7 ms·

Its a common occurrence for families to take in poor girls to do house work in exchange for food and lodging. And with the insidious nature of Brazilian racism,

by forinti 2mo ago

Its a common occurrence for families to take in poor girls to do house work in exchange for food and lodging. And with the insidious nature of Brazilian racism, they will pretend that she is part of the family. They might even take her on vacations (to work, of course). If you grow up with this mentality it might even be hard for you to see the injustice. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, the last country in the Americas to do so, decades after its neighbours. The slaves never got compensation but their owners did.

petcat 2mo ago
I was shocked to read how late even several prominent European countries abolished it. Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did.
- wahern 2mo ago
  Serfdom wasn't legally abolished in Russia until 1861. Slavery was technically abolished in the late 1700s, but in some areas serfs were still bought and sold like chattel until the end of serfdom. The Ottoman Empire legally abolished slavery in the 1880s, but there was still illicit yet tolerated slavery in Turkey into the 1930s. I think in some areas of the Sahel chattel slavery may still exist as a practical matter. Mauritania didn't legally abolish chattel slavery until 1981, for example, but as in other areas it can take decades for reality to match the law, given the laws were often changed under international pressure rather than reflecting any change to the domestic social order.
  - hylaride 2mo ago
    Serfdom continued in practice in Russia for decades and often serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them. The fact that serfdom de-facto remained is one of the primary reasons Russia's industrialization lagged the rest of Europe for so long as factories didn't get the initial cheap labour. It was only finally fully picking up steam (pun not intended) when WW1 broke out.
    - geoka9 2mo ago
      > serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them. Exactly. Bolsheviks just changed the name from "serfdom" to "collective farms". Mandatory membership where members were not allowed an ID that enabled them to move inside the country and therefore were bound to the farm. The practice continued until the late 1970s.
  - spwa4 2mo ago
    And, today, in the whole middle east everyone, from governments to individual families, keep getting "embarassed" by having it turn that that they're "holding servants". And then it happens again. And again. And again. Daesh/IS "brought back" slavery (which is one reason bringing back terror brides, some of whom exploited slaves while in the middle east, is such a judicial nightmare. What do you do with a legally Australian girl, now a mother of 4, who lived for 2 years in Iraq, bought and sold slaves, exploited some them to "run the household", and killed/worked to death one of them?) Slavery is abolished everywhere in the middle east ("except" Daesh/islamic state), and yet this keeps happening. Example after example after example: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/12/fifas-world-cup-ignores-child-labor-nightmare https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/12/fifas-world-cup-ignores-... https://www.freedomunited.org/news/repression-modern-slavery-risks-iran/ https://www.freedomunited.org/news/repression-modern-slavery... https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies... https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2014/12/domestic-servitude-jonalyns-story https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2014/12/domestic-servitude-... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5v077nyjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5v077nyjo https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/13/i-was-sold/abuse-and-exploitation-migrant-domestic-workers-oman https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/13/i-was-sold/abuse-and-e... https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/united-arab-emirates-trapped-exploited-abused https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/united-arab-emirates-tra... https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-withou... https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/11/libya-must-end-outrageous-auctions-enslaved-people-un-experts-insist https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/11/libya-must-e... Oh and the royal families keep getting caught in "even more embarrassing" incidents. Here is Saudi Arabia having a royal murder a slave for perceived insults, then forcing UK governments to allow and forgive the murder (by taking nationals hostage then organizing a "prisoner swap") https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9674420/Saudi-prince-who-killed-manservant-to-be-allowed-home.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9674420/Saudi-... Or Qatar: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200619-qatar-prince-accused-of-rape-and-murder-in-us-lawsuit https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200619-qatar-prince-accu... Or Iranian and Iraqi imams and mullahs selling children, girls, but apparently even including the occasional boy, into child prostitution, functioning as pimps and exploiters: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/ForcedMarriage/NGO/JusticeForIran.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/W... Frankly, these days it seems to be quite normal for countries to just sign whatever treaty anyone wants signed ... and just ignore it. Vilifying anyone calling them out on it as culturally insensitive and in all cases ignoring them.
- throw_m239339 2mo ago
