Trapped in debt bondage

In July 2015, 31-year-old worker Antônio Rocha was freed from a coffee plantation by Brazilian authorities. The inspectors determined that he and his fellow migrant workers were victims of human trafficking who were living under conditions analogous to slavery. Although Rocha had never before in his fourteen years of picking coffee ended up in debt bondage, he had encountered even worse living conditions on other coffee plantations.

On a coffee plantation in southern Minas Gerais state, five workers sit with their backs against the outer wall of their dormitory. They are over 1000 kilometres from their homes. For the last month and a half, they have been picking coffee without contracts or protective equipment, and without receiving pay for their work. They owe money to the plantation owner for the bus ticket that brought them here, and when they arrived, they were told that they would have to buy food on credit until they were paid at the end of the harvest several months later..

Five coffee workers who were just liberated from slavery-like working conditions at a coffee plantation in Southern Minas Gerais. Photo: Maurilo Clareto Costa.

Inspectors from the Brazilian Ministry of Labour and Employment have just finished questioning the five workers, and now they sit and smoke cigarettes in near silence. A lanky man introduces himself as Antônio Rocha. Since he was seventeen, he has been travelling from his home in Bahia to the neighbouring state of Minas Gerais to work every June to August in the coffee harvest. Even though he has worked on many coffee plantations, he has never before encountered a plantation owner who withheld workers’ pay until the end of the harvest.  

“The payment system here is not normal”, he says, explaining that he is paid every two weeks on most other plantations.

No other job prospects

Antônio Rocha is thirty-one years old. When he is not working on coffee plantations, he lives with his parents on a small piece of property where they plant beans and corn to eat. In his home town of Aracatu, Bahia, there is very little work to be had.

“There is no industry and no jobs”, he says.

From time to time, Rocha has other short-term farm jobs. At the end of last year, for example, he worked for two months harvesting corn.  

“The conditions there were much better”, he says, explaining that the workers didn’t have to pay for their transportation to the plantation. They also had lockers where they could keep their personal belongings, and they were given sunglasses and sunscreen to wear.  

Rain through the roof

Rocha has also worked on coffee plantations with better conditions. He remembers one in particular where his employer provided all the necessary safety equipment, and he was given a contract. But that was back in 2001. Since then, he has worked on many coffee plantations where conditions were substandard.

“The living conditions here are not so bad compared to some of the other places I’ve been. Here we’re just a little cramped”, he says. “I’ve lived in many places that were worse, where it was hard to sleep because the raindrops fell right through big holes in the roof”.

Antônio Rocha and the other coffee workers are freed from slavery-like conditions.