Part Two: That Time Volkswagen Operated a Slave Plantation in Brazil

We conclude the heinous tale of Volkswagen's slave plantation in Brazil. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Robert Evans?

  Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that you're listening to right now. And this is part two of our episodes on Volkswagen's slave plantation in Brazil. So you probably know what's going on here. You're not, you're not dropping into part two of this specific episode just on your own. That would be weird.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  I hope not.

• 0:27Robert Evans?

  Uh huh.

• 0:28Speaker 01

  They'll both be depressing, but to just pick the second part of it.

• 0:32Robert Evans?

  That's maniac shit. That's like 51 50 shit, right? Like, that's a 72 hour hold for you.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  See, Kelp.

• 0:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah. What are you, what are you doing? And we're coming in, of course, on the day that Diddy just got sentenced. So that's fun. Have you, have you caught this yet? This, this happened in between us, uh, recording part one and part two.

• 0:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 0:55Robert Evans?

  The court art is, uh, something else, very special. Uh, he does not look happy.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:01Robert Evans?

  I had hoped for more than that, but yeah, he's more than four years. So at least it's not.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  It's not nothing.

• 1:06Robert Evans?

  I don't know. What, what do you want? This is, this is 2025, like.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  I, I am like, wow, he meant to trial?

• 1:13Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. He's going, he's, he's staying in prison. He's not gonna get time served for what he already did. That's not nothing. Yeah.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:21Robert Evans?

  It's sad that like, I'm looking at that and being like, well, I, I was worried it would be worse. But look at this picture of him. I'm also, I'm really vibing on this, uh, this drawing of him. I love good court art. Yeah.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, it's beautiful. He does not look happy. His hair is totally white. Also, this has to be a choice. The, clearly it looks like a bailiff behind him. You can see they've like drawn his badge and it looks like an anarchy circle A symbol on the bailiff's badge. I don't know why they made that choice.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  You are not, you're not reading into it. It's to my untrained eye. Absolutely.

• 1:52Robert Evans?

  That is a circle A, right? Like, that's just a circle A.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Hell yeah.

• 1:59Robert Evans?

  Let's, let's talk about something that makes sense, you know? Something, something that makes us feel good, that makes us feel optimistic. Oh, wait, no, we're talking about slavery in Brazil. We're not talking about any of that at all. Maggie, you want to plug anything before we, we get back into talking about Brazil slave plantations? Well, Volkswagens in Brazil.

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I, I am so excited to get back into talking about that.

• 2:25Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  But in case you need a little bit of a headspace before, yeah, you can check out my YouTube channel. Uh, I do video essays, uh, on cultural stuff and film. And then, yeah, over on Nebula, uh, there's a nice little show. Amy's at a dream house, kid's show for adults, adult topics, uh, under the guise of a kid's show. We don't, however, cover business practices. So I think we'll cover that here today in the second part of this podcast.

• 2:53Robert Evans?

  Excellent.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Maybe just give some advice.

• 2:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we'll be talking a lot about that. And weirdly, I mean, we just started talking about the strange bedfellows that politics make. But like, one of the good guys in this is the Catholic Church, or at least a Catholic priest. Um, which doesn't happen often on this show, but it does happen more when we're talking about Latin America, you know?

• 3:14Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 3:14Robert Evans?

  So we've got some liberation theology guys. So our Catholic listeners, this is what you get to feel good about. Congratulations.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  You get one, you get one.

• 3:23Robert Evans?

  You get, you get one every now and then. We have a good priest who comes in. Usually when we bring up the Catholic Church on a podcast about bad people, it's a dark story. But, uh, not today, not today, folks.

• 3:39Speaker 02

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• 4:12Robert Evans?

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• 4:48Robert Evans?

  When the military hunters started putting out feelers to multinational corporations, seeing who might be interested in investing in the Brazilian economy, VW executives weren't just going along with the flow, they were eager supporters of the military dictatorship. After the former left-leaning president was forced out, directors at Volkswagen were quoted as describing what had happened as "the restoration of a rational political order." "Oh, thank God, we got rid of those democratically-elected guys, you know? Some dudes with guns coming in. As Germans, we feel really confident that this is going to end well."

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yes, I feel safe now amongst my people.

• 5:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I mean, again, these are guys, we're talking the 60s and 70s here, so anybody who's over like 40 or 50, you know what their background was, right?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Wow, doing that math, yeah.

• 5:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, a lot of the people who are running this company, not great backstories, you know? Now, the irrational thing, when they talk about the dictatorship restoring a rational political order, what they're saying is irrational, is the idea that the government of a country that Volkswagen might have profit interest in would have any other priorities beyond maximizing the amount of money that multinational corporations could take out of the country, right? A write-up by the Organization for World Peace summarizes the reaction of members of the VW board to these changes. Volkswagen board member Friedrich Wilhelm Schulzwenk rejoiced when secret police arrested trade union leaders on factory premises.

• 6:19Robert Evans?

  In so doing, he endorsed a regime that perceived its own citizens as mindless automatons that committed widespread torture, that ran hidden concentration camps to repress uncooperative indigenous tribes, and precipitated the environmental destruction of the Amazon. Who guy? Friedrich Wilhelm Schulzwenk. Huzzah, the secret police have arrested union organizers.

• 6:41Robert Evans?

  Yeah, the Nazis didn't go away, they just moved around a little bit, they shuffled, you know? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. There's a good, uh, Chumbawamba song about that. There is. Now, as I noted earlier, Volkswagen was participating in a wider system embraced by the military junta and a lot of foreign corporations that's had a profit interest in Brazil, which is a large country, there's always been a lot of money in selling to and utilizing Brazil's natural resources. Mm-hmm. Uh, that O W P write-up lists other corporations like Mitsubishi, Nestle, Goodyear, Swift, Bamarindus, and Anderson Clayton as all investing in Brazil during this period at the express request of the military dictatorship.

• 7:23Robert Evans?