  You'd be shocked how much of our "friends" in MENA still have legal slavery for non citizens. When an employer can legally confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. I have no idea why we in the west consider that normal and look the other way... What am I saying, I know, oil & VC money... Some of them also bring their Filipino, India, Nepali, or African slave maids in Europe and everybody looks the other way, they have too much money to be criticized... They are so brazen about slavery they routinely sell their slaves on Instagram or Facebook ads, with copies such as "doesn't need much food","will sleep on the floor", "will work 20 hours a day"... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549 > "African worker, clean and smiley," said one listing. Another: "Nepalese who dares to ask for a day off." > When speaking to the sellers, the undercover team frequently heard racist language. "Indians are the dirtiest," said one, describing a woman being advertised. They are dehumanized at first place, but the level of racism in these places, on top of all that is shocking...
  - fmbb 2mo ago
    > When an employer can confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. This happens in Europe as well. It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.
    - runsWphotons 2mo ago
      This is completely a figment of your imagination.
      - manarth 2mo ago
        Passport confiscation is a common sign of modern slavery. "he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK" "The gang confiscated the passports of all their victims" It's not legal. There are definitions of "Modern Slavery" and descriptions of the practices and warning signs because it is still an issue in contemporary times, including in Europe. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kdg84zj4wo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kdg84zj4wo
- hokkos 2mo ago
  Serfdom was abolished in the Kingdom of France in 1315.
- crote 2mo ago
  This isn't very surprising. The vast majority of slaves went to the New World, so that's where most of its effects were felt. Of the 12.5M people kidnapped from Africa, only ~9000 went to the Old World. It just wasn't as obvious of a problem in Europe itself. An interesting side-effect of this is that a lot of European countries have two relevant dates: the first being the banning of slave trade, the second being the banning of slavery. For example, the UK prohibited any involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but slavery in the UK itself was only abolished in 1833.
  - rightbyte 2mo ago
    Abducted and enslaved? Doesn't kidnapping imply kids?
    - ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
      It doesn't imply kids (or napping). Nancy Guthrie is 84 https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fbi-determines-nancy-guthrie-kidnapping-notes-be-fakes-source-says-2026-07-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fbi-determine...
      - rightbyte 2mo ago
        Oh. Yeah I thought it was slang language use but it seems like it is used for adults too over the board. I mainly wanted to point out that adults were victims also.
  - _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
    In addition muslim traders also exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523100.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523100.stm
- insane_dreamer 2mo ago
  > Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did Sort of. France and England abolished slavery within their own territories before the US states did, but it did not extend to their colonies until later. France banned slavery within its home territory back in the 1300s (Free Soil Principle), but continued with slavery through its "Code Noir" (Black Code) in its colonies, where slavery was not permanently abolished until 1848 (it was abolished at the time of the French Revolution but then reinstated by Napoleon). England abolished slavery at home in the mid 1700s but not in its colonies until 1834. (Like the US North, England and France had very small populations of Africans/others, so it was relatively painless and easy to ban slavery there, while continuing to accept slavery "elsewhere". For the US North "elsewhere" was the South, for England and France it was their colonies. Same principle though.) Along the same lines, slavery of Catholics was forbidden in Europe all the way back in the Middle Ages. So it was acknowledged to be something bad, that Christians should not do to each other. But slavery of "infidels", heathen/pagan/Muslims/etc., was OK - and not only okay but sanctioned by Romanus Pontifex in the 1400s granting Portugal the authority to enslave "pagans" (basically all non-Europeans) along the coast of Africa. (Incidentally, as some Africans converted to Christianity, this posed a problem (they were no longer pagan and couldn't be enslaved), and so eventually it shifted to being about race and skin color rather than religion.)
  - _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
    I wonder if this position was taken from the Muslim slaver behavior who had been conquering/enslaving Christians for quite a while at that point. Especially as Spain was being taken back from Muslim colonizers at that time, and you have lands that had been under Muslim practices (enslaving non-muslims) now having the roles reversed but perhaps the engrained Islamic thought (only enslave non-believers) entrenched. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqaliba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqaliba
- cyphar 2mo ago
