Question

How did Brazil virtually complete eradication of child labor and slavery?

Answer 1

Slavery

The Gradual Abolition

In 1871, the Brazilian Parliament passed the so-called “Free Womb Law,” declaring that all children born to enslaved women would be free. However, children had to work for their parents’ owners until they were adults in order to “compensate” the owners. At the time, many notaries–with the knowledge of local parishes–forged birth certificates to prove that child slaves were born before the law had been passed. According to Joaquim Nabuco, a lawyer and abolitionist leader, thanks to this piece of legislation alone, slavery would remain in effect in Brazil until the 1930s.

In 1884, a new law came into effect that freed enslaved persons who were 60 years of age or older. More perverse than the latter, this law gave owners the power to abandon enslaved persons once they had become less productive and more susceptible to diseases. Moreover, it was rare that an enslaved person even made it to his or her 60th birthday.

The Catholic Church ended its support of slavery by 1887, and not long after the Portuguese Crown began to position itself against it. On May 13, 1888, the remaining 700,000 enslaved persons in Brazil were freed.

Post-abolition Brazil

The legal end of slavery in Brazil did little to change the lives of many Afro-Brazilians. Brazil’s abolitionist movement was timid and removed, in part because it was an urban movement at a time when most slaves worked on rural properties. Yet the abolitionst movement was also more concerned with freeing the white population from what had come to be viewed as the burden of slavery. Abolitionist leaders were unconcerned with the aftermath of abolition. There were no policies to promote integration, or plans to help former enslaved persons become full citizens through providing access to education, land, or employment.

Indeed, Brazilian elites largely opposed to the idea that Brazil would have a majority Afro-Brazilian citizenry. After slavery was formally abolished as a legal institution, the government implemented a policy of branqueamento, or “whitening”—a state-sponsored attempt to “improve the bloodline” through immigration: Brazil was to accept only white Europeans or Asian immigrants. Meanwhile, with nowhere to go and no other way to earn a living, many freed slaves entered into informal agreements with their former owners. These amounted to food and shelter in exchange for free labor, thereby maintaining the status quo.

Today, vestiges of the slave system can still be witnessed in Brazilian society. It is not a coincidence that only 53 percent of the Brazilian population identify as Afro-Brazilian or mixed, but make up two-thirds of incarcerated individuals and 76 percent of the poorest segment of the population. More than any other nation in the Americas, Brazil was profoundly shaped by slavery—a legacy that the country still struggles to address more than 350 years after the first enslaved African landed on its shores.

Child Labour

launching a campaign to help denounce and eradicate the practice.

Under the banner "Not protecting childhood means condemning the future," the National Forum for the Prevention and Eradication of Child Labor unveiled the campaign to encourage people to blow the whistle, especially on the more dangerous forms of child labor, such as agricultural or domestic work.

Brazilian law makes it illegal to hire anyone under the age of 18 for those tasks.

The forum reports that now more than 2 million Brazilian children aged five to 17 work, which stunts their educational and employment outlook, and often leads to physical injury.

That figure is as high as 2.7 million, according to a 2015 survey conducted by Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

"A child that works does not have the level of concentration or energy needed to study. The fact that the state does not guarantee quality public education for all is an aggression in itself, combined with child labor, it dooms these children," forum adviser Tania Dornellas said.

Brazil failed to meet its initial target to end dangerous forms of child labor by 2016, as part of its commitment to the International Labor Organization (ILO). That commitment has now been revised and the target is to eradicate all forms of child labor by 2025.