  The whole reason these companies wanted to work in Brazil is because the junta would let you tear apart the Amazon, which climate scientists generally consider to be the lungs of the world, for quick profit. Yes! And because labor unions and the rights of workers were among the first things cracked down on by the dictatorship, there was no oversight for how your workers were treated, so you could really turn a profit doing this, right? As long as you didn't care about how certain people were treated. Right, every though. Yeah, I mean, obviously, nothing like this has ever happened before or since, this is the only time this happened, just in Brazil, uh, just with these companies. Of course, of course. Yeah. Uh-huh, mm-hmm. So, from 1974 to 1986, Volkswagen operated their Para State Farm through a local subsidiary

• 8:08Robert Evans?

  and tried to generate a profit from ranching and logging. It's unclear to me how many workers were victimized during the span of time, court filings have since indicated at least 300 people were hired through what were known as irregular contracts. Some sources I found put the real number at close to 1,000 people. One of the only ways to escape was through contracting malaria or some other serious illness, and this was not always a way to escape, but sometimes you could get out because they just didn't want to deal with you. Mm-hmm. There was no real medical care for workers beyond the most basic treatment of wounds, and sometimes you couldn't even count on that. Um, depending on when and where it happened, it was uncommon in some cases for workers to have any kind of medical treatment for even those basic injuries. People on the edge of

• 8:51Robert Evans?

  Death might be allowed to leave, but it was at least as common for them to be worked to death and disposed of. A 2024 article for The Intercept describes what was found at one graveyard for enslaved laborers. "Some of the bones were full of strings, as if the person had been tied up before they died," says Giselda Pereira, National Director of the MST, Landless Workers Movement's production sector. "The crimes, however, were never properly investigated. It was a very common logic to put the person to work and then when she made some charge, they sent her away and eliminated her on the way," explained the sister of one such worker, Isabel Rodriguez, a pedagogue and farmer who has been working at the MST for 35 years. And this is something you'll hear a lot, specifically with Volkswagen's workers,

• 9:34Robert Evans?

  that a lot of these people, they're not just worked to death and buried. Some of them were strung up. This is a punishment. When like workers would refuse to work, when they would try to escape, if they would get caught, if they would resist in any way, the gatos, they would be strung up and sometimes hung until dead. You know, as a way to make sure everyone else kept working.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 9:56Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  There's many parallels to, you know, a lot of the fishing industry. They also, you know, trap people out on a boat in tenuous contracts that they can't fulfill. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of.

• 10:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah. These are the kind of things, there's no oversight. Any sort of like unionizing, any sort of like workers' rights has been utterly cracked down on by the regime, which is part of what's appealing to Volkswagen, right? Is that they can just have these contractors do whatever. As far as they're concerned, there's no one policing how they treat these people.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:28Robert Evans?

  As that previous quote said, they're not looking at these workers as human beings. These are automatons. They're robots. You plug them in, you work them until they break, and then you throw them away. And if one of them isn't working right, you string them up as an example to the others, you know?

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Right. And there's still no cars being.

• 10:45Robert Evans?

  They're not making cars.

• 10:48Robert Evans?

  They're clearing, they're clear cutting forests for cows.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 10:53Robert Evans?

  This isn't even in your wheelhouse VW, what the fuck?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I just need that to sink it, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:59Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. This would be like if Cool Zone Media started a cattle farm in Brazil. It's like, this is so far outside of our wheelhouse. Like, why, why are you even, for the first, like, even outside of the ethical stuff? Why are you in this business?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:14Robert Evans?

  The answer is, they thought they'd make a buck. They didn't. But because labor rights and organizing had been so comprehensively shattered by the military junta, the first outside entity to look into the horrifying situation at Volkswagen's farm was a Catholic priest named Ricardo Rizende. As a new priest and a young man, he was stationed at a diocese in the Para State, relatively close to the Volkswagen ranch. He was made the regional coordinator for the Bishop's Conference Land Pastoral Commission, or CPT, which was formed in 1975 to support peasants and rural workers. Now, it would be fair to say that, like, the CPT, it's a good attempt, but it's kind of like a Band-Aid on an arterial wound, right?

• 11:58Robert Evans?

  But this is also the only kind of oversight for poor workers that exists during the military dictatorship. Unionizing has effectively been like, I mean, people are being put in secret concentration camps for, like, being labor organizers, right? But you can't do that to the Catholic Church. I mean, you can't, obviously, some priests and nuns

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:20Robert Evans?

  throughout Latin America who are part of this same liberation theology, which we'll talk about thing, is Rizende, are killed, are assassinated. But you can't whole scale, if you're the military junta, you can't just go after the Catholic Church, whole hog, right? Like, that is a bridge too far, because everyone's Catholic, basically, right?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:37Robert Evans?

  Like, if you do that, you are going to get in. It's the same problem the Nazis had, right? Where they didn't like the Catholic Church, Himmler especially saw it as an enemy, but they had to co-opt and work with it, because you can't just ban Catholicism in Germany. Like, that is going to get you in trouble. Like, even the Nazis didn't feel like they had enough of a handle on things to do that.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the Civ 6, you know?

• 13:00Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right.

• 13:01Robert Evans?

  Right, you have to care somewhat about how much you're pissing these people off, because these are kind of, these are the people who are real people in your state, right? And so, we can argue that like this land pastoral commission, it's not like enough. There should have been much more here. But Rizende and his diocese get a lot of credit because they are, they are the only people who can really do something, right? Because they have some ability to operate under the junta without getting just completely annihilated. And it would be fair to say, again, while this is not on its own a sufficient thing in order to replace what's been lost in the crackdown on, on workers' rights, Father Rizende is a pretty admirable person in all of this, I think.

• 13:44Robert Evans?

