SÃO PAULO — As the first quarter of the 21st century drew to a close, justice prevailed: 163 Chinese workers were rescued from the construction site for a factory for Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD in Camaçari, Bahia, in northeastern Brazil.
It was Dec. 26, 2024, and the workers were enduring conditions comparable to slavery, according to a task force comprising the Public Labor Ministry (MPT), Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU), Federal Public Ministry (MPF) and Federal and Highway Police. Brazil’s executive branch was represented by the Ministry of Labor and Employment.
A month earlier, an Agência Pública report had already exposed the precarious situation of workers in the factory.
One of the shocking photos showed a man lying on the ground after being kicked in the back by his supervisors. According to workers interviewed by the reporter, physical punishments were common, with Chinese supervisors striking them with kicks and punches to meet the tight deadline for completing the construction by January. The factory aims to produce 300,000 cars annually.
No passports, no salary
The situation was worse among earthwork laborers hired by the Chinese company Jinjiang Group, a subcontractor for BYD. In the lodgings, filth and overcrowding prevailed. The bathrooms, shown in photos, were filthy, with yellowish water clogging the sinks. Food was inadequate and stored in unsanitary conditions. Work shifts were grueling: 12 hours a day, seven days a week.
When public agencies liberated the workers, the situation was even worse: They found beds without mattresses, open pots of food on the floor for the next day’s meals and one bathroom for more than 30 workers. They were forced to wake up at 4 a.m. to use the facilities before starting work at 5:30 a.m.
Exhausted, one worker suffered an accident after working without rest for days on end.
Furthermore, the workers had to pay a “deposit” to cover travel costs from China to Brazil, resulting in 60% of their salary being withheld by the company. Their passports were confiscated, and if they wanted to terminate their contracts, they had to pay exorbitant fines. Those who quit before completing six months of work did not receive a penny.
The Brazil of 2025 is no different from the Brazil of the past 200 years.
The factory’s inauguration was sponsored not only by Bahia Governor Jerônimo Rodrigues but also by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as part of the rapprochement with China and the strengthening of a company that has threatened the reign of Tesla, Elon Musk’s company.
After the inspection, the Jinjiang Group sent the 163 workers to a hotel and had its contract suspended by BYD. The automaker is now negotiating with the MPT on how to resolve the situation of these employees.
Let it be clear: the task force was not a result of our report. Since November, a series of inspections had been carried out at the factory, although, as explained in the text, the competent bodies hadn’t inspected the precarious accommodation.
Publishing — Agência Pública’s primary and essential commitment — helped strengthen an action surrounded by pressures and political interests from all sides.
Ruins of the past
On the same day we published these reports, Agência Pública published another article showed that some politicians with ancestors who owned enslaved people in the 19th century had been questioned about modern slavery in today’s Brazil: Jader Barbalho (MDB-PA), Jayme Campos (União Brasil-MT) and Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado (União Brasil-GO). The latter has proven to be a key player in the Bolsonaro camp for the 2026 elections, as demonstrated by the surprise announcement of a possible (and unusual) presidential candidacy of musician Gusttavo Lima.
It’s no coincidence: the Brazil of 2025 is no different from the Brazil of the past 200 years.
We build tomorrow on the ruins of the past, and that’s why digging into the past and present is the urgent task of our journalism. Investigating what Brazil is this where the oldest woman and man in the world live — Inah Canabarro Lucas and João Marinho Neto, the former born just 20 years after the 1888 law that abolished slavery in Brazil.
It is the echoes of this past that resonate in the land conflicts that plague communities throughout Brazil, in the violent disputes between indigenous people and criminals who invade their territories to steal wood and metal, in the high courts that silence a woman trying to denounce sexual violence suffered from her husband and the websites that publish this complaint, in the unequal access to justice between the family of a musician killed while going with his family to a baby shower and the military who pulled the trigger 257 times.
Why the past matters today
Today, our problems in Brazil are different and still the same as always.
The loathsome arms of machista ideology, a new guise for the defense of patriarchy, echo in the dispute between Elon Musk and the Supreme Court, and in the way his Starlink antennas have spread like wildfire in the Amazon.
The lobby that buys politicians to make food more harmful to the health of the majority. The routine sexual harassment in different institutions in the country’s capital, where power is still disproportionately concentrated in the hands of men. The precarious work by delivery apps, where almost 70% of workers are Black. The violent neo-colonization of thought by a handful of big techs, the vast majority located in just one region on the West Coast of the United States, Silicon Valley. The use of social networks to construct, spread and disseminate lies that normalize horror and erode belief in our young democracy.
New and old interests will act to undermine the 30th UN Climate Conference.
These new and old interests that will act to undermine the 30th UN Climate Conference, which will take place in November in Belém, under the watchful eyes of indigenous populations and the expectation of resolving climate financing and renewing commitments to reduce polluting gas emissions.
In 2025, we will cover all of this with attention. We will continue doing journalism, investigating, understanding and explaining these bridges between the present and the past — and perhaps the future.
We will do this because we believe that in our large and rich Brazil — the Brazil that today is moved by the Golden Globe for actress Fernanda Torres, who won in the drama category for the Brazilian political film I’m Still Here — this same Brazil of color and contrast, it is possible to do things differently.
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