brazilian Portuguese]. It’s like, “We’re together.” That’s what he’s saying. Together.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Perfect. That was a great spot to end on, guys.

[Pause]

Vitor Filgueiras:  Hello, my name is Vitor Filgueiras, and I used to be a labor inspector at the Ministry of Labour in Brazil. Now I’m a professor at the Federal University of Bahia, a professor of economics. I’m working on some projects, and one of them is called Vida Pos-Resgate, or in English, Life After the Rescue.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell yeah. Well Vitor, thanks again so much for joining me, brother, from across the hemisphere. Really appreciate it. And listeners just heard the conversation that we recorded with these two incredible guys that you’re working with who were part of this revolutionary program that we’re here talking about today. And I wanted to make sure, before we ended this episode, that we gave listeners a chance to hear a little more about the deeper context here and know what they need to know about what makes this current program so different, what challenges lie ahead, and where the program itself came from.

You’re the perfect guy to talk to about this, so I appreciate you hopping back on another recording with me. I wanted to start there. We talked a little bit about this in the previous conversation that listeners just heard, but I was wondering if you could say a little more about the background here. Because this is not a new problem, workers getting trapped in slave-like conditions, and there have been multiple attempts by the state government to try to address that problem. I was wondering if you could fill in, for listeners here in North America, some of that history. Tell us about how bad this problem is, how widespread it is, and what attempts have been made in the past to address the scourge of workers being trapped in slave-like conditions in Brazil.

Vitor Filgueiras:  Sure. So, the first thing that we have to keep in mind is that this problem, which means very bad conditions for workers and very harsh conditions similar to slavery, is not an issue that’s particularly from Brazil. Any capitalist society can face and may face this issue if there is no protective regulation. This week I’m talking about labor law, I’m talking about labor movements, and so on. Because of the disparity between labor and capital, if there is no protective regulation, very bad situations can be seen, and tend to be seen, tend to be registered in the workers’ lives. That’s one main thing that I need to stress. So it’s a potential situation for any capitalist society.

Having said that, in Brazil particularly, we have this terrible background of slavery, a lot of state-based slavery. Our capitalism was based on slavery for over three centuries. So because of that, we have a culture of exploitation that’s maybe even deeper than other countries. But it’s not only the rural areas. This program is focusing on the rural areas but it’s a widespread problem. Like I said, if there is no protective regulation from the states or if the labor movement is not strong enough, capitalism can do whatever it will, and it’s not about money. It’s not about being bad or being good, it’s part of the process of seeking profits. There’s a reason in itself.

But anyhow, going outside of Brazil, we had this very traditional, weak protective regulation by the states, and very bad situations which we call slave-like conditions are spread that it’s very hard to estimate how many people are being subject to this exploitation. But what I want to say is that for the last almost-three decades, there has been a state-based group that is supposed to tackle the problem, making inspections in the fields and the corporations, taking the case to the criminal courts, to the labor courts, and trying to make this practice limit people in slave-like conditions; something that’s not attractive to the corporations. This group and this state-based public policy of trying to impose fines, eventually taking lawyers to jail, have faced challenges but also have been doing some important work in terms of regulating the demands of the labor force and regulating the employer.

But there wasn’t any program to give alternatives to workers. That’s the main point. Workers have been rescued from slave-like conditions since the beginning of the ’90s in Brazil. But after their rescue, after they were released from the slave-like conditions, there wasn’t a program to address the problem in terms of, so you are free now, what are you going to do? What are you going to do with your life? So the Vida Pós Resgate program that we announced here is trying to address this problem of the alternative for workers who have faced slave-like conditions and need an alternative for their lives.

