In a study released this month by Brazil's Labor Ministry, 192 individuals and businesses were found to be exploiting workers in conditions similar to slavery. In the past few years, more than 20,000 workers have been freed. “Slave labor is related to environmental crimes, because it mostly occurs along the new agricultural frontiers of the Amazon and the Cerrado (a vast savannah), in rural areas where native forest is cut down,” Marcelo Campos, coordinator of the Ministry's mobile anti-slave-labor unit, told Tierramérica.

The employers are charged and their names placed on the “dirty list” of those who may not receive loans from official banks.

Brazil abolished slavery nearly 120 years ago.