A world of hidden slavery: Impressions along the way

The traditional peoples marry me Brasília, Chapecó, Florianópolis, Xingú, Cuiabá, Curitiba ... The book you hold in your hands may seem like a guide or a travelogue. It is not. Rather a quest for injustice or the story of a descent into the abyss. Just like in his previous books, Luc Vankrunkelsven, Norbertine friar and ambassador of the "grandparents for the climate", describes with compassion - but without concession - the devastation that greed, exploitation and pollution cause in this Brazil that he loves so much. In particular, he draws attention to the three large, threatened biotopes and their traditional inhabitants: the Amazon rainforest, the Pantanal and the Cerrado. In a world where science, nature and people seem to have to make way for the generation of wealth, Luc shows his frustrations, but he also gives a message of struggle and hope. Hope for an increase in sustainable agricultural practices, struggle for new alliances. His book opens with slavery, in Brazil but also in Europe, and ends with another servitude, this one great and beautiful, that of marriage: 'The traditional peoples of the Cerrado have married me on this journey. Their struggle and resistance touch me, marry me.' (A threefold marriage, text 7-10-2019) An indispensable and urgent look at Brazil today, and at ourselves. Patrick Hermann, Belgian ambassador in Brasília, Brazil The world is not a fazenda In the context of pension funds that invest in land and this, for a not insignificant share, in the Brazilian Cerrado, Jos Lemmens, the then manager for commodities at the ABP, is quoted. This top executive of a Dutch pension fund confirmed in 2010: "The world is in principle our fa-zenda." It is enough to look up the term fazenda on Wikipedia and follow the links in the article (slavery, debt slaves, colonization, etc.) to get a taste of the nasty implications of this ambitious one-liner. What the world is “in principle” may not be captured in short sentences. But it is certainly not “our fazenda”. Inspired attempts to say what it is, are the breeding ground of the stories in this book. Jos Wouters, General Abbot of the Norbertines, Rome