Maximillian Alvarez:  This is such an important development that countries around the world can learn from, especially the US, because the progression here is, like you said, over three decades there have been efforts by the state to intervene in this terrible problem of workers being trapped in slave-like conditions. So the first step is to liberate people who were trapped in that situation, which has happened. Like you said, a lot of people have been rescued. We talked to those guys in the previous conversation about how they were rescued, and it was a terrifying story. That’s the first step, and that’s an important step, of course. But then like you said, if workers don’t have another option to make a living after that, a lot of them are going to get trapped again in a similar situation.

I know that one of the steps that was taken after that was to try to give workers some professional training and try to help them improve their stock on the labor market, and that didn’t work. That wasn’t sufficient enough either. And this is why the program that we’re here to talk about today is so vital and revolutionary because then the next step was, okay, we need to provide material resources for these workers who have been liberated from slave-like conditions so that they can build their own self-sustaining farm and can live and work off the land. In fact, we’re going to take the fines from the employers who are trapping these workers, we’re going to take the money that we’re taking from them and give it back to the workers. That’s incredible. Do I have that right? Is that the progression here?

Vitor Filgueiras:  Yeah, Max. Perfect. During the last 15 years, there were some attempts, and there were people who honestly were trying to address the whole rescue problem. In other words, what should we do to help people that were rescued? These attempts were linked to the so-called qualification of the workers. So if we qualify them, if they have some training, they can go back to the labor market, and everything is going to be all right. Once again, it’s not a specific situation in Brazil, it’s a neoliberal approach to the problem. All over the world, there is the psychological concept that if you train the workers, they will get jobs in the labor markets like —

Maximillian Alvarez:  Sorry to interrupt, but there’s an annoying… And it pisses me off but it’s almost become a joke here in the US because one of the areas where we see this happen is in the parts of the country that used to employ a lot of people in the coal mining industry. And so obviously as the world transitions away from coal energy, a lot of these areas in Kentucky and West Virginia, they don’t have those jobs anymore for people. And so it’s been a question for decades of, what do we do with the people who are living here? And the neoliberal response is like, oh, why don’t we train these 50-year-old coal miners to code on their computers so that they can get different jobs? And it’s like, that’s a nice idea, but that’s going to work for five people. That’s not a systemic solution to the problem.

Vitor Filgueiras:  — Yeah, exactly. And it lies on a theoretical point of view, it’s the neoclassical economy. It’s not something new, it’s something very old. Suppose that if workers are trained enough, the jobs will appear. So it’s all on the workers, that’s the main issue. It’s like if the supply of labor force, the workers themselves, are prepared, they will find some job. And it’s unlikely because there is a social monopoly from the capital to decide if the job will exist or not. The investment creates jobs. If there is no investment by the companies or by the states, there is no job, no matter how qualified or how trained the person is. So in this case, in Brazil, there were some attempts in some states because it’s been very comprehensive. It was specific states, and they made some training, and so on.

Actually, Max, we researched here at the University of Bahia to see, to an extent, whether labor markets were in a good situation. When the economy was growing, people who were trained were getting jobs, and people who weren’t trained were getting jobs as well. Even with the crisis in 2015, everybody was unemployed: both people who weren’t trained and people who were trained, so something we expected. I want to stress that some people who were involved had good motives. They were honestly trying to do something. It’s important to try and work this but it’s not the main issue that we’ll create the jobs. It has been an ideological tool in the hands of corporations and neoliberal ideologues all over the world. I’m trying to be more direct here. Also, considering these events we tried to solve the problems of what are these people going to do now after their rescue and we saw that it wasn’t working, we developed this idea that you already perfectly presented.

So the idea is very simple. It’s to say, look, why are these people facing such bad conditions? It’s simple: because they don’t have the means of production to carry on with their lives, to have these things, amounts of material, and sources to live. Because they don’t have the means of production, they have to sell their labor force on the labor markets. The labor market is about who has more power or who has the power inside by definition of the corporations. In other words, if you send back people to the labor markets, even if they get a job, they can face very hard situations again. It is very bad conditions if the labor market is not well-regulated. If you give them an opportunity to work by themselves through all the means of production, to organize themselves in a democratic way without bosses, the employees, without any hierarchy between people, may not need to go to the liberal markets anymore.