  And he is unusually dedicated to the spirit of his work. As I noted earlier, Rizende was a follower of what's known as liberation theology. This was at the time, a new creed that was particularly common in the Latin American segments of the Catholic Church, and was dedicated to a broad support for emancipation from every kind of oppression, right? And Rizende personally considered the fight against forced labor a sacred calling, right? This was a religious duty to him, which is good. And he made it known publicly that his office would investigate all serious allegations that people were being forced to work. Rizende gets moved into this program in 1975, and he first starts hearing allegations

• 14:28Robert Evans?

  that Volkswagen has a plantation in the Amazon and people are being enslaved there in 1977, two years later.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:35Robert Evans?

  The very first claims come from a union organizer named Natal Ribero, who said that he had been hired by, I think he was a former union organizer, but he goes to Rizende and says that, you know, "I was hired by these gatos and they forced to pay me for my work." And he tells Rizende that like, yeah, there's a farm out there, it's guarded by people he described as professional pistoleros, these are just, you know, gunmen, right? And that they were abusing workers, that there were hundreds of people who weren't being allowed to leave, were being held at gunpoint. So Rizende hears about this in 77, but all he's got is this one guy's claim. He doesn't have hard evidence. He doesn't have like anything he can really go to the state with. And this is something where

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:15Robert Evans?

  If you kind of go off half cocked on this, when you've just got this one, and this is a union organizer, so it's not someone that like the government's going to take super seriously. If you just go off immediately. Right, exactly.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:25Robert Evans?

  Exactly.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'll kill him, they'll, yeah.

• 15:27Robert Evans?

  Right. Or they'll, they'll clean up their act enough that nothing else will get out. Right? So he, Rizende, he does the hard thing, which is he keeps digging, right? He keeps trying to collect accounts. He, he doesn't give up on this, but he doesn't immediately pull the trigger on it too. Cause he's, he's trying to see like, can I get enough that I can make an unimpeachable case? He gets a major shot in the arm to his efforts in 1981, when he meets his first escapee from the ranch. Edivan Alenkar, who told him, quote, "A man tried to flee and was caught by Chico, who's one of these gatos. Chico beat him with a beam." So this is his first, he talks to this one guy who had formerly worked there, then he talks to another guy who was like outright enslaved and had some direct stories about

• 16:11Robert Evans?

  like being tortured by these guards. So he, he's kind of slowly starting to build this like, this basis of accounts on what had happened.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:20Robert Evans?

  Alenkar would go on to provide extensive testimony, both to the state and to journalists with several publications, including the Washington Post. He accused Chico and his men of beating and disappearing laborers. In one instance, he claims to have seen Chico and other gatos burn down a parcel of forest filled with workers who he believes were burnt to death. These men were still working at the time and they may have just been murdered to save the gatos the risk of freeing them. Right? That they were going to be like moving on and it's kind of sounds like it was a situation where they were like, we don't have anything to do with these folks, but if we let them go, they'll spread more stories. What if we just light them on fire and burn down a chunk of the Amazon?

• 16:59Speaker 01

  That one, that one, let's do that one.

• 17:02Robert Evans?

  Right, right. It's a, a perfect ad for Volkswagen right here. Yeah, Volkswagen, the hottest cars and that's, that's, that's, you know what? Forget I said that. Here's some ads.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

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• 17:49Robert Evans?

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• 18:48Robert Evans?

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• 19:00Robert Evans?

  We're back. So, Rizende is increasingly building up his kind of account of what's been happening in this slave plantation. And as he talks to more and more people, his investigation reveals these kind of patchy and incomplete stories that nonetheless paint a pretty bitter picture. Workers were being kept dozens of miles away from the main Volkswagen compound. They bedded under clear plastic sheets and they drank unfiltered water. He wrote in 1981 of one woman who managed to flee. Quote, "They fled through the forest because if they'd taken the road, the gatos would have killed them. They walked 155 kilometers."

• 19:37Robert Evans?

  Now by 81, he's got, been doing this for three or four years. He wants to take action. He wants to stop this, but the political situation at the time makes that impossible. And Rizende is only able to get away with anything at all because he's a representative of the church. And even so, he starts being surveilled by the dictatorship.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 19:53Robert Evans?

  He's labeled a communist sympathizer and a subversive.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:56Robert Evans?

  And the first witnesses he meets, this isn't enough for him to really go on yet, even four years in. So it's not until early 1983 that this really gets blown open for him. He gets approached by a group of young men who'd been hired to work clearing land owned by Volkswagen. These kids had all been part of a local soccer league in their hometown.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 20:19Robert Evans?

  And one day, a friend of theirs comes in, he's like, "Hey, guys, hey, buddies." This guy's been out for a while. He's like, "I'm looking for men to do some contract work down south."

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 20:27Robert Evans?

  It pays great. It's a good job.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 20:31Robert Evans?

  Rizende would write, quote, "Among the five workers who fled the farm, three were only 17."

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 20:36Robert Evans?

  They were lured to work there not only because of a promised payment, but also because they were told that they would be able to play soccer there.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Grabbers!

• 20:44Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah. Soccer. You'll basically just be playing soccer the whole time, you know?

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 20:51Robert Evans?

  Who wouldn't want to get paid to play soccer?

• 20:53Speaker 01

  This is so sadistic.

• 20:56Robert Evans?

  I will say, on the main Volkswagen ranch, there was a soccer field.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:01Robert Evans?

  But laborers like this, the people who are being enslaved to clear land, they're not allowed on that compound facility, right?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Right. They're not even near it necessarily.

• 21:11Robert Evans?

  No.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:12Robert Evans?

  They're miles away.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:14Robert Evans?

  It says, "Well, talk about, there are some really nice facilities for regular employees who are like managing this cattle farm."

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:20Robert Evans?

  It's a pretty good job for those people. It's the folks doing this backbreaking labor in the jungle that are, you know, being treated this way. And so they don't have access to the soccer field. Now, within the main body of the camp, which is a mix of, there's some skilled local workers and there's a lot of foreign employees, right? There's Germans, there's Swiss, you know, there's a lot of people who have been brought in for their skills, and these men and their families enjoyed a high quality of life. There were gardens, there were paved roads. There were proper brick houses. There was a school for children of workers. There was a club, a restaurant, and a bar, as well as a pool. Now, the kids who had escaped, these seventeen-year-olds who flee home to fucking make some money and play soccer.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:02Robert Evans?