  The abolition of slavery in the US is unfortunately a more complicated story than most people are aware. The 13th amendment removed the legal concept of slavery (except for convicts) but it was still not a crime to do slavery. Slavery changed shape many times over the years since the civil war (usually involving convicting black people under sham crimes and then selling them as debt slaves or forcing them to sign contracts that rendered them slaves under threat of being convicted for said sham crimes) and can only reasonably be said to have actually ended in the US after Pearl Harbour when concerns that it would be used as enemy propaganda caused the Justice Department to properly prosecute slave owners (see Circular 3591[1]). The last chattel slave in the US was Alfred Irving[2] and he was released in late 1942. He was kept in chains and was permanently disfigured due to constant physical abuse from his owners. He died in 1960. [3] is a very comprehensive video essay about the topic. [1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA
iammrpayments 2mo ago
I was repeatedly told in school that Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, only to find out recently that places like UAE had not abolished slavery until 1967.
- jauco 2mo ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/1967/03/28/archives/saudi-arabian-slavery-persists-despite-ban-by-faisal-in-1962.html https://www.nytimes.com/1967/03/28/archives/saudi-arabian-sl...
  - za3faran 2mo ago
    > Slavery in the Arab world is a benign institution. Slaves are rarely used for industrial or agricultural labor. They are often treated as members of the family. Bright young slaves are educated and given positions of trust and are eventually freed. Mohammed Surur, the former Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, was born a slave. Two managers of one of Jidda's principal hotels were once slaves.
- jdiff 2mo ago
  They likely had the qualifier, as does GP, that it was the last country "in the Americas."
- inexcf 2mo ago
  "last country to abolish slavery" vs. "last country to practice slavery"
  - Loughla 2mo ago
    Yeah, have you ever been to Dubai? Slavery is "illegal". I'm convinced that the absolute modernity is only a sideshow attraction for the ultra-wealthy to visit Dubai. The real show is the servants.
    - robbie-c 2mo ago
      A family member stayed in a hotel in Dubai recently and on returning said how incredible the staff were and willing they were to help them, and my response was "no shit"
phyzome 2mo ago
Correction: The US still has not abolished slavery. It is still legal in the case of prisoners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...
- froh 2mo ago
  yes! which is _the_ driving factor behind the US prison system with its private prison labor facilities. there is zero financial motivation for the state for prevention or rehab or any other activities to reduce imprisonment rates did I mention disenfranchisement of the imprisoned?
  - sokoloff 2mo ago
    Are you suggesting that the state turns a net profit on prisoners, making more from their labor than the full cost of their incarceration? That seems…unlikely.
    - none2585 2mo ago
      Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage.
      - sokoloff 2mo ago
        What’s the financial motivation for the state then?
        compsciphd 2mo ago
        to lose less money on the prisoners? i.e. its not a good motivation to increase the number of prisoners (even if one looses less money per prisoner, more prisoners will mean more loss), but it does motivate investigating ways on how one can minimize the loss on individual prisoners.
        2mo ago
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
matheusmoreira 2mo ago
"Common" occurrence? I've literally never seen literal slavery like this happen before.
motbus3 2mo ago
"It is" is a bit misleading. I will say it was common up to the end of 70s and somewhat into the 80s. Common here I don't mean that every single person would have a "slave child" at home but you'd know someone or someone that knew someone who did it. I am not saying it justify this horrible behaviour, but mostly as to say how much worse it could get. Some would just be "Cinderella" style abuse, but other would be physically and sexually abused. Some reform of policies around de 90s cleared much of the evil practice. I think by today standards, 99% of people knowing this would have denounced this much earlier. The fact it did not happen in this case is because this family is related to a powerful politician of the region. Compensation they offer is too little and too disrespectful. It is basically 3 USD a week for the past half decade of forced work relationship. First, it would need to be at least 100x more than that and it would need to put this rubbish in form of people into jail for the rest of their lives.
beAbU 2mo ago
> they will pretend that she is part of the family Wasn't there some mild scandal a decade or so ago where wealthy white American families would adopt kids from Africa or Mexico, only to force them to do housework the whole time?
- spwa4 2mo ago
  https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/774166.pdf https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/774166.pdf Well, it's classed as child abuse and the perpetrators ("parents") were punished harshly. So pretty bad, but not remotely the same thing as what happens in the middle east or north Africa.
bodash 2mo ago
“The oppressors left, but their systems remain”
archagon 2mo ago
Not Brazil — Mexico — but the movie Roma does an amazing job at dissecting this sort of dynamic.
- forinti 2mo ago
  If you found that movie interesting, check out The Second Mother (Que Horas ela Volta?) which is a Brazilian movie about a maid and her relationship with the middle class family that employs her.
  - archagon 2mo ago
    Thank you! Putting it on the watchlist.

