Luis Morais
02-19-2006, 06:58 PM
It might have been a cold day in Google, when Sergey and Larry decided to whiz to Brazil in the end of January almost without notice. Just like Google Brazil itself, both arrived in Brazil dressed with shirts of the Brazilian Football (Soccer) selection, distilling information in some other language than Portuguese.
One of their first stops was Cosan, the self entitled biggest sugar-cane processing company in the world, a family-owned sugar mill company which has been implicated with environmental and human rights issues.
Despite of that, Cosan is also developing other means of generation of energy which the news have highlighted as the main interest of the Google duo in Brazil. Hmmm, does that hint that Google might be looking for a source of energy for their highly speculated but never really unveiled Google PC? Who knows? The good news would be that supposedly Brazil had started to elbow India for a place in the minds and hearts of technologists in need of a real social context to test their PC for the poor initiatives, if of course that was the drive behind their curiosity for energy production in Brazil. For those who do not know, on the fuel front, we have become completely independent from fuel imports as well, now producing all the oil and ethanol we need for the internal demand.
Anyhoo, it would be good news were not the fact that just in 2004, Cosan was penalised by the Brazilian Ministry of Work with a millionaire fine for not doing enough to curb semi-slave labour in the sugar-cane fields; a rampant practice amongst outsourced companies providing human labour to the company.
Ringleaders lure the young and poor from run-down municipalities with the promise of work, food and a place to rest their head after work and then keep these defenceless and vulnerable citizens incomunicados in farms that produce the sugar-cane for the mills. Once in a farm, they never leave as the ringleader extorts these poor souls by declaring them deeper and deeper in debt for unpaid rent, groceries bought in the farm store and anything they did not bring in their empty bags when they arrived.
Well, who am I to bore you with news from a far way country and expect you to believe me. The links are:
About the sugar-cane workers conditions in Brazil (please note that there is no reference to Cosan in the links below but to the industry as a whole):
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31768
http://www.newint.org/issue225/bitter.htm
Environmental analysis of Cosan:
http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/spiwebsite1.nsf/0/99378c64cc153f0085256fb90076555d?OpenDocument
As a result of the governmental squeeze, Cosan intensified social works in the regions where their mills are based and started to take responsibility for their outsourced employees. Since we are talking about an industry that depends on the production of alternatives, paying the fine was also made via an alternative currency: wireless computers to Sao Paulo’s police, donation of medicines to the local hospital and the opening of a training centre for the children of the sugar cane workers, something that they would surely have done a few decades before had someone asked politely.
As everyone can see from 2004 to 2005, after decades of being a victim of their outsourced labour providers the company became the good, caring community centre it is now.
Then, along came a Google spider... two of them, actually.
Tell me about mixed feelings, I still don’t know if I feel proud and happy for the attention received or just cry relentlessly every time I remember at what cost these advances in self-sustainable energy in my country were achieved. It is China again.
One of their first stops was Cosan, the self entitled biggest sugar-cane processing company in the world, a family-owned sugar mill company which has been implicated with environmental and human rights issues.
Despite of that, Cosan is also developing other means of generation of energy which the news have highlighted as the main interest of the Google duo in Brazil. Hmmm, does that hint that Google might be looking for a source of energy for their highly speculated but never really unveiled Google PC? Who knows? The good news would be that supposedly Brazil had started to elbow India for a place in the minds and hearts of technologists in need of a real social context to test their PC for the poor initiatives, if of course that was the drive behind their curiosity for energy production in Brazil. For those who do not know, on the fuel front, we have become completely independent from fuel imports as well, now producing all the oil and ethanol we need for the internal demand.
Anyhoo, it would be good news were not the fact that just in 2004, Cosan was penalised by the Brazilian Ministry of Work with a millionaire fine for not doing enough to curb semi-slave labour in the sugar-cane fields; a rampant practice amongst outsourced companies providing human labour to the company.
Ringleaders lure the young and poor from run-down municipalities with the promise of work, food and a place to rest their head after work and then keep these defenceless and vulnerable citizens incomunicados in farms that produce the sugar-cane for the mills. Once in a farm, they never leave as the ringleader extorts these poor souls by declaring them deeper and deeper in debt for unpaid rent, groceries bought in the farm store and anything they did not bring in their empty bags when they arrived.
Well, who am I to bore you with news from a far way country and expect you to believe me. The links are:
About the sugar-cane workers conditions in Brazil (please note that there is no reference to Cosan in the links below but to the industry as a whole):
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31768
http://www.newint.org/issue225/bitter.htm
Environmental analysis of Cosan:
http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/spiwebsite1.nsf/0/99378c64cc153f0085256fb90076555d?OpenDocument
As a result of the governmental squeeze, Cosan intensified social works in the regions where their mills are based and started to take responsibility for their outsourced employees. Since we are talking about an industry that depends on the production of alternatives, paying the fine was also made via an alternative currency: wireless computers to Sao Paulo’s police, donation of medicines to the local hospital and the opening of a training centre for the children of the sugar cane workers, something that they would surely have done a few decades before had someone asked politely.
As everyone can see from 2004 to 2005, after decades of being a victim of their outsourced labour providers the company became the good, caring community centre it is now.
Then, along came a Google spider... two of them, actually.
Tell me about mixed feelings, I still don’t know if I feel proud and happy for the attention received or just cry relentlessly every time I remember at what cost these advances in self-sustainable energy in my country were achieved. It is China again.