  They tell Father Rizende that they didn't have access to any of that stuff. They had been sold to a gato named Chico. This is our second time hearing about Chico, right? This is the guy who burnt down a forest with people in it.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  He gets around.

• 22:14Robert Evans?

  Right? Yeah, Chico's a busy man.

• 22:18Robert Evans?

  And Chico made them work in a forced labor camp under a coterie of armed men. One of the kids died of malnutrition and malaria. Another was shot in the leg trying to escape. A woman who worked with them was raped when her husband escaped without her.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 22:32Robert Evans?

  On one occasion, one of the boys found a dead man in the forest who had been strung up and beaten to death. Again, these are seventeen-year-olds. Now, these kids do escape eventually, right? They weren't allowed to. This is something that they they kind of managed to make it out on their own. Because they they're in debt, right? The gato says that they owe money.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:54Robert Evans?

  And the way they're able to finally get out is they convince him that they've been conscripted by the military. So in other words, they only got out of forced labor by convincing their bosses that the state wanted to force them to work for the military.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  A different guy wants us to.

• 23:06Robert Evans?

  Right, right, right. And like, you'll get in trouble if you keep us, right? We're we're expected, you know? Like, that's how fucked up the situation is for these kids.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That is so brave of them to do. They they go, they try to go above him, and it works. Wow.

• 23:24Robert Evans?

  Yeah, they're smart kids. Um, so these kids get out and they're, they are, this is kind of what blows the case open for Father Rizende, right? He's got these five kids who have like this just really hideously grave accounts, and they're willing to like... Talk under their own names about what's happened. They they're naming specific people. Like, this is kind of what he'd been waiting for the whole time.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:45Robert Evans?

  And the boys told Father Rizende that they expected at least 600 laborers were still stuck clearing land and working as slaves. The priest horrified tried to schedule a meeting with Yader Barbalo, who was the the state governor of the Para State. And Rizende is refused initially, but this does not dissuade him from pursuing the truth. So the father flies to Brasilia with one of the escaped kids. And he goes to the media and he gives a press conference in a place that the junta couldn't ignore, the National Bishops Conference of Brazil. The next day, newspapers featured the headline, "Priest Says There Are Slaves On Volkswagen Farm." Right?

• 24:25Robert Evans?

  So he takes this kid out in front and is like, they can't crack down on a bishops conference. And like, they'll have to pay attention if I. And this is a brave move. He's putting himself in danger and this kid is putting himself in danger to do this, but it works. Part of why it works is that the German media picks up the story. You know, the Brazilian media is very much under control of the regime. But Volkswagen's a German company and Germany has a free press. And the German free press are like, hey, VW, this sounds pretty bad.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  It sounds familiar and bad.

• 24:58Robert Evans?

  As Germans, we're kind of, we're kind of sensitive about slave labor allegations. What uh, what's going on down there?

• 25:09Robert Evans?

  Now VW denies everything, of course, but they couldn't entirely ignore what had come out. So they decided to authorize a fact finding mission to, quote, shed light on the truth. This is like the standard playbook of like, oh, well, this is definitely not true. But just to make sure, you know, everybody knows how not true it is. We're gonna, we'll send a fact finding mission.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  We'll, we'll send them. Yeah.

• 25:32Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  We got it. Don't worry.

• 25:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Come over here, Father. We'll take care of this. You know, we'll get you up with some local politicians. We'll take you to the, our ranch and you can see how nice it really is, right?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 25:44Robert Evans?

  So Volkswagen invites a bunch of their critics. To visit the ranch and see what they claimed was the reality.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 25:51Robert Evans?

  One of the men selected for this delegation was Sao Paulo state lawmaker Expedito Batista. Now, he had actually worked in a Volkswagen factory previously and was likely invited by the company executives because they were like, well, this guy's a former employee. He'll be sympathetic to us, right? This proved to be a miscalculation. Batista told OSV News, a local publication, quote, "They just wanted to show me the modern buildings they had recently built there, but I asked for a truck that could take me to a nearby city where I would meet with Father Rizende and the local labor union leader." The vehicle had to take a road that was not part of the visit planned by Volkswagen. That's when Batista saw a farm truck carrying some people and asked for it to be stopped. And this is Batista.

• 26:32Robert Evans?

  "A worker had his arms tied and was being taken by a labor contractor known as Abalau. I ordered them to immediately release the man." Abalau argued that the worker was trying to escape the farm, but that he was in debt with it, so they had to get him back.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  So they're saying.

• 26:49Robert Evans?

  Well, we can't let him just have work for us for free, you know? Like, he's got to pay to work for us, obviously. But this guy's obviously been beaten and is clearly being taken against his will to work. Like, they've just stumbled, this delegation Volkswagen brings them in to impress them with how nice the main facility is. And this guy drives and grabs the priest and on their way back, they just stumble upon proof of forced labor.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  That is wild. I said, take the other road. I said, go the other way around.

• 27:23Robert Evans?

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, we should have had him take the bus, goddammit. Yeah. Yeah, this is like a Jurassic Park problem, but instead of the raptors getting loose, it's this gatos out of pocket and, you know, forcibly hauling a man back in chains. It's a lot like Jurassic Park.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It is, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:43Robert Evans?

  So now you've got not just these eyewitness accounts, but now credible members of like this fact finding mission.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that they brought, that they brought here.

• 27:55Robert Evans?

  To a member of the clergy and elected leaders have seen this going on, right?

• 28:02Robert Evans?

  This is like the worst case scenario for VW because you have pretty hard evidence now.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:08Robert Evans?

