THEN & NOW EXAMPLE
Topic:Modern-day Slavery
Current event sources: Cockburn, Andrew, “21st- Century Slaves,” National
Geographic, September 2003, p. 2-25
Article synopsis:
These articles on modern-day slavery were shocking! Amazingly, there are 27 million slaves in the world today, and 50,000 are in the United States.The Miriam-Webster dictionary defines of slavery is “the keeping of slaves as a practice or institution,” and the definition of slave is “a person entirely under the domination of an influence or person.” This article defines slaves as people who are “…physically confined or restrained and forced to work, or controlled through violence, or in some way treated as property.” (p. 8) These people become enslaved in a variety of ways and the type of work they do is equally diverse.
Three common characteristics of all of the various ways people become enslaved in the 21st century are indebtedness, vulnerability and deception. Some parents and husbands sell their wives or children into slavery, such as child prostitutes in Thailand and adult prostitutes in India. Often, these families are greatly in debt. Many slaves are misled or deceived into a vulnerable position, from which they are then enslaved. For example, Victoria from Moldova went with a friend to get a job in neighboring Turkey but instead ended up being betrayed and shipped to Serbia and Bosnia. Until she escaped, she was a prostitute forced to pay off her “travel expenses.” Every time she got close to paying off her debt, her owner sold her to someone else and she had to start all over again. Some children inherit their debt and slave status from their parents, such as brick makers in India or Salma in Mauritania. (Salma finally escaped.) Many of the slaves in the US are vulnerable in one of two ways; they usually do not speak, read or write English and this makes it even more difficult for them to escape. Secondly, many of them are without official documents, either because they were smuggled into the country illegally or their papers were stolen from them.
Many of the slaves in the United States became enslaved in return for being smuggled into the country in search of a better life. Some agree to the conditions because it is the only way they can get to the U. S. Others are misled and later get trapped in the situation. For example, Juan was picked up by someone in Arizona who offered to take him to Florida where a job was waiting as an orange picker. Juan understood he would have to work off his transportation debt of $1,000. Instead, he found himself being exploited. Even though he earned $7,500 a year, he was forced to spend his entire check on rent and food provided at exorbitant rates by his bosses. This is happening in our backyard. A few teenage boys in a shelter in Tijuana were forced into male prostitution before they were rescued. Sadly, there are many more examples. “In 1995 more than 70 Thai women were rescued after laboring for years behind barbed wire in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte, making clothes for major retailers.” (p. 23)
When we hear the term “slave,” we tend to think of African slavery in the Colonial Period or in the early United States. But what types of work do modern slaves perform? Many are agricultural workers or prostitutes. Others do housework for a family. Still others work at brick making, leather making, bracelet making or riding racing camels. And many of these slaves are children.
Why is slavery allowed to continue? Is it legal? Who are the slaveholders? “The buying and selling of people is a profitable business because, while globalization has made it easier to move goods and money around the world, people who want to move to where jobs are face ever more stringent restrictions on legal migration.” (p. 9) This is confirmed by the second article which explains that “…modern-day slavery is one of the by-products of globalization….” (Page two of the Reinhardt article) And in regards to legality, there are zero countries where it is legal. But, it happens anyway. And who, on earth, would participate in human trafficking? Well, many of the slaveholders and smugglers fit the expected stereotype of being petty gangsters in a dark smoky room but others are deemed more “respectable” and are trusted by their communities. The professions of slaveholders who have been caught in the US includes attorneys, landlords, social workers, television executives, a BostonUniversity student and even a World Bank employee.
Connection to history
As I read this shocking article, I was reminded of several parallel events in United States history. I will list them all but only explore one of them in depth. Since many of the slaves today are children, I thought of child labor in the U. S., especially in the era of rapid industrialization. Obviously, I recalled the existence of slavery in our country as another parallel. As I read about Juan in Florida, I was reminded of my own great-grandfather’s experience in the coalmines of West Virginia in the 1910’s. He was forced, by threats, to make all of his purchases in the company store. There was no other place to live except the company town, where he had to rent a house from, you guessed it, the company. Sometimes, he snuck off to buy Italian foods in a specialty shop in another town but if he had ever been caught, he would have been fired. He had 5 children and a wife to support. That was a big risk. Admittedly, his situation was not nearly as dire as Juan’s. In addition, my great-grandfather did not owe anyone for his or his families transportations to America. But, it many ways, he was trapped like Juan. Eventually the mine took his life. He died in a mine explosion in 1915.
So, even though this tragic current event has many parallels in history, the connection I will explore is indentured servitude in the colonial era. An indentured servant contracted to serve a master for a period of four to seven years in return for payment of the servant’s passage to America. Indentured servitude was the primary labor system in the Chesapeake colonies for most of the seventeenth century. Indentured servants were more often male than female, but there were indentured servants of both genders.
The terms of the indenture, or contract, usually specified that the master had to provide food, shelter, clothing, and freedom dues, which were food clothing and sometimes land given at the end of service. This suggests there was an end to the term of service. I wonder if workers in Juan’s situation would ever be freed. Even though a legal document guaranteed an end to the term of service in the colonial era, many servants died before they earned their freedom. Disease, harsh discipline, and hard labor were usually the causes of death.
So, why would anyone actually sign himself or herself up for such a situation? The reasons in the 1600’s were not so different from the reasons of today. Some of the indentured servants were orphans or criminals, but most were unemployed and seeking a better life. Not all indentured servants signed on willingly. Some were kidnapped, including some English and Irish youths. As the demand for labor in the colonies and the Caribbean increased even more, African slavery began to replace indentured servitude.
Slavery today has another historical parallel: debt peonage in the American Southwest in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Those exploited were usually Mexicans. Not until 1911 did the Supreme Court officially declare debt peonage to be unconstitutional (in violation of the 13th amendment that abolished slavery) Sharecropping was a similar situation in the South after the Civil War.