by forinti 2mo ago

petcat 2mo ago

I was shocked to read how late even several prominent European countries abolished it. Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did.

wahern 2mo ago
Serfdom wasn't legally abolished in Russia until 1861. Slavery was technically abolished in the late 1700s, but in some areas serfs were still bought and sold like chattel until the end of serfdom. The Ottoman Empire legally abolished slavery in the 1880s, but there was still illicit yet tolerated slavery in Turkey into the 1930s. I think in some areas of the Sahel chattel slavery may still exist as a practical matter. Mauritania didn't legally abolish chattel slavery until 1981, for example, but as in other areas it can take decades for reality to match the law, given the laws were often changed under international pressure rather than reflecting any change to the domestic social order.
- hylaride 2mo ago
  Serfdom continued in practice in Russia for decades and often serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them. The fact that serfdom de-facto remained is one of the primary reasons Russia's industrialization lagged the rest of Europe for so long as factories didn't get the initial cheap labour. It was only finally fully picking up steam (pun not intended) when WW1 broke out.
  - geoka9 2mo ago
    > serfs became indebted to the landowners in a form of financial bondage that pretty much lasted until the Russian revolution, where...well things didn't get much better for them. Exactly. Bolsheviks just changed the name from "serfdom" to "collective farms". Mandatory membership where members were not allowed an ID that enabled them to move inside the country and therefore were bound to the farm. The practice continued until the late 1970s.
- spwa4 2mo ago
  And, today, in the whole middle east everyone, from governments to individual families, keep getting "embarassed" by having it turn that that they're "holding servants". And then it happens again. And again. And again. Daesh/IS "brought back" slavery (which is one reason bringing back terror brides, some of whom exploited slaves while in the middle east, is such a judicial nightmare. What do you do with a legally Australian girl, now a mother of 4, who lived for 2 years in Iraq, bought and sold slaves, exploited some them to "run the household", and killed/worked to death one of them?) Slavery is abolished everywhere in the middle east ("except" Daesh/islamic state), and yet this keeps happening. Example after example after example: https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/12/fifas-world-cup-ignores-child-labor-nightmare https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/06/12/fifas-world-cup-ignores-... https://www.freedomunited.org/news/repression-modern-slavery-risks-iran/ https://www.freedomunited.org/news/repression-modern-slavery... https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/CoISyria/A_HRC_32_CRP.2_en.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/HRBodies... https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2014/12/domestic-servitude-jonalyns-story https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2014/12/domestic-servitude-... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5v077nyjo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw5v077nyjo https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/13/i-was-sold/abuse-and-exploitation-migrant-domestic-workers-oman https://www.hrw.org/report/2016/07/13/i-was-sold/abuse-and-e... https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/united-arab-emirates-trapped-exploited-abused https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/22/united-arab-emirates-tra... https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-without-wages/salary-abuses-facing-migrant-workers-ahead-qatars https://www.hrw.org/report/2020/08/24/how-can-we-work-withou... https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/11/libya-must-end-outrageous-auctions-enslaved-people-un-experts-insist https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2017/11/libya-must-e... Oh and the royal families keep getting caught in "even more embarrassing" incidents. Here is Saudi Arabia having a royal murder a slave for perceived insults, then forcing UK governments to allow and forgive the murder (by taking nationals hostage then organizing a "prisoner swap") https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9674420/Saudi-prince-who-killed-manservant-to-be-allowed-home.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9674420/Saudi-... Or Qatar: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200619-qatar-prince-accused-of-rape-and-murder-in-us-lawsuit https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20200619-qatar-prince-accu... Or Iranian and Iraqi imams and mullahs selling children, girls, but apparently even including the occasional boy, into child prostitution, functioning as pimps and exploiters: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Women/WRGS/ForcedMarriage/NGO/JusticeForIran.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/W... Frankly, these days it seems to be quite normal for countries to just sign whatever treaty anyone wants signed ... and just ignore it. Vilifying anyone calling them out on it as culturally insensitive and in all cases ignoring them.
throw_m239339 2mo ago
You'd be shocked how much of our "friends" in MENA still have legal slavery for non citizens. When an employer can legally confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. I have no idea why we in the west consider that normal and look the other way... What am I saying, I know, oil & VC money... Some of them also bring their Filipino, India, Nepali, or African slave maids in Europe and everybody looks the other way, they have too much money to be criticized... They are so brazen about slavery they routinely sell their slaves on Instagram or Facebook ads, with copies such as "doesn't need much food","will sleep on the floor", "will work 20 hours a day"... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50228549 > "African worker, clean and smiley," said one listing. Another: "Nepalese who dares to ask for a day off." > When speaking to the sellers, the undercover team frequently heard racist language. "Indians are the dirtiest," said one, describing a woman being advertised. They are dehumanized at first place, but the level of racism in these places, on top of all that is shocking...