  So the investigatory team, which now has the father with them, heads back to the ranch and they do the original meeting that they'd been scheduled to have. They meet with Volkswagen's corporate PR manager for Brazil, a guy named Paulo de Castro. And they meet with the ranch's director, Friedrich Bruegger, who was a Swiss national. From an article in the Washington Post, quote, "He touted its commitment to social service, according to an account by a reporter who accompanied the delegation, saying the farm's 328 direct employees and their families had it great. Discounted food, free medical care, quality schooling. The delegation, Resende said, was not permitted to visit the deforestation camps. One day, though, one of its laborers managed to find them. He went straight to the priest and touched his arm. The man's hand was hot with fever.

• 28:51Robert Evans?

  "You have to save me," the priest recorded him saying. "Save you from what? I've worked here for nine months and I can't leave," the man said. "I have malaria and I am sick, padre. I want to leave." So that's, again, pretty bad. This is how, like, they can't even keep a lid on this thing, the least bit, as soon as these guys show up. They just start stumbling into evidence of crimes against humanity.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Honestly, pretty incredible. Like, very, uh...

• 29:16Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  They made their own pot and kettle and invited everyone to tea time, to partake.

• 29:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 29:23Robert Evans?

  No, they wouldn't notice anything. We'll show them how nice our basketball court is.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:28Robert Evans?

  Look at this club. Look at how good the food is here. They're not going to notice the sick people begging them to die. So the father goes to Bruegger, who's this Swiss dude running the ranch. And he says, he tells him, "There's a problem. You're hiding something." And Bruegger says, "This isn't my problem." And he tells him, "It's the ghetto's problem, right? I got nothing to do with this."

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Uh-huh.

• 29:49Robert Evans?

  "I'm only responsible for these workers who are being treated well because these guys are actual employees of the Volkswagen subsidiary. I can't, how could I possibly expect to know what's happening 10 miles away with the guys that I'm paying to make other guys work for them?"

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get into the detail. You know, when you get granular like that, obviously. But, yeah.

• 30:07Robert Evans?

  Right, obviously.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:09Robert Evans?

  Yeah, how much can you expect me to do? You know, I'm sitting here, I'm in the jungle, I'm pretending not to hear the screams. Nothing else is my job, obviously.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Right. I also love the Catholic priest being, uh... I know a liar. Uh, I know, I know many liars. And I can see that in you.

• 30:27Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like I I'm a Catholic priest. Like I have met I have met better liars than you. It's kind of my job.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 30:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  You're hiding something and I'm one to know. Yeah.

• 30:41Robert Evans?

  So on their way out of the area, the delegation actually runs into one of the gatos. This guy, we talked about him a little bit earlier, Tu Abalau, who was driving back into camp in his Chevy truck, quote, "wearing a cross necklace and a cowboy hat, which really must have pissed off the father." Like, you're wearing a fucking cross while you're do- come on, man.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  In a Chevy.

• 31:03Robert Evans?

  Take it off to do the slavery stuff at least.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  It feels like it's on purpose at this point. He's mocking them.

• 31:10Robert Evans?

  Right, right. Like, yeah, I feel kind of like you're just insulting the faith here. So they run into this guy, Abalau, who's driving back to camp. He's got his cross and cowboy hat on, and Resende questions him about the mistreatment of the workers. And the gatos like, "I don't use violence. I just use energy to keep my workers in line, right? Just energy, you know? Kinetic energy."

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Energy, the jazz hands.

• 31:33Robert Evans?

  It's not hitting. It's kinetic energy. Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:38Robert Evans?

  He insisted, quote, "They're nasty goats and vagabonds that take my money, then disappear into the forest." And he bragged that just 16 out of 408 workers on the ranch had fled and gotten away that year. One unsuccessful fugitive was in the back of his truck when the investigators found it. Abalau insisted the man had been eating more than he could afford and thus couldn't be freed. Again, now he's eaten too much. We can't just let this guy go, right?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  We can't let this man be eating and sitting in- no.

• 32:08Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 32:10Robert Evans?

  This is a lot that they found, and the delegation, they they put together enough info on this trip that it forces the state police to open an investigation. So police officers come in and they talk with laborers, they talk with the gatos, with Volkswagen contractors, and they make a report, which they send to the state security chief. And the state security chief writes a letter to the governor in late 1983, which concluded that the gatos, quote, "treat their contracted workers like slaves."

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 32:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, so that's that's good. That's pretty, pretty direct.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 32:43Robert Evans?

  The security chief is a guy named Arnaldo Filho, who concluded that VW wasn't directly guilty of any criminal action, but that it had responsibility for what had happened by omission. And he says, quote, "It's impossible that everything investigated inside the limits of its property occurred without any knowledge or action on its part." And I might say, so why isn't he responsible? Why doesn't he have any responsibility here? Right? Like, that kinda seems like you're responsible if you, like, knew what was happening and

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 33:15Robert Evans?

  You had the resources to have stopped it and you chose not to.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:19Robert Evans?

  But, yeah.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  It seems a little more active than, yeah, just not, you know, not disclosing. Uh huh.

• 33:27Robert Evans?

  It seems like pretty damning to me.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 33:30Robert Evans?

  But, you know, I'm not an expert on Brazilian law, so I suspect this is just partly one of those things where it's like, it's probably a mix of corruption and also, well, if I go too far, they might sue me and he's kind of a little bit of a coward. I don't know. That's kind of my interpretation of it, is he doesn't wanna, like, go too far, you know?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 33:50Robert Evans?

  And maybe get out of pocket here. But, yeah, that's partly me, kind of, um...

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Guessing, parsing.

• 33:56Robert Evans?

  Drawing that out.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:58Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. I think that's like a fair conclusion here. So, several weeks after this all happens, the father gathers with a group of bishops in the state capital, along with the governor, who we talked about earlier, Barballo. And Barballo makes a public statement during this gathering that his office is now looking into the case, which would be referred, once he makes a conclusion, to the federal prosecutor's office. So he's like, "Hey, I'm taking this seriously. Uh, once my people come to a conclusion, we will send this up the ladder so it can be prosecuted, you know, at the highest possible level." And this was a lie. I think it was just a delaying tactic.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Okay, you said so, uh huh, like you really meant it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:40Robert Evans?

