Brazil’s Labour Ministry has accused Volkswagen of enslaving hundreds of rural workers between 1974 and 1986 in a cattle and logging operation in the Amazon region, allegedly with support from the military dictatorship. The case calls for R$165 million in damages. Volkswagen denies all responsibility.
This week, the Labour Court of Redenção, in the south of Pará, Brazil’s northernmost state, will hear one of the most serious allegations of slave labour in the country’s history. Volkswagen Brazil has been accused of luring rural workers to the Vale do Rio Cristalino ranch in Santana do Araguaia, Pará, between 1974 and 1986, and subjecting them to conditions akin to slavery. In December 2024 Brazil’s Labour Ministry charged Volkswagen with having violated their workers’ human rights. This followed decades of complaints from organisations like the Pastoral Land Commission (a Catholic human rights organisation) and workers’ unions, as well as frustrated attempts to reach a settlement with the German automaker.
Pará
A state in northern Brazil, its name is said to derive from the Tupi word pa’ra, meaning sea, a reference to the fact that the Amazon river, which runs through it, is so wide that it resembles
the sea.Four formerly enslaved labourers will give testimony this coming Friday (30 May 2025), with the court expected to issue its ruling in the latter half of the year. The action calls for a public apology along with R$165 million (£23 million / US$30 million) in collective moral damages. “When I worked at Volks, there was no time off. We even worked Sundays. I worked the sickle and lived in a tarpaulin hut. When there was rain and wind, everything got torn off,” Raul Batista de Souza (66), one of the workers called to testify, told Repórter Brasil.
