La lucha contra el trabajo esclavo contemporáneo en Brasil: de la Amazonía a las universidades, una entrevista con Ricardo Rezende Figueira

Abstract

In 2023, the Contemporary Slave Labor Research Group (GPTEC) celebrates its 20th anniversary. Linked to the Suely Souza de Almeida Center for Public Policy Studies on Human Rights at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (NEPP-DH/UFRJ), it has a recognized performance in Brazil and important connections with other groups, with organized civil society and with the international press. Much of this is due to the figure of its coordinator, the professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Dr. Ricardo Rezende Figueira, anthropologist and priest, who lived for two decades in the Amazon region, specifically in southern Pará. Ricardo welcomed workers, recorded and denounced practices of violence and enslavement, along with other activists and organizations, at a time when the Brazilian State itself financed companies and initiatives responsible for rights violations. The following pages, mediated by Ricardo's life story, tell a little about the construction and maintenance of the policy to combat slave labor in Brazil, one of the main and most symbolic in the country. The interview was conducted on November 29, 2022, in the context of the interviewer's doctoral research stay at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.