- fmbb 2mo ago
  > When an employer can confiscate someone's passport and one can only leave the country with their authorization, it is slavery. This happens in Europe as well. It is not legal, but it is the only way the Scandinavian berry market works at all. You don’t even need a huge market for this to be allowed to happen. You just need _a_ market and workers that are desperate enough to be tricked.
  - runsWphotons 2mo ago
    This is completely a figment of your imagination.
    - manarth 2mo ago
      Passport confiscation is a common sign of modern slavery. "he was lured in with the false promise of a well-paid job in the UK" "The gang confiscated the passports of all their victims" It's not legal. There are definitions of "Modern Slavery" and descriptions of the practices and warning signs because it is still an issue in contemporary times, including in Europe. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kdg84zj4wo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2kdg84zj4wo
hokkos 2mo ago
Serfdom was abolished in the Kingdom of France in 1315.
crote 2mo ago
This isn't very surprising. The vast majority of slaves went to the New World, so that's where most of its effects were felt. Of the 12.5M people kidnapped from Africa, only ~9000 went to the Old World. It just wasn't as obvious of a problem in Europe itself. An interesting side-effect of this is that a lot of European countries have two relevant dates: the first being the banning of slave trade, the second being the banning of slavery. For example, the UK prohibited any involvement in the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, but slavery in the UK itself was only abolished in 1833.
- rightbyte 2mo ago
  Abducted and enslaved? Doesn't kidnapping imply kids?
  - ShinyLeftPad 2mo ago
    It doesn't imply kids (or napping). Nancy Guthrie is 84 https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fbi-determines-nancy-guthrie-kidnapping-notes-be-fakes-source-says-2026-07-01/ https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/fbi-determine...
    - rightbyte 2mo ago
      Oh. Yeah I thought it was slang language use but it seems like it is used for adults too over the board. I mainly wanted to point out that adults were victims also.
- _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
  In addition muslim traders also exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523100.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1523100.stm
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
> Most northern US states abolished slavery even before Britain, France, Portugal, and (especially) Spain did Sort of. France and England abolished slavery within their own territories before the US states did, but it did not extend to their colonies until later. France banned slavery within its home territory back in the 1300s (Free Soil Principle), but continued with slavery through its "Code Noir" (Black Code) in its colonies, where slavery was not permanently abolished until 1848 (it was abolished at the time of the French Revolution but then reinstated by Napoleon). England abolished slavery at home in the mid 1700s but not in its colonies until 1834. (Like the US North, England and France had very small populations of Africans/others, so it was relatively painless and easy to ban slavery there, while continuing to accept slavery "elsewhere". For the US North "elsewhere" was the South, for England and France it was their colonies. Same principle though.) Along the same lines, slavery of Catholics was forbidden in Europe all the way back in the Middle Ages. So it was acknowledged to be something bad, that Christians should not do to each other. But slavery of "infidels", heathen/pagan/Muslims/etc., was OK - and not only okay but sanctioned by Romanus Pontifex in the 1400s granting Portugal the authority to enslave "pagans" (basically all non-Europeans) along the coast of Africa. (Incidentally, as some Africans converted to Christianity, this posed a problem (they were no longer pagan and couldn't be enslaved), and so eventually it shifted to being about race and skin color rather than religion.)
- _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
  I wonder if this position was taken from the Muslim slaver behavior who had been conquering/enslaving Christians for quite a while at that point. Especially as Spain was being taken back from Muslim colonizers at that time, and you have lands that had been under Muslim practices (enslaving non-muslims) now having the roles reversed but perhaps the engrained Islamic thought (only enslave non-believers) entrenched. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqaliba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saqaliba
cyphar 2mo ago
The abolition of slavery in the US is unfortunately a more complicated story than most people are aware. The 13th amendment removed the legal concept of slavery (except for convicts) but it was still not a crime to do slavery. Slavery changed shape many times over the years since the civil war (usually involving convicting black people under sham crimes and then selling them as debt slaves or forcing them to sign contracts that rendered them slaves under threat of being convicted for said sham crimes) and can only reasonably be said to have actually ended in the US after Pearl Harbour when concerns that it would be used as enemy propaganda caused the Justice Department to properly prosecute slave owners (see Circular 3591[1]). The last chattel slave in the US was Alfred Irving[2] and he was released in late 1942. He was kept in chains and was permanently disfigured due to constant physical abuse from his owners. He died in 1960. [3] is a very comprehensive video essay about the topic. [1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Circular_No._3591 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Irving_(former_slave) [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA

