By Viviane Faver
The woman, now 46, was just eight years old when her mother handed her over, in the act of desperation, to the professor at the Patos de Minas University (UNIPAM), Dalton Cesar Milagres Rigueira. Rigueira’s mother raised her young son, and she has spent the last 38 years working for the family without getting paid or any time off. She was relegated to a life of cleanliness and even forced to marry.
The brazilian TV show, Fantástico, reported on December 20th and identified the woman as Madelena Gordiano. According to reports, she is a black woman. During captivity, Gordianus had limited liberties and remained under constant surveillance by the family. According to the anti-slavery inspector who led the enslaved woman’s rescue mission, to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Humberto Camasmie, they gave her food when she was hungry. Still, they took all other rights from her.
Authorities took Gordiano to a shelter, and psychologists and social workers are treating her, Reuters reported.
The woman was forced to marry an elderly family member so the family continues to receive her pension payment after his death.
The Labor Prosecutor’s Office investigated the case, and the Labor Prosecutor’s Office rescued her on November 27 with the help of the Federal Police, according to Brazilian news, G1 Triângulo and Alto Paranaíba. MPT inspectors found her living in a small windowless room in an apartment in Patos de Minas’s heart, a city in the interior of Minas Gerais.
“It was a room less than 3 meters long by 2 meters wide, stuffy and without ventilation,” said Camasmie.
A member of the organization that coordinated the rally, Élida Abreu, analyzes the situation as shocking and said that it signals the long tradition of racial division in Brazil.
“Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, so we still live with the remnants of that period of slavery,” said Abreu. “Black people in Brazil are still subject to inequality, segregation, violence,” she added.
Reuters said Gordiano now maintains his late husband’s pension, and officials are working to reunite her with her biological family.
Fantastico reports that about 55,000 people have been rescued from slavery in Brazil in the past 25 years. In 2019, 14 people were released from domestic slave labor, something more challenging to detect because many of these victims do not even realize that they are living in bondage.