So the main point of this program is to take people out of the labor markets. It’s to give the opportunity for them to organize themselves, to produce in a democratic way, and to emancipate themselves from the liberal markets. So what we do, it’s very simple, in theory. It’s very complex to implement but as you get the fines that corporations pay for — In labor courts when they are sued they have to pay fines and reverse these fines for rural associations to produce the healthy food in the original places that the workers come from — Most of the workers rescued here in Brazil, they go from one place or another. They have some local migration.

Not only that, but normally they go from the northeast of Brazil to the south of Brazil, so the idea is to get this money from the fines the corporations have to pay and to give not to the workers directly, but to arrange the facilities to help them to build rural associations to produce healthy foods in the cities that they come from. From now on, we have dozens of different variables for organizing to make it work. But the main point is to let the workers have the means of production, let the workers organize themselves in a democratic way, and to produce specifically healthy foods. And I can also explain why the idea is to produce healthy food.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Let’s talk about that a little more. I want to ask about how you got involved in all of this and what it’s been like for you to see this program coming into existence. Because it is a radical program and it does say something about a different approach to the question of governance, like what is a state supposed to do? How is it supposed to serve the people? Like we were saying, in our respective countries we’ve been dominated by this neoliberal bullshit for so long that we’ve forgotten that there are other ways to organize society. There are other ways that the state can serve the people.

And what is happening over there reminds me of things in the 20th century, like the New Deal here in the US, Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico, land reforms, and the expropriation of the oil industry in the 1930s. That was radical stuff but it’s like you guys are hearkening back to that. So I wanted to ask a little more about how you got involved in all of this, what this program says about the current approach to government in Brazil, and what you think other countries can learn from that.

Vitor Filgueiras:  Yes, Max. It’s almost sensed in Brazil, it’s one of our main historical problems. For our society, it’s precisely because Brazil has never faced land reform or agrarian reform. If it’s more specific. How do you normally say it in the US? Is it land reform or agrarian reform?

Maximillian Alvarez:  It depends if you’re in a university or outside of a university, but they very much mean the same thing.

Vitor Filgueiras:  Okay. Anyway, there is a huge, huge concentration of land in Brazil in the hands of very, very few people, and it explains a lot of bad things that have always happened in Brazil. Regarding slave-like conditions specifically, there are many studies also coming from the state saying that one of the main reasons that explain why slave-like conditions are still very common in Brazil is because there has never been land reform. Of course, there have been many attempts in many different governments and many different contexts, but it never happens in very specific situations, not a comprehensive approach. To try to explain how it happens and how it’s working, I was a labor inspector from the Ministry of Labour, so I used to carry out these rescues.

I had been all over Brazil doing it and it was clear, not only visually, while I was lively seeing the stuff happening, but also the data shows that many workers are submitted to slave-like conditions, many times the same workers. So as a labor inspector and as a labor person as well, I was very disturbed with the situation. I was always thinking about how we could do something different. It was very obvious that land reform was something that must be done but it’s very hard for many reasons. The main thing is political, regarding law, regarding bureaucracy. The idea of the Vida Pós Resgate, this program that we’re talking about, strictly came from very specific spots where I was. Then I led the labor inspection, and I started to be a professor of economics. I had the idea to make a partnership with the Public Ministry of Labour. It’s an institution here that is public attorneys regarding labor law, so when they sue companies, they take the case to the court, and they can direct the resources and the science. And I was like, well, we could use this money to benefit for this, to make some land reform.