iammrpayments 2mo ago

I was repeatedly told in school that Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, only to find out recently that places like UAE had not abolished slavery until 1967.

jauco 2mo ago
https://www.nytimes.com/1967/03/28/archives/saudi-arabian-slavery-persists-despite-ban-by-faisal-in-1962.html https://www.nytimes.com/1967/03/28/archives/saudi-arabian-sl...
- za3faran 2mo ago
  > Slavery in the Arab world is a benign institution. Slaves are rarely used for industrial or agricultural labor. They are often treated as members of the family. Bright young slaves are educated and given positions of trust and are eventually freed. Mohammed Surur, the former Minister of Finance of Saudi Arabia, was born a slave. Two managers of one of Jidda's principal hotels were once slaves.
jdiff 2mo ago
They likely had the qualifier, as does GP, that it was the last country "in the Americas."
inexcf 2mo ago
"last country to abolish slavery" vs. "last country to practice slavery"
- Loughla 2mo ago
  Yeah, have you ever been to Dubai? Slavery is "illegal". I'm convinced that the absolute modernity is only a sideshow attraction for the ultra-wealthy to visit Dubai. The real show is the servants.
  - robbie-c 2mo ago
    A family member stayed in a hotel in Dubai recently and on returning said how incredible the staff were and willing they were to help them, and my response was "no shit"

phyzome 2mo ago

Correction: The US still has not abolished slavery. It is still legal in the case of prisoners: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

froh 2mo ago
yes! which is _the_ driving factor behind the US prison system with its private prison labor facilities. there is zero financial motivation for the state for prevention or rehab or any other activities to reduce imprisonment rates did I mention disenfranchisement of the imprisoned?
- sokoloff 2mo ago
  Are you suggesting that the state turns a net profit on prisoners, making more from their labor than the full cost of their incarceration? That seems…unlikely.
  - none2585 2mo ago
    Not the state but the companies that run the prisons and those that contract the workers to work at an extremely low wage.
    - sokoloff 2mo ago
      What’s the financial motivation for the state then?
      - compsciphd 2mo ago
        to lose less money on the prisoners? i.e. its not a good motivation to increase the number of prisoners (even if one looses less money per prisoner, more prisoners will mean more loss), but it does motivate investigating ways on how one can minimize the loss on individual prisoners.
      - 2mo ago

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matheusmoreira 2mo ago

"Common" occurrence? I've literally never seen literal slavery like this happen before.

motbus3 2mo ago

"It is" is a bit misleading. I will say it was common up to the end of 70s and somewhat into the 80s. Common here I don't mean that every single person would have a "slave child" at home but you'd know someone or someone that knew someone who did it. I am not saying it justify this horrible behaviour, but mostly as to say how much worse it could get. Some would just be "Cinderella" style abuse, but other would be physically and sexually abused. Some reform of policies around de 90s cleared much of the evil practice. I think by today standards, 99% of people knowing this would have denounced this much earlier. The fact it did not happen in this case is because this family is related to a powerful politician of the region. Compensation they offer is too little and too disrespectful. It is basically 3 USD a week for the past half decade of forced work relationship. First, it would need to be at least 100x more than that and it would need to put this rubbish in form of people into jail for the rest of their lives.

beAbU 2mo ago

> they will pretend that she is part of the family Wasn't there some mild scandal a decade or so ago where wealthy white American families would adopt kids from Africa or Mexico, only to force them to do housework the whole time?

spwa4 2mo ago
https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/774166.pdf https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/774166.pdf Well, it's classed as child abuse and the perpetrators ("parents") were punished harshly. So pretty bad, but not remotely the same thing as what happens in the middle east or north Africa.

bodash 2mo ago

“The oppressors left, but their systems remain”

archagon 2mo ago

Not Brazil — Mexico — but the movie Roma does an amazing job at dissecting this sort of dynamic.

forinti 2mo ago
If you found that movie interesting, check out The Second Mother (Que Horas ela Volta?) which is a Brazilian movie about a maid and her relationship with the middle class family that employs her.
- archagon 2mo ago
  Thank you! Putting it on the watchlist.