“Tá certo isso?”: Uma etnografia da exploração de trabalhadores Kaiowá em regime de trabalho escravo contemporâneo

Abstract

This dissertation arises from the monitoring of contemporary slave labour cases involving Kaiowá indigenous workers from the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, between 2022 and 2026. It is an ethnography conducted with 65 Kaiowá indigenous workers residing in the Te’yikue village (at Caarapó Indigenous Reserve), and in the retomadas (retaken lands) of Itagua, Te’yijusu and Kunumi Vera, which are contiguous to the reserve. These workers were subjected to slave labour in sugarcane planting on regional farms in 2023. Whilst some were rescued by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, others—whom the inspection did not reach—mobilised independently to sue their employers through the Labour Court. The dissertation narrates these workers’ encounters with state agencies and examines the working conditions to which they were subjected, drawing on both state perspectives and the workers’ own accounts. It explores the labour and life relations amongst these workers; the mechanisms of control within work fronts and the roles of gatos com CNPJ (registered labour intermediaries), cabeçantes (crew leaders) and fiscais (supervisors); the organisation of turmas (work gangs) along lines of kinship, neighbourhood and other criteria; and the everyday acts of resistance undertaken to counter exploitation. The research also historicises the formation of the contemporary Kaiowá labour force by the Brazilian State through land expropriation and exploitation across successive agribusiness activities—from yerba mate extraction and forest clearing to pasture formation and sugarcane harvesting. It demonstrates how the State continues to broker indigenous labour for trabalho fora (off-tekoha work), sending workers to southern Brazil to harvest apples. This constitutes an exemplary case of the root causes of slave labour, which remain in full operation today.