The main point here, Max, is that Vida Pós Resgate started out trying, in the short term, land reform. That was the idea, that we’ll take the money from the corporations to facilitate, to make it feasible, the organization of workers to hand them enough productions especially, but also the lands. We made an agreement between the public Ministry of Labour and the Federal University of Bahia where we would first research the existing public policies that addressed labor conditions and then try to organize and propose this program. So that’s what we did. We took like four or five years to do this research. And during this research, we started to develop this program and this idea of how it would work. Everybody can imagine how many variables went into this program and research. We started in 2021, two years ago.

The first two different partnerships were in cities in Brazil with the University of Bahia and the public Ministry of Labour. We always had to make a partnership with the local mayor because many specific situations in the local areas have to be carried out by public authority, the municipal, or the local authorities. So we got the fines from companies in the labor parts — These two different cities here in Bahia — And the two first projects started almost two years ago. Now we have five different projects. The idea is at some point, Max, to try to make the program something that will address every situation of slave-like conditions. For every rescue we plan, at some point, to propose to the workers — If they are interested, if they have backgrounds that can relate to this kind of public policy — A comprehensive program that will give them opportunities for organizing workers in rural associations in every rescue.

It’s not happening yet. Today we have five projects. But that’s our plan. The five projects that we are carrying out right now in this program, in five different cities, are giving us loads of sources and materials to think about in terms of the difficulties or the problems. I’m talking about the relationship between the workers, bureaucracies, and training. But here, Max, we’re talking about training for themselves. They have been trained to work for themselves, not to work with other people. And while the program is being carried out we are learning a lot to try to make it more comprehensive. That’s the main idea.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Well, let’s talk about that real quick because I know you’re super busy and I can’t keep you for much longer, but I wanted to end on that note. Because like you said, the concept is simple: We’re going to sue these exploitative employers in labor court, we’re going to take those fines, and we’re going to redirect that money to help the workers who have been freed from these slave-like conditions to buy their own land, to have the tools or training that they need to cultivate that land, to produce healthier food for their local economies and themselves. That’s a beautiful and simple concept, but making it happen is the difficult part, and we’re very much in the early infant stages of that. And I wanted to ask if you could say a little more about the challenges that y’all face in terms of making that program a broad reality, but also the hopeful things, the hopeful signs that you’re seeing, and where you think things will go from here? We should do another one of these episodes in a year and talk about how it’s going. But what path lies ahead? What struggles lie ahead to make this program successful in the coming months and years?

Vitor Filgueiras:  Perfect. First I have to try to illustrate in a very superficial way how the program works so that you can have a more concrete idea. We talk to the workers that were we rescued to see if they are interested in going back home, to work there, to live in their homelands, if they have a rural background, what they produce there, how the economy is built there, how the climates, the ecosystem, environment’s ecosystem is there. You know? Try to see if it’s feasible to carry it out, we’re on the case; So if we think that it’s feasible, that we can do it.

The second part of the program is to make as many meetings as possible to know the workers better and to make them know the program, the proposition, and the proposal for what’s going to help them. If everything goes well, we help them to organize a rural association with two main assumptions. There are two assumptions or obligations that cannot be developed in this program: They cannot use wage work. They ought to be part of the association. They cannot use wage work between them or bring somebody from outside to work as an employee. Everyone has to be at the same level in the association. And second, they cannot use any chemical products like Monsanto and so on. We call it Brazil poisons, we cannot use any poisons. It has to be sustainable, at least an organic approach. But if it’s feasible, try to go for our approach. So the idea is to be sustainable from a social point of view, a democratic way of work, and also an environmental point of view and low use of poisons in this store.

So the association is created and many different things start to be done at the same time, simultaneously. The first is to get the money. All the money from the fines goes to the association. It’s not for the individual, it’s for the association. The very basic thing here is to buy lands, which is a very hard task because most of the lands in Brazil are not legal in terms of the documents that the state considers to be necessary to make it legal. So it’s very hard to buy a legal farm in Brazil. In the countryside, it’s very, very high. So one of the main difficulties of the program is to buy land. And we have done it. We have done it. In many situations, the workers or their families have the lands, but these lands are very small and they need capital if you wish to be productive. In some cases, what we’re doing is investing in equipment, facilities, machinery, everything needed in the lands for this work, these people, these workers.

