Brasília - Two teams from the Special Mobile Inspection Group of the Ministry of Labor and Employment freed 90 workers this week who were living in slave-like conditions. In the Airport Ranch, in the municipality of Sinop, in the state of Mato Grosso, 53 persons were discovered living in subhuman conditions. Three of them were children digging up roots. The workers who were freed were living in miserable housing, with bad food and without signed working papers. Three weapons were also found in the locale.

In the Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception ranch, in the municipality of Formoso do Rio Preto, 37 workers were also freed, two of them minors under 18 years of age. Everything they consumed was bought on the ranch, where the prices were higher than normal, which charaterizes a debt cycle among the workers..

The supervisor of the Federal Police, Pablo Camargo Nezzedimi, brought a suit accusing the owners of the ranches of reducing the workers' conditions to slavery, forming a gang, and false recruitment of labor.

Agência Brasil
Translator: David Silberstein
12/16/2004