  Yeah. They don't do shit. A full year later, the ranch is still operating and no action has been taken against VW or her subsidiaries. There's no evidence that he had his office refer anything to the federal prosecutor's office. I think he just did this to buy time.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or he forgot about it. Maybe he forgot.

• 34:59Robert Evans?

  Or he forgot about it. He's a busy man, you know?

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 35:03Robert Evans?

  Right. Look, you can't, you can't keep track of all of the slavery happening in your state, right? Like, that's just-

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Obviously.

• 35:10Robert Evans?

  An unreasonable ask.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  There's so many trees to cut down. That's just one-

• 35:14Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Right part of it all that I gotta cut, yeah.

• 35:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah. People can hide in forests, people can hide burning people to death in the forests. You know, it's just too much work for one man and all of his employees. So in August of 1984, there's another delegation sent to the ranch, a group of state labor officials visit, and they conclude that nothing meaningful has changed, that there's been no improvement in conditions, that workers are still basically being treated as slaves by the gattos. And they further conclude that Volkswagen's ranch was, quote, "a snapshot of all the other farms in the region, where humble and illiterate laborers were easy prey for unscrupulous recruiters eyeing profits, often with the complacency of the farms' owners." Still-

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:56Robert Evans?

  Nothing gets done, no further steps are taken. By this point, the governor has moved on from being the governor to the senate, which is probably why he never referred the case to the state at all. He was delaying because he was like, "I'm not gonna have this job, I don't need this heat, I'm just going to like, wait until I can go do something else."

• 36:14Speaker 01

  The shuffle, the Nazi shuffle. He's doing that into a new, yeah.

• 36:17Robert Evans?

  The Nazi shuffle.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:19Robert Evans?

  Years later, he's asked, like, "Hey, why didn't you do anything about this?" And he's like, "I don't remember this at all." "You're saying I said something? I promised to refer people to prosecute something? That doesn't sound like me."

• 36:29Speaker 01

  So he did forget. He forgot.

• 36:32Robert Evans?

  Doing my job? No.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 36:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, it must have been some other governor. So, two months after this 1984, this is the second delegation to visit the ranch, state police finally arrest one of the gattos, Abalau, after investigations on two separate farms unrelated to the Volkswagen farm turned up another 107 enslaved workers working for this guy. The report named that other gatto, Chico, who'd provided workers for Volkswagen's farm too, but they couldn't find him to prosecute.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I remember Chico.

• 37:02Robert Evans?

  Right, so these guys, one of them is now being prosecuted, the other they just can't find. Interest in the case dies down after this. Chico is investigated again two years later, in July of 1986, under suspicion of trafficking workers in a nearby region, but again, nothing comes of the investigation. By 1986 Volkswagen is kind of looking at their balance sheet and they're like, "This isn't making us any money," right? And it never really does. This is not a profitable enterprise.

• 37:32Robert Evans?

  I kind of think the point was never for it to be super profitable. They would have liked that. I think the point is Volkswagen's in business in Brazil and the military junta wants companies doing stuff like this. So I think there's a large portion of where their interest in this is less the money it makes directly and more the relationship it helps them build with the dictatorship. That's kind of my interpretation here.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, it's like, you know, being paid in exposure via many people's lives and livelihoods.

• 38:00Robert Evans?

  Right, that's exactly it.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:02Robert Evans?

  Yeah, speaking of paid in exposure, we're not paid in exposure. We're paid by our advertisers and let's hear from them now.

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• 39:43Robert Evans?

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• 39:54Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So, in 1986 Volkswagen closes down their operation. They sell off their assets. They are cutting bait.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  In 86?

• 40:04Robert Evans?

  Yeah, 86. This does not mean the workers who'd been enslaved there get freed, right? Because these guys are property of the gattos, who still considered these men indebted to them. So the ranch workforce is sold.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:15Robert Evans?

  And this is very much a chattel slavery moment where to try to get as much money as they can out of this, these gattos are splitting up their labor force, in some cases, splitting up family members in order to auction workers off to the highest bidder.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Oh. In 86?

• 40:31Robert Evans?

  86.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  I was just like orienting myself.

• 40:34Robert Evans?

  86, they're splitting up families in a slave auction to get rid of these Volkswagen fucking laborers.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  For no profit.

• 40:42Robert Evans?

  Yeah, for, yeah, I mean Volkswagen isn't making, the gattos are making bank. Don't get me wrong here.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Well, at least somebody.

• 40:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, fine, yeah, yeah, at least. One worker, Raoul, is separated from his brothers. He later told The Washington Post, "I can still see my brothers being put on the back of a truck and taken away from me." For the Post's reporting, quote, "Raoul said he spent the next four months captive until a farmer helped him escape. He found his way back home to his brothers, who had also managed to flee. But Raoul discovered that his younger brother was not the same. Over the years, his brother receded further into his trauma. Today, he no longer speaks. He only nods and sways."

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 41:19Robert Evans?

  That's great. Good, good stuff.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 41:22Robert Evans?

  All worth it for beef, killing the rainforest?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Did they even get to the cows part of all this? Or were, did they just?

• 41:30Robert Evans?

  They've got cows. It's just not very profitable compared to how much it costs.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:34Robert Evans?

  The real reason they're doing this is because it makes the government more inclined to give VW other things they want. I don't think Volkswagen's primary interest is directly profiting from this, right? Mm-hmm. Right. So for decades after the ranch closed its doors, the father continued to collect accounts of former enslaved laborers. He eventually documents 69 alleged victims whose stories range from 1977 to 1987. Here are some relevant examples from the document he puts together. Quote, "We worked Monday to Monday, often without eating," one man said. "They promised to kill us." Another laborer, Jose de Silvia, 29, of Annapolis, says, "They stomped on a laborer, broke his teeth, brought him to the hospital and put him back to work in the jungle."

