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More on Brazil from Disposable People.

Life in a Brazilian Batteria
The camps are called batterias because they center on a battery of charcoal-making ovens (usually 20–100 ovens and 8–40 workers). “The heat, smoke, and desolation of the batteria make it seem like a little bit of hell brought to the forest.” Charcoal ovens are dome-shaped about 7 feet high and 10 feet wide, with a 4-foot doorway on the side. The ovens must be pack precisely, be sealed properly, and burn at a specific temperature to make the charcoal. Workers pack the ovens with wood from the decimated forest; they constantly monitor the over as it burns for two days; then go inside the ovens to remove the charcoal.

The climate is naturally hot and humid—this is exacerbated by deforestation. Add blazing ovens, and the heat becomes unthinkable. Then ask exhausted, emaciated workers to climb into the ovens before they’re cool. Kevin Bales describes going into an oven with one of the workers: “The pressure of the heat had my head swimming in minutes, sweat drenched by clothes, and the floor of hot coals burned my feet through heavy boots.”

To combat the heat, most workers enter the ovens wearing very little, but this makes the even more likely to face severe burns. On top of exhaustion and starvation, the workers are constantly on the brink of heat stroke and dehydration. They’re constantly coughing from the soot, and most will suffer from black lung disease, if they live that long.

Talking to the Workers
Because the camps are so isolated the gatos don’t always stay in the camps. They know that the workers can’t escape through the wilderness. This gave Kevin Bales the opportunity to go into one of the camps and talk to the workers.

Through interviews, he found that many of the workers are bound by a profound sense that they must repay their debts. Though they know they are enslaved (this realization usually comes with time), they feel they must pay what they owe. One said, “It is necessary to have your debts paid off, so I have to keep working till then. If I didn’t do that then tomorrow or later I would need a job and I would go to the other places and the gato would send word: ‘This man worked for me and didn’t settle his debt.’ Then I would never be able to get work.” One slave even told the story of a man who hitchhiked home for a funeral and then came back to the batteria to work to repay his debt. The gatos know that the workers have this strong sense that it is wrong to leave debt unpaid, and they use it to their advantage.

They also cling to the hope that maybe some day the gato will pay them. One says, “Sometimes [I think] I’ll run away without getting paid. Sometimes I stay because I think the gato will pay me. We never know what to do—go or stay, maybe we get something, maybe not.” When Bales asked another if he had any idea when the gato would pay them, he responded, “No, I have no idea, I have no way of knowing this. We don’t even know the name of this batteria or where we are. All I know is the name of the gato.”

Because slaves are isolated and indebted, gatos don’t usually have to resort to violence, but once slaves realize the hopelessness of their situation and that they will never be paid, violence becomes more common.

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