In the beginning, we had two very different situations. In one situation, we buy the land and deliver everything that is needed for that land that we bought: seeds, machinery, facilities — Whatever is needed — Products and so on for the production to be carried out. In other situations, we make the lands that were already owned by the workers to be productive. So we used the money to capitalize. I don’t know if it’s the right word to say in English, but to make these lands productive enough so that they can use their own lands to make a decent wage. We’re talking about getting the money and getting the lands or using the lands owned by them. And we have to prepare these workers to work for themselves. Something also interesting, I’m pretty sure in the US there is also this ideological [inaudible] of entrepreneurship. Am I wrong? I’m pretty sure it’s out for everyone.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Oh, we’ve got that here.

Vitor Filgueiras:  Yeah. Everyone can be a boss, everyone can be rich. It depends on your efforts and your view. And it’s completely false because of two very basic reasons: First, you can only make a living — I’m not talking about being rich — You can only make a living if you have the means of production. This system matures to make that living. You cannot take it from nowhere, this means of production. And second, what makes capitalism very productive in terms of improving the productive forces, if you will, is that capitalism functions through collective work. It’s wage work but it’s collective work. As long as one by one, each one works by optimizing and not dialoguing with each other. Exactly the contrary. The contracts can be automated and can be individual.

The formal way that corporations are organized, they seem to be fragmented, but what makes capitalism productive and the labor improve is the cost. The production is collective by definition. The centralization of capital is one very strong example of what I’m seeing. But it’s very obvious that we are talking about $300 million companies. We’re talking about high-definition economies that are strong where they have collective arrangements. Anyway, what Vida Pós Resgate is trying to do about it is to make this demagogue narrative, this theological narrative of future entrepreneurship, something real. Let’s use this narrative against them and say, okay, let’s promote the entrepreneurship of these workers. Let’s give them land, let’s give them capital, let’s give them the machines and everything they need to be entrepreneurs. That’s the real idea of the program.

So part of this challenge, if I can say this way, is to prepare them to be entrepreneurs. Not this individual entrepreneurship, you know, but a collective one. Say, look, you are going to work by yourselves, you’re going to work together. And it’s very hard to do it, as you can imagine. We are talking about people that came from social movements. They’re talking about people who used to live and are living in very difficult situations in a very individualistic society. So it’s hard to make bonds between them, for them to create bonds and to create honest links between them. Normally, they’re thinking about surviving on a daily basis so it’s hard to make them trust themselves and trust the initiative. It’s hard to make them have this idea that I will grow and get things done. It depends on me. Because normally, it doesn’t depend on the person. So there’s a very specific case. It depends on the person. The person, the people, the world, and they still have to be the protagonists of the program.

The program is not going to do everything for the workers. It will facilitate. So a very hard challenge is to prepare them, to help them to assimilate, incorporate the idea that they can do it together and that everyone will benefit if they work together. We try to do this in many different ways by having meetings, trainings, and courses. We try to gather many institutions to prepare them, to talk to them, and it’s very hard. In other words, it’s one of the most challenging aspects of the program. The training also embraces technical training. They’re talking about different stuff. Sometimes, Max, some of them are working with books because of many resources regarding weather, climates, regarding the economic framework of the cities. Others are producing cocoa. So it depends on the city, on the region, and what they will produce.

So the training depends on what’s going to be produced. Then we have many variables regarding what equipment will be used, what preparation, and what input will be needed. Everything has to be added. Otherwise, even if everyone is very engaged, it’s not going to work. Like I said, what the program tries to do is facilitate these organizations and associations to produce healthy food. What’s the idea here, Max? It’s not only this idea of sustainability, this generic stuff that’s normally used by corporations themselves. It’s precisely the opposite.

