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Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

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Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#141

Post by crote »

petcat wrote: post #18
forinti wrote: post #11

Its a common occurrence for families to take in poor girls to do house work in exchange for food and lodging. And with the insidious nature of Brazilian racism, they will pretend that she is part of the family. They might even take her on vacations (to work, of course). If you grow up with this mentality it might even be hard for you to see the injustice. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Amer…

I was shocked to read how late even several prominent European countries abolished it. Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did.

This isn't very surprising.

The vast majority of slaves went to the New World, so that's where most of its effects were felt. Of the 12.5M people kidnapped from Africa, only ~9000 went to the Old World. It just wasn't as obvious of a problem in Europe itself.

An interesting side-effect of this is that a lot of European countries have two relevant dates: the first being the banning of slave trade, the second being the banning of slavery. For example, the UK prohibited any involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but slavery in the UK itself was only abolished in 1833.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#142

Post by RetroTechie »

fmbb wrote: post #67
throw_m239339 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be shocked how much of our "friends" in MENA still have legal slavery for non citizens. When an employer can legally confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. I have no idea why we in the west consider that normal and look the other way... What am I saying, I know, oil & VC money... Some of them also bring their Filipino, India, Nepali, or African…

> When an employer can confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. This happens in Europe as well. It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.

On a side note: be VERY suspicious if you ever come across a situation, where person identified by a passport, does not keep (more exactly: control) it themselves. This is a big red flag you've encountered some sort of exploitative (and possibly illegal) situation. Please remember!

Quoting from my own passport:

"The bearer of this passport may pass it to a third party only if there is a statutory obligation to do so".

Denying the freedom of an employee to end a work relation with their employer & leave, does not pass that bar.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#143

Post by matheusmoreira »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #7
Razengan wrote: post #3

> Although the family has agreed to compensate her, Maria, who lived in near-total isolation and without contact with her relatives, will remain with her employers What the fuck? Why did the law need the family's "agreement"?? Why is nobody going to jail for imprisoning someone for 55 years??

In Brazil there are so many laws, I heard that nearly 100% of the population treats laws like strongly worded suggestions, at best. Idk how the prosecution system even functions without credibility.

It's the usual "criminalize everyone then selectively enforce when politically convenient" corruption.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#144

Post by amazingamazing »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #116
amazingamazing wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also trivially easy to not end up in involuntary servitude. Stupid people always say nonsense like this as if no person in prison is innocent.

Stupid people also assume there are not exceptions to every rule. But you can't build your systems (or your arguments) around edge cases, because that would be ignoring the vast majority of use cases.

Another stupid comment. What do you think about the death penalty?

If you happen to be the one dying for no reason would you consider that just a trivial unfortunate edge case?

Educate yourself:

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/policy-issues/policy/innocence

Every day I am happy many here are techies and not politicians.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#145

Post by ufmace »

55555 wrote: post #83
t1234s wrote: post #25

I was talking to a doctor who went to medical school in Brazil and said it was normal for upper-middle class people to have a live-in domestic servant. Many of the floorplans for condos or houses include a servants quarters. They were telling me theirs cost around $12 USD a day which is not a bad deal.

The median income in brazil is 10X lower than USA. So $12 a day -> $120 a day. That's similar to what someone in the US at the bottom of the economic ladder might earn. We have the same thing, it's just that Americans want to have servants but don't want to see them, so there's an app barrier between you and the poor. Someone cooks your food, someone else delivers your food, someone cleans your hotel room, but Americ…

Thanks for your perspective. I do wonder if this arrangement is usually not as bad as some people are implying. Though on the other hand, the line between this sort of thing and something that can reasonably be called slavery can be quite fuzzy.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#146

Post by carlosjobim »

diego_moita wrote: post #64
carlosjobim wrote: post #50

"Statistics suggest that Maria was undoubtedly poor and, most likely, Black." That is a new way of reporting news, that journalist Gortázar seems to have invented here. When you don't know anything about the victim, just make something up from "statistics". Where else can we apply this technique? "Maria entered their lives around 1971 — the year Henry Kissinger visited China, John Lennon wrote Imagine, and Mexico hos…

At first I found interesting how you nitpick in irrelevant details while ignoring the bigger picture. The point of the whole article is to use a single case to illustrate a bigger picture that you seem to deliberately oversee: abuse and exploitation of manual and unqualified workers. But, then, I saw your Brazilian name and understood. Brazilian jingoism freaks out when Brazil "looks bad" to the world. It is a very c…

Dear Diego,

Senhor Jobim had to leave hastily for the horse race track, and has asked me to briefly tend to his hacker messages and Kubernetes before I prepare his afternoon coffee.

He regrets that you found his commentary as being picking of the nits, but says that the article itself didn't invite any much broader reflection on the subject matter. He also mentions that no amount of bad publicity could ever make Brazil look worse than their neighbours, meaning Argentina - as he has understood from your hacker name is your home country.

Further, the journalists exploits a crime in her agenda to ignite hatred between the races, instead of focusing on facts or trying to broaden the picture. A bigger picture could for example be that Brazilian law classifies as slavery such crimes as lawmakers and reporters in other countries are afraid to. Which has later been mentioned by other senhores hackers in this thread, for example regarding berry pickers in Sweden and Finland.

He sends you his latest composition, for your enjoyment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGO44D-hMmQ

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#147

Post by sokoloff »

none2585 wrote: post #135
sokoloff wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that the state turns a net profit on prisoners, making more from their labor than the full cost of their incarceration? That seems…unlikely.

Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage.

What’s the financial motivation for the state then?

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#148

Post by juggert8 »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #20
juggert8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selective capitalisation of different races (white cf. Black) is a common dog whistle employed by anti-Whites. Are you sure you want to start using statistical assumptions as "facts" in crime reports? That is going to backfire very badly for your disproportionately black offenders...

You mean like how you wrote "anti-White" and "black"? Ignorance and strong opinions is a bad combination.

Yes, exactly. It's racist when I do it, and it's racist when she does it too.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#149

Post by carlosjobim »

ricardobeat wrote: post #105
55555 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median income in brazil is 10X lower than USA. So $12 a day -> $120 a day. That's similar to what someone in the US at the bottom of the economic ladder might earn. We have the same thing, it's just that Americans want to have servants but don't want to see them, so there's an app barrier between you and the poor. Someone cooks your food, someone else delivers your food, someone cleans your hotel room, but Americ…

This is probably the same line of thought the families involved in the story have had. Yet, the end result is still quite similar to slavery. Why do you suppose the servants stay, instead of living a life of their own? I think you’ll find the answer there.

I'd say certainly not. The key aspect of the story is that the woman entered in service of the family as a very young child. That makes all the difference.

Re: Woman in Brazil enslaved for 55 years by 3 generations of the same family

#150

Post by [deleted] »

runsWphotons wrote: post #74
fmbb wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When an employer can confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. This happens in Europe as well. It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.

This is completely a figment of your imagination.

[deleted]
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