• 42:19Robert Evans?

  Oh, my God. Yeah. Three men made an account in 1989 after escaping and told Rizende, quote, "They tied up a man and beat him in the forest, leaving him naked there." Another survivor, Edavan Dias Alancar, told the priest, "They have a cave where they kill people and throw the bodies in." Oh, my God. Cool stuff. Yeah. Volkswagen. They got a cave. Wow, New Beetle, driving you wild. Volkswagen, we got a cave for corpses. Yeah. We got a cave. Woo. Look, here at Volkswagen, we know that people are concerned about our history and the slave laborers that were mass murdered in concentration camps in Europe.

• 43:02Robert Evans?

  And we promise that'll never happen again. We have a cave for the corpses now, you know? A wine cave. It's the same thing, but for bodies. We're learning. We're growing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So much better than a death camp. I mean, my God, a death cave? Come on. It's a roof. It's got a roof. It's got a roof. It is a roof. So the father documented everything he could. But again, even after this ranch closes, he has very little hope that any punitive action would ever be taken. And it almost doesn't. It's not until late 2019 that a state prosecutor in Brazil reopened an investigation on the federal slave labor division into what had happened at Volkswagen's ranch.

• 43:47Robert Evans?

  And he engages Rizende, who had to spend weeks traveling around rural communities, finding witnesses who would be able to come back on the record and talk again. About what they didn't do, right? Because they need to have people who are willing to like show up in court and talk about it.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00Robert Evans?

  A lot of these people died at this point. This is like, this is a difficult effort for a man who's not young. You know, this priest is not a young man anymore and he's got to really go around and, and find these people, pull them out of, you know, obscurity so that they can attempt to force some sort of accountability.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:18Robert Evans?

  And they are somewhat successful here. The case does not move rapidly. Again, I said it starts in 2019 and in 2022, they finally wind up in court. And a lot of these survivors have a chance to testify. Now Volkswagen had been in the process. They had just been negotiating and admitted wrongdoing and like working with the military junta. Like this is a thing that had happened not long before that, but they're not willing to admit that they had anything to do with this slave labor plantation or anything to do with like the work of these gatos. They gave up after months of negotiations with the labor ministry and refused to pay $30 million in reparations demanded by the government for their past collaborations.

• 45:02Robert Evans?

  In 2020, the company had signed a conduct adjustment agreement with the public prosecutor's office, acknowledging that it had supported the regime and several human rights violations, but admitting to the enslavement of laborers on their isolated ranch was a bridge too far. The case finally comes to trial in 2025, right? Like they're, they're starting, there's some testimony and whatnot, but like it, it doesn't shake out until this year. This is all reaching its conclusion very recently.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  This is, I, yeah. The evils you usually describe, they are evils, but and often, you know, there are echoes we're feeling now. But this is, this is now.

• 45:39Robert Evans?

  Yeah, this is right now that this is coming to some kind of conclusion.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  This is right now.

• 45:45Robert Evans?

  Quote from the Post.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 45:46Robert Evans?

  The first person to testify was Volkswagen's representative, Jose Tirow. He said that the company didn't monitor human rights as rigidly in those days, but that it had investigated the allegations at the time and didn't identify any irregularity. Then one by one, the laborers came to the stand. "We were sold," said Raul Batista de Souza. "We slept under a black plastic sheet," said Pedro Vasconcelos. "They were all armed. We had to work," said Jose Viana Nunes. Finally, Rizende, who'd come from across the country, rose to testify. The priest hadn't slept much the night before and had woken angry. How could they have permitted this crime he invented that morning and continued to have permitted it? The court ultimately ruled against Volkswagen,

• 46:28Robert Evans?

  ordering them to pay 165 million BRL for collective moral damages. Volkswagen still denies any wrongdoing and, last I said, are appealing the case. And for an example of like how hideously company officials have refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing, there's a very good article by DW Deutsche Wel, which is like a German publication, by Astrid de Oliveira. Brazilian prosecutors summoned VW over slavery allegations. This is from 2022. Quote, "The Swiss agronomist and former manager of the cattle farm in Santana de Araguaia, Friedrich Bruegger," this is the guy we talked about earlier. This is like the dude that met with Rizende when the delegation showed up.

• 47:09Robert Evans?

  "Describes the allegations that VW engaged in modern slavery as complete nonsense. As if there were nothing more important today than improving the past," he told a reporter.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 47:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like it's, it's, it's pretty hideous. He says, "The responsibility of a company ends somewhere. When there are over 1,000 men in one room, things aren't always gentle. That's obvious, especially in the middle of a jungle." The issue isn't stuff that's happening in a room, for one thing.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no. You were clearing the trees. It wasn't in the middle of the jungle. It was a, it was a field with cows.

• 47:44Robert Evans?

  It was the jungle, man. Like, yeah, like it's, it's so fucked up. Like the, this fucking guy Bruegger needs to, I mean, he needs to be locked up in a fucking cage somewhere.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:57Robert Evans?

  These are the kind of things that people really need to pay for more often. Like the, the fact that, that 2001 law in Brazil where they're like, "We can take all of your assets if we find you holding slaves." Like, that's a good start, but they need to go, like especially Germany needs to go further for guys like this. There's another really infuriating quote from this motherfucker from a Washington Post article that I just have to read to you. The brutality that happened, of course, doesn't surprise me at all. "The Brazilian is a bad person," he said in the 2017 interview with a German reporter. He blamed the laborers for their own debts and defended the gatos' alleged use of violence. "To keep a crowd under control, they have to show a certain amount of strength." Wow.

• 48:42Robert Evans?

  I mean, he's Swiss, but still not beating the Nazi allegations, my man. Wow. Holy shit, dude. Wow.

• 48:50Robert Evans?

