Bolivian seamstresses in Brazil rebel against 17-hour days

17-hour days, no days off and payment of 1.50 reais (30 cents) per garment. These were the working conditions to which Dilma Chilaca was subjected when she arrived at Brazil. “When you have nothing, you have to keep quiet,” says.

This 41-year-old Bolivian seamstress, originally from Potosí, now owns her own workshop in a humid basement on the outskirts of São Paulo where Andean music mixes with the murmur of sewing machines.

After a years-long struggle against precariousness, Chilaca demands better working conditions for seamstresses. “I learned to say no, businessmen have to understand that we have family”he tells EFE, while he finishes sewing with agile fingers 20 shorts stacked on one side.

Labor exploitation affects Latin American migrants who, like Chilaca, arrive in Brazil without papers and encounter the language barrier and informality. This year, more workers in slavery-like situations have been rescued since 2009 (2,847 to date).

Although the majority of the victims are Brazilian, authorities have released 965 foreigners in the last ten years, including 331 Bolivians, many of them employed in the textile industry, according to official data obtained by EFE.

Chilaca was not “rescued” and he didn’t seek to be either. Exploited or not, her priority was to bring her children to Brazil and work as hard as it took to achieve it.

His usual day went from 7:00 in the morning to midnight, but sometimes it lasted until 2:00 in the morning to deliver the clothes on time. If he did not do so, the owner of the workshop deducted a third of the value. He earned three times more for each piece sold to a textile company.

“I didn’t feel tired thinking about my children, but now I say to myself: ‘My God, it was a lot of hours.’”remember.

Stories of abuse are recurrent within the Bolivian community of São Paulo, which numbers about 100,000 people. Lidia García, 46 years old and originally from La Paz, worked without pay for months to return to the owner of her workshop what she said she had paid for her bus ticket from Bolivia.

As “warranty” of the payment of that debt, the employer also confiscated his identity documents. Meanwhile, García and her husband had to share a small room on the upper floor of the workshop with nine other people.

After complaining to the police, they got the boss to give them back half of what she owed them and ran away in search of something better.

Break the cycle of exploitation

Since those beginnings, García and Chilaca have tried to climb the ranks in the textile chain, opening their own workshops to sell directly to warehouses, but it is not easy.

“I need capital to create my own clothing line”says García, who receives about 18 reais for a set that can be sold for 150 reais in stores.

The two regularly go to the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Women (Cemir), an association made up of 280 women, of which around one 70% has suffered labor exploitation, according to its founder Soledad Requena, from Peru. “Brazilian legislation is advanced, but much remains on paper”says Requena.

The workforce of labor inspectors is the smallest in almost three decades and a reflection of this is that the number of people rescued has also fallen, from 6,025 in 2007 to 2,481 in 2022.

In Cemir’s modest office, women help each other and take courses in entrepreneurship and labor rights. Chilaca no longer works on Sundays and says that she has learned to negotiate: from 1.5 reales per garment before, she now charges an average of 14 reales.

One day he even confronted a businessman who had invited the seamstresses who supply him to have coffee. “Why do you pay us so little? We are human beings“, He snapped.

She no longer sews for him, but she has just launched a clothing line made from aguayo, the thick, multicolored fabric used by indigenous women in Bolivia. “My dream is to be an entrepreneur,” she says, dressed in a T-shirt on which she has embroidered a heart in Andean colors.