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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Mon May 14, 2018, 09:12 PM May 2018

Child Slavery Refuses to Disappear in Latin America


By Fabiana Frayssinet



A little girl peels manioc to make flour in Acará, in the state of Pará, in the northeast of Brazil's Amazon region. In the
rural sectors of Brazil, it is a deeply-rooted custom for children to help with family farming, on the grounds of passing
on knowledge. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet / IPS

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 14 2018 (IPS) - Child labour has been substantially reduced in Latin America, but 5.7 million children below the legal minimum age are still working and a large proportion of them work in precarious, high-risk conditions or are unpaid, which constitute new forms of slave labour.

For the International Labor Organisation (ILO) child labour includes children working before they reach the minimum legal age or carrying out work that should be prohibited, according to Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, in force since 2000.

The vast majority of these children work in agriculture, but many also work in high-risk sectors such as mining, domestic labour, fireworks manufacturing and fishing.

Three countries in the region, Brazil, Mexico and Paraguay, exemplify child labour, which includes forms of modern-day slavery.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/05/child-slavery-refuses-disappear-latin-america/
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Child Slavery Refuses to Disappear in Latin America (Original Post) Judi Lynn May 2018 OP
Paraguay child slavery: Judi Lynn May 2018 #1
Criadazgo child servitude was very common in Argentina as well - until Peron sandensea May 2018 #3
Mexico child slavery: Judi Lynn May 2018 #2

Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
1. Paraguay child slavery:
Mon May 14, 2018, 09:18 PM
May 2018
In Paraguay, a country of 7.2 million people, the tradition of “criadazgo” goes back to colonial times and persists despite laws that prohibit child labour, lawyer Cecilia Gadea told IPS.

“Very poor families, usually from rural areas, are forced to give their under-age children to relatives or families who are financially better off, who take charge of their upbringing, education and food,” a practice known as “criadazgo”, she explained.

“But it is not for free or out of solidarity, but in exchange for the children carrying out domestic work,” said Gadea, who is doing research on the topic for her master’s thesis at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso).

In Paraguay, the country in South America with the highest poverty rate and one of the 10 most unequal countries in the world, some 47,000 children (2.5 percent of the child population) are in a situation of criadazgo, according to the non-governmental organisation Global Infancia. Of these, 81.6 percent are girls.

“People do not want to accept it, but it is one of the worst forms of work. It is not a solidarity-based action as people try to present it; it is a form of child labour and exploitation. It is also a kind of slavery because children are subjected to carrying out forced tasks not appropriate to their age, they are punished, and many may not even be allowed to leave the house,” said Gadea.


(Taken from original posted article.)

sandensea

(21,529 posts)
3. Criadazgo child servitude was very common in Argentina as well - until Peron
Mon May 14, 2018, 11:14 PM
May 2018

Which is one of the reasons why landed elites there hate Perón - and Peronists (particuarly left-wing Peronists) - to this day.

Of course, the criadazgo system was probably the most benign of the abuses endured by most rural workers in Argentina until the late 1940s (and over 25% of the labor force was agricultural at the time).

While many criadas were raped, forced to give landowners' sons their "first time," and in other ways humiliated, many others were in fact treated like family (depending on the employer).

But the peons themselves weren't as lucky.

Payment in near-worthless scrip, slavery conditions, crippling work, rampant child labor, sub-human housing, disease, beatings, and disappearances were the norm until Perón's Peon Statutes.

This - as well as massive urban conventillo poverty - was the dark side of the "rich" Argentina so often touted in the early 20th century.

Of course, enforcement of the Peon Statutes has been a challenge, given that most large landowners still resent labor laws (many use Bolivian and Paraguayan labor to prevent complaints).

Rural labor law violations in Argentina are no doubt getting worse again, seeing as Macri's own Ag Minister, Luis Etchevehere, has been repeatedly charged with slave labor (as well as tax evasion and money laundering).

Etchevehere's own sister came out against his appointment last year.

Thank you, Judi, for posting this look at Latin America's ongoing problem with peonage and slavery - 1.3 million people at least, plus 11 million child laborers.



Argentina's Macri (2nd from right) congratulates Etchevehere and the yellow union head Momo Venegas (since deceased) on their money hauls, while a landowner grudgingly pays his laborers chump change.

Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
2. Mexico child slavery:
Mon May 14, 2018, 09:27 PM
May 2018
In Mexico, with a population of 122 million people, there are more than 2.5 million children working – 8.4 percent of the child population. The problem is concentrated in the states of Colima, Guerrero and Puebla, explains Joaquín Cortez, author of the study “Modern Child Slavery: Cases of Child Labour Exploitation in the Maquiladoras.”

Cortez researched in particular the textile maquilas of the central state of Puebla.

Children there “work in extremely precarious conditions, in addition to working more than 48 hours a week, receiving wages of between 29 and 40 dollars per week. To withstand the workloads they often inhale drugs like marijuana or crack,” the researcher from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) told IPS.

In some maquilas “strategies have been used to evade accountability. As in the case of working children who, in the face of labour inspections, are hidden in the bathrooms between the bundles of jeans,” said Cortez.


(From posted original article.)
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