The idea is to produce healthy food. You can secure healthy food so that they can exist with healthy foods, and that’s a very important aspect of the program. The program starts at the moment of the rescue and it goes back to the moment of the distribution of the products. In Brazil, we have a national public policy that makes public schools buy food for children from small producers and from rural associations. It’s so-called institutional markets. And we are linking the production of these associations to this public policy. So making contracts with the local authorities so the schools can buy food from these associations. It’s very important not only because the children will get healthy food, but also because it can give some income. We won’t rely on open markets and so on to try to sell the products.

On the contrary, having contracts with public local authorities, they can have a regular income. It’s going to be easier to sell, even at these so-called fair trades, and so on. But that’s something that we’re thinking ahead about. And maybe it will still happen, but at least for these institutional markets, we are looking to get it done as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:  Hell, yeah, baby. Well, building a new world out of the ashes of the old is never easy. But I hope in a year when we talk again, this program will be flourishing and more people will be involved in it because it’s so important. And I hope that governments around the region and around the world take notice. I hope people listen to this and are inspired by what y’all are trying to do over there. I’m so grateful that I’ve learned about it and that our incredible friend and mutual comrade, the great Vina Dubal, put us in touch so that we could talk more about this.

So I wanted to thank you again, brother, for talking with me about this, and for setting up the conversation that folks heard at the beginning of this. And like I said, I want to stay on this. I want to check back in and hear how the program’s going. To round us out, any final words that you have for folks listening to this about why this is important, and what you think they should be on the lookout for in the coming year?

Vitor Filgueiras:  Oh, Max, I truly appreciate the opportunity and the space. I’m looking forward to talking to you next year and telling you about the failures and the successes and what has gone well and what hasn’t. I’m sure that it’s going to be interesting. The main point that I want to make here is we try not to [inaudible] things. And one of the main things that seems to be natural in our society is the wage work organization of production. It seems that corporations are the only way that we can organize ourselves to produce our material needs. And it’s not true. It’s just part of the context of humanity.

Some centuries ago it seemed impossible for society to have democratic ways of organizing ourselves. So choosing our leaders, democracy itself was, for many centuries, putting doubts or horizons like it’s impossible to help. Democracy is anarchy. We need to have a king, we need to have a spiritual leader, we need to have someone that tells us what to do. And it’s part of democracy, as everybody knows. The construction of democracy was hard and the main difficulty was to convince people that sharing participation in society’s decisions was something not only possible but something that was good. It was something to be seen, that everybody has to fight for this, and it’s important.

And nowadays, in many parts of the world, people agree that democracy is good. So why not start talking about democracy in the workplace? Because we decide about our leaders in the political arena once every four years, but we spend most of our life working. Why can’t we decide how the work is going to be done? Shouldn’t it be done in a democratic way? With everybody choosing, everybody discussing, debating, and carrying out the production in a democratic way. This project aims to bring those debates. It’s not going to be easy. Democracy was not easy to carry out. It still isn’t easy but it’s the right way to go. We can and we need to impose this idea to debate and incorporate this idea for the workplace as well as for the production of our material needs. That’s what we’re trying to propose and simulate in this program.

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Editor-in-Chief
Ten years ago, I was working 12-hour days as a warehouse temp in Southern California while my family, like millions of others, struggled to stay afloat in the wake of the Great Recession. Eventually, we lost everything, including the house I grew up in. It was in the years that followed, when hope seemed irrevocably lost and help from above seemed impossibly absent, that I realized the life-saving importance of everyday workers coming together, sharing our stories, showing our scars, and reminding one another that we are not alone. Since then, from starting the podcast Working People—where I interview workers about their lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles—to working as Associate Editor at the Chronicle Review and now as Editor-in-Chief at The Real News Network, I have dedicated my life to lifting up the voices and honoring the humanity of our fellow workers.
 
Email: max@therealnews.com
 
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