Brazil convicts Volkswagen for enslaving laborers in the Amazon 40 years ago

Mr. Raimundo Batista de Souza apologizes because the internet connection comes and goes and the call takes a while to connect. Things that happen when you live in the heart of the Amazon. He is speaking from Porto Nacional in Tocantins, on the shores of a lake where he fishes to make a living. Souza, 57, shares over the phone a tempered joy and some of the memories that have haunted him for four decades, since he worked with his brothers on the Volkswagen ranch.

“God got us out of there because if we had stayed, we would have died,” he says. “My brother was lost in the jungle for nine days. My other brother and I walked for three days to get back home — 90 kilometers [56 miles],” he recalls.

The Brazilian subsidiary of the German multinational has just been convicted by a judge for enslaving laborers on a cattle ranch in the 1970s and 1980s. It must compensate four former workers (including the fisherman Souza and his brother Raul) with two million reais each ($390,000) for subjecting them to slave-like conditions. It is the largest financial compensation for forced labor ever ordered in Brazil, explains Andréia Silverio of Coletivo Veredas, the group of grassroots lawyers who represented the plaintiffs.

“It is a very important precedent because it establishes that this crime does not expire,” she explains. This opens the door to new lawsuits. “The state has the duty to pursue these crimes and hold those who profited from slave labor accountable.”

The judge issued the ruling on June 11 in a court in Redenção, 124 miles from the Volkswagen ranch, where hundreds of day laborers were taken under false pretenses. If this case made it to court with evidence, it is thanks to the painstaking investigative work carried out by a priest, Ricardo Rezende, 74, and his team from the Catholic Church’s Pastoral Land Commission, in an extremely hostile environment, in a vast and violent territory during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985).

José Ribamar Viana Nunes, 60, another victim who won the case, says he was a 17-year-old boy when he set out on what seemed like a seductive adventure. He wanted to see Pará, the neighboring state — then an almost unexplored land — earn some money, and dreamed of playing football on a real field, with grass. He left in 1983 with four friends, a ball, and a pair of football boots. Brazil had won three of its five World Cups. Pelé’s retirement was still fresh in the national memory.

Souza, the fisherman, avoids giving details of the hell he endured — it hurts too much. But each victim processes trauma in their own way. Nunes, a farmer, recounts the horror of those months with solemnity and detail from his homestead in Porto Alegre do Norte in the state of Mato Grosso. He remembers by full name the four friends he traveled with, the nicknames of the gunmen, of the “cats” (the intermediaries). He describes brutal scenes. It is clear he has testified in several trials.

“On the weekend, if you like, you’ll be able to play on the ranch’s field,” the recruiter told them, he recalls. It was a lie — the first of many. “The night we arrived [at the Volkswagen ranch], one of the laborers had some kind of attack [went mad]; we didn’t know him. A gunman shot at his feet and tied him up in front of a shack. We never saw him again.”

He recounts other violent assaults, disappearances, deaths from malaria… “A lot of people disappeared back then; it was not easy.”

Before they even passed under the Volkswagen logo that presided over the entrance to the ranch, they were trapped in a maze called debt bondage. They owed the cost of the trip. At the canteen, an account was opened for each of them. Forced to buy food, tarp for their huts, and the tools needed to clear the jungle and open pasture — at exorbitant prices — their debt kept growing, recalls Souza.

They discovered the trap after finishing clearing the trees on the first plot they were assigned. “We went to get paid and they told us: ‘There’s no balance. You have to clear another 20 acres.’ So we did. And the same thing again: ‘There’s no balance.’ We’d already done 40 acres, and they were asking for 20 more. And the debt kept getting bigger,” explains the farmer. “We were just kids.”

The conditions were inhuman. They worked from sunrise to sunset, lived in shacks, surrounded by snakes and deadly spiders, according to lawyer Silverio. The threat of punishment was constant. Watched by armed men, escaping was extremely dangerous. That’s why Nunes and his companions had to be resourceful.

Since three of them were due to report for military service, they managed to convince their captors to let them leave. It wasn’t easy, but they succeeded in returning home. The gunmen holding them captive didn’t want to anger the military.