  So that's cool, you know? Yeah. And that's more or less where we are. The court ruled against Volkswagen. They are appealing. They have not admitted wrongdoing as of yet. Right. In 2016, as part of their long reconciliation effort, Volkswagen engaged at the urging of the Brazilian state. The car company hired a historian named Christopher Kuper to write a report on the company's activities during the dictatorship. And this is, as I said, they're not copping to the slavery. They did admit in 2020 to having worked to like punish and put in concentration camps and whatnot, like labor organizer, like they helped the Brazilian state prosecute labor organizers. Right. Often viciously, and they admitted to that, right? They haven't admitted to this, but as a part of that, that other reconciliation effort,

• 49:35Robert Evans?

  they bring in this historian. And Kuper, he writes a good report. He's not quite willing to say, yeah, they definitely enslaved people. He says that in like a more academic, kind of less legally actionable term. Quote, "Volkswagen strictly monitored operations. Pasture cleaning, fencing, deforestation, all done under slave conditions. Contractors were only paid once the work was in order. The company couldn't not know how laborers were treated. Ignorance is not credible. It's absolutely impossible, as the ranch was orderly and efficiently run. Workers were surveilled at all times by armed security, who weren't directly employed by the automaker, but were following a set of directives established by VW.

• 50:18Robert Evans?

  Managers later talked their way out of trouble by emphasizing they were not responsible for the treatment of laborers employed by the subcontractors, even as they bragged to the media that "full-time workers employed directly by VW lived very well by local standards." Copper concluded Volkswagen farm managers were certainly aware of the realities of the rural labor market, the exploitative practices of the gattos and the treatment of the itinerant labor force as second class. These men got no reliable shelter, no sanitation, no proper medical care. Instead of fixing this, management kept supporting the gattos. His ultimate conclusion is that while Volkswagen never gave the orders to enslaver abused workers, it quote, "took no action to mitigate inhumane conditions and was absolutely aware of how its contractors were performing their duty."

• 51:04Robert Evans?

  And yeah, that's the story.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Wow. So I guess maybe don't buy Volkswagen?

• 51:11Robert Evans?

  Maybe don't buy a Volkswagen. I don't know, man. Again, good luck finding it. Like, buy a used car, I guess. Although like used car dealers are also sketchy in different ways, but.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, there are several ways you can, you know, take out a window here or there.

• 51:25Robert Evans?

  I'm not going to tell you the right way to live ethically under capitalism, but uh, bad.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 51:32Robert Evans?

  Bad Volkswagen, bad. Yeah.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Wow. This is so like, so more recent than I think my, my spine was prepared for.

• 51:43Robert Evans?

  It's shocking, right?

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Woo!

• 51:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, same.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 51:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I, I had this. This is a friend of mine who I'm not going to name because they're a friend and I don't name friends on the podcast because that's a bad idea.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  And you have none, okay?

• 51:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and I have none. No, they just brought this up to me in person. Like, did you know that Volkswagen had a slave plantation in Brazil in the fucking eighties? I was like, no, I didn't know that.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 52:04Robert Evans?

  That's pretty fucked up.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 52:06Robert Evans?

  And now you know about it.

• 52:07Speaker 01

  And now I know about it.

• 52:08Robert Evans?

  So great.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  And now you all know about it.

• 52:10Robert Evans?

  Now you all know about it.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  What do we do with it? You know, now that we know?

• 52:15Robert Evans?

  I don't know. Somebody should probably like, you know, that guy we kept talking about, that Swiss dude, he should probably get charged with something. Bruegger?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Cause he's still around, right?

• 52:27Robert Evans?

  He's still around? Last I checked, I don't know, maybe he died recently, but he was around like 2022, I think.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 52:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Somebody go yell at him or something at least. Fuck, I don't know. I don't know how to fix this.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess that's not our problem. Yeah.

• 52:43Robert Evans?

  Maggie, you want to plug anything?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Well, yes, this, this was lovely. Uh, I learned unfortunately so much about our current state of the world. And, uh, yeah, uh, my other show, Amy's Dead and Dream House, it's on Nebula, because yeah, it also deals with topics, I would say probably nothing as, as, as grandiose as, uh, current, uh, you know, labor infractions. Um, but it does do it with misogyny, uh, depression, getting misdiagnosed, friend breakups, you know, lesser evils in the, in the grand scale of things. But, uh, yeah, you can hop over there, check it out. Uh, have a beautiful, wonderful time. I have some wonderful guests, wonderful guests that I've been on this podcast,

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Jamie Loftus, friend of the pod, and yeah, YouTube essays at my name, one about copaganda, uh, coming out soon. And that's it, man. Yeah, I think I'm just gonna eat chocolate, or maybe, I will eat ethical chocolate the rest of the entire day, I think is what I'm gonna be doing.

• 53:50Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I will say, folks, maybe avoid Haribo. Uh, if you don't know, they, they've got a pretty rough human rights, the, the, the gummy bear company, not a, not a great, uh, history.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  I could not tell from your tone earlier, yeah, that was it.

• 54:07Robert Evans?

  No, that's, that's not a joke. They allegedly still rely on slave labor to harvest carnalba wax.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  To this day?

• 54:14Robert Evans?

  Yeah, there's a documentary released in 2017, which showed that Brazilian carnalba pickers live in like horrific conditions without access to like clean food or water and receive, I, I think it's like maybe $12 a day. And it, and it's, I think it's like a similar sort of like debt pannage system in a lot of cases. It's maybe not quite as bad as it used to be, but it's, it's pretty ugly.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Sounds bad. Put those gummy bears the fuck down. If they're in your hands currently.

• 54:43Robert Evans?

  Maybe it's gotten better, but it just don't get it from Haribo. I don't know. I don't know where you should get your gummy bears, folks.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Again, that's not your job.

• 54:50Robert Evans?

  Just look into it. Read about Haribo, you know?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 54:54Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I don't know.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:57Robert Evans?

  Just lick sugar from a bag.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Straight from the bag.

• 55:00Robert Evans?

  That's probably ethical. Yeah. Woo. All right. Well, thanks, man. Bye, everybody.

• 55:09Speaker 05

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedi.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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