Nonilex#Volkswagen’s Secret
History forgot the horrors endured by #laborers on the automaker’s massive cattle ranch in the #Brazilian #Amazon. But a priest had recorded it all.
When Ricardo Rezende Figueira saw the headline, he felt a chill run through him. It was about #Volkswagen. The company said it was finally ready to atone for its past. After admitting that its staff had cooperated with #Brazil’s #military #dictatorship to target #workers for political persecution, the automaker had begun to negotiate #reparations.
Rezende read to the bottom of the article, then sat for a moment, quiet.
The story didn’t say anything about the #Volkswagen #CattleRanch. Nor a word about the #Amazon #rainforest, where the company’s leadership had once presided over a property nearly twice the size of NYC. It sometimes seemed to Rezende as if no one still remembered what had happened there — the forced #labor & #privation, #torture & #violence, #deception & #horror But Resends did. He’d recorded it all.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late, he recalled thinking.
It was early 2019. Rezende…walked…to Rio de Janeiro’s federal university, where he taught #HumanRights & coordinates a commission to study modern #slave #labor. At 73, gray-haired & bespectacled, he no longer resembled the shaggy Catholic priest who had led an investigation into alleged #atrocities at the Vale do Rio Cristalino Ranch, owned by an eponymous subsidiary of #Volkswagen #Brazil. But the documentary evidence he’d gathered during that time was still with him, inside a filing cabinet….
elpolacodesplegado@Nonilex
Back in the 1980ies Germans used to joke that VAG (Volkswagen - Audi - Gemeinschaft) in reality stood for "Von Adolf Geschaffen" (created by Adolf). Its cooperation with inhumane regimes continues until today where VW uses Chinese forced labor. I'm sorry for any Brazilian, Mexican and Chinese, harmed by this company.
Back in the 1980ies Germans used to joke that VAG (Volkswagen - Audi - Gemeinschaft) in reality stood for "Von Adolf Geschaffen" (created by Adolf). Its cooperation with inhumane regimes continues until today where VW uses Chinese forced labor. I'm sorry for any Brazilian, Mexican and Chinese, harmed by this company.