From time to time, the Pastoral Land Commission or unions received complaints about abuse, about men who were swallowed up by the Volkswagen ranch, but little was known for certain. So when Father Rezende heard that a group had managed to escape, he took the first plane and went there to gather their accounts. They later held a press conference at the Bishops’ Conference in Brasília; a group of lawmakers visited the ranch and produced a report; more victims and witnesses were identified; documentation was gathered…

And what was Volkswagen doing raising cattle in the Amazon? Brazil’s generals, fearful that the United States might invade the Amazon in the name of fighting communism, launched a colonization project: taming the jungle in the name of civilizing development. The military persuaded large companies to join the national effort. In exchange for investing, they received tax exemptions. That is how the German multinational ended up as the main shareholder of a ranch in Santana de Araguaia in Pará, a cattle operation slightly larger than New York City. To create pasture, the forest had to be cleared — and that required labor.

Asked about the recent conviction, the company responded in a statement: “Volkswagen of Brazil will not comment on ongoing legal proceedings […] With a 73-year legacy […] it condemns any form of forced, degrading, or slavery-like labor and reiterates its historical commitment to promoting a dignified, ethical, and responsible work environment.”

Father Rezende says from Rio de Janeiro that patience was crucial. “Historical patience was necessary, and also obstinacy. When you fight for human rights, you know it is a fight for life.”

Debt bondage may sound anachronistic, but it still exists — and so does forced labor. In 2025, Brazilian authorities rescued more than 2,700 victims, two-thirds of them in cities. The lista suja (dirty list), an official registry of companies and employers who have subjected workers to slave-like conditions, includes 169 names.

A year ago, Father Rezende and those who have accompanied him in this struggle achieved another major victory in a collective civil action over the same issue. The German multinational was ordered to pay compensation of 165 million reais ($32 million). The company appealed to higher courts.

The priest regrets that “Volks,” as those involved familiarly call it, has always refused to negotiate a settlement to close the case, because the years pass “and people die,” he says. After working in the Amazon for years, he moved into academia. He now coordinates a research group on contemporary slave labor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

He stresses that “compensation does not heal the pain, but it gives hope that companies will not commit such crimes again.” He would like individual perpetrators — such as the manager, Friedrich-Georg Brugger, who lives in Switzerland — to be held accountable. “I don’t want him to go to prison; I want him to acknowledge the harm and ask for forgiveness.” Brugger — and every link in the chain. In this case, history also comes into view. Few countries have examined their past as thoroughly as Germany, where Volkswagen is headquartered.

During the trial, Volkswagen argued that it did not directly hire the day laborers. “How could it not know how its workers were being treated? Why didn’t it try to find out?” asks lawyer Jamyla Pereira de Carvalho, from the Pastoral Land Commission. “It’s the responsibility of any company,” she adds. The judge rejected the company’s attempt to hide behind subcontracting.

Other large companies had similar ranches in the Amazon, but the Volkswagen case is the best documented, despite the difficulties posed by the vast Amazon region, which is a realm of large landowners and local strongmen. In dictatorial Brazil, the police, the courts, and public authorities in general were weak or viewed with distrust. The most vulnerable turned to the Catholic Church, which, embracing Liberation Theology, was deeply committed to defending human rights, the right to land, and decent work. For the military regime, those priests who documented complaints and raised awareness among the poor were the enemy — dangerous communists stirring up trouble.

Father Rezende notes that, with sufficient funding, staff could be deployed to investigate other complaints. Lawyer Carvalho stresses that land conflict persists. Agribusiness is advancing from the south, pushing further into the Amazon. “Soy is arriving, and with it, poison. They want to buy more and more land.”

For the two victims interviewed, the ruling leaves them with mixed feelings. Souza says he is “happy, although I will never forget what happened — I hope everything ends peacefully.” Nunes hopes that his efforts to preserve the memory of that horror will not have been in vain. “If everything is judged and turns out well [referring to the appeals], it will be a victory. But if we’ve spent 40 years giving testimony only for it to come to nothing, that would be bad, wouldn’t it?”

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