Forced Labor and Poverty in Latin America in the interwar period.

AuthorFerreras, Norberto O.

Introduction

The abolitionist movement led by European abolitionists had sharp importance to ending slavery in the 19th century. However, other forms of compulsory and captive labor relate to continued slavery by other means. In the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War, slavery was included as a problem to be solved by mutual agreement between the different countries and the new international agreements. Slavery no longer had any justification for continuing in the colonies and territories controlled by Germany were forced to abolish slavery, a task that corresponded to new tests, as in Articles 21 to 23 of the Versailles Treaty (LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1919).

After the First World War, by the League of Nations (LoN) was created by the Versailles Treaty, to shape a new system of coexistence and peaceful resolution of conflicts. It created a new paradigm in the treatment of relations between countries and in the construction of agreements related to technical and professional issues. The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 culminated in several treaties signed between the winning and the defeated states. In all treaties, clause 22 of the Convention of the Treaty of Versailles was included, which established the end of the slave, arms and liquor trade in Africa. Additional agreements on the slave trade, guns, and alcohol were signed in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Article 22 of the Versailles Treaty replaced the treaties of Berlin (1885) and Brussels (1890), eliminated the institutions they created and proposed just and humane forms of work (LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1919). (1) From the agreements established at Versailles, the International Labor Organization (ILO) also emerged. This ILO was designed to improve the general conditions of workers. Despite the abolition of slavery, there were continued problems relating to colonial labor and complaints of slave labor.

Defining Slavery and forced labor was a task that demanded the entire decade of 1920 and involved the emergence of bodies of employees and the engineering of conceptual and legal definitions.

The general question here is: the word slavery related to real working conditions in the 20th century? This question becomes relevant when we see the profusion of terms used as synonyms or equivalents. Slavery as a historical category was redefined over time. It is a category built from the legal and from Western law, but at the same time, it has been challenged from the experiences that must be included in the legal framework. At the same time, we must think about which groups of people experienced forced labor and how, in order to understand how different groups experienced poverty.

The League of Nations, the International Labor Organization and Slavery

Since its creation in 1919, the League of Nations has treated slavery as trafficking and as a system. The commitments of the LoN to abolition slavery conflicted with its other interests. One of the great ideological justification of colonization was to fight against slavery. These acted as a constant control of what happened in that area. On the road to civilization, abolitionist institutions and organizations could be inconvenient companions. On the other hand, certain institutional duplicity between LoN and the ILO created tensions by having overlapping functions. They had to carry out their tasks on a limited budget, and duplicity meant allocating money to the same tasks. Problems were faced as they appeared, became public or when pressure factors were able to mobilize the institution. Often the League itself depended on the work of others who, in turn, had their agendas. We cannot forget that the investigators were responsible for the countries that made up the LoN administration. For example, the research on sex trafficking carried out in 1924, and 1926 received the support of the American Social Hygiene Bureau (HOUSDEN 2012: 83).

Among the cases that interested the abolitionists were those linked to sexual slavery because they defied the limits of Western morality. These countries, mostly Muslims, where where the West tried to draw borders between 'civilization' and 'barbarism'. The LoN had to deal with the abolitionist pressure and with the refusals of the local administrators to accept the end of sex trafficking and the abandonment of concubinage. The way to get around the conflict was the transformation from concubinage to the polygymy system ( multiple marriages) which was seen by the West as a less objectionable practice (LOVEJOY, and HOGENDORN 1993: 251-260; and RODRIGUEZ GARCIA 2014).

To address issues related to trafficking and slavery, the LoN created a specific committee, the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children. Civil society, mainly European, had strong participation in it, imposing European standards as a universal norm. These committees included the United States, even though they were not LoN members. The American action could be official or unofficial, like the actions of the American Social Hygiene Association, which were financed by John D. Rockefeller (KNEPPER 2016: 139-140).

Other practices of trafficking or domestic labor involving children or young people actively mobilized public opinion and abolitionist groups. Three of those practices strongly impacted public opinion in the early 1920s and contributed to the approval of the LoN Slavery Convention: Vudusi or Trokosi, which had its epicenter in the Volta River region in Africa, Devadasi in India, and the Mui Tsai in China. The three can be summarized as delivering children to work in domestic and sexual services. Trokosi, or Vudusi and Devadasi, had these characteristics. Mui Tsai was closer to domestic servitude. Domestic and sexual Slavery remained the responsibility of LoN.

How people thought about slavery in the 1920's

Throughout the 1920s, it was necessary to establish the clear responsibilities of each institution when the definition of slavery was established. Once slavery was formally abolished, other forms of captivity came to light different parts of the world that had been poorly known by the West. Slavery, as a form of commodity production, and domestic and urban slavery, a by-product of the plantation system, had legally disappeared before the First World War. However, other forms of captivity and exploitation remained.

The subjection of human beings continued with other names, adapting traditions and practices to the actions of the new international organizations, colonial governments, and philanthropic associations. Because of those agreements, domestic slaves came to be called servants, concubines as secondary wives, agrarian slaves to be subject to debt, and so on, continuing to exploit and lose freedom. In these cases, we can see a direct relationship between socioeconomic status and colonial societies. If concubines were incorporated into new families, urban or rural servants were treated as subordinates. The initial debt that caused these conditions of forced labour was the extension of poverty in colonial societies, which resulted from the collapse of traditional societies, which in turn was caused by consequences of the pressures of global imperialism.

In this new situation, the League of Nations and the ILO's responsibilities needed to be established. Part XIII of the Versailles Treaty had to be defined in practice. The LoN dealt with pressure from religious and civil society associations, such as the Anti-Slavery Association (MIERS 2003b: 7), ILO met the demands of unionized workersand entrepreneurs. (2) These demands were, wages, working conditions, and sick pay, amongst others. Workers' rights were rarely extended to workers who were outside their organizations. Therefore, slavery was in an ambiguous area.

Slavery entered the LoN agenda when it was created. In 1920, at the first LoN Assembly, the Secretary-General asked for a meeting to analyze 'White Slavery", and it took place in June 1921 (LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1920: 180). The call was complemented with a questionnaire sent to all member countries, with questions about criminalized and permitted sexual practices in each country. Among the questions were, for example, whether prostitution was legal. The meeting was attended by 34 countries that recommended abolishing trafficking in women and children and their punishment. An organization was created with members of the League and advisers from feminist, religious, and hygienist associations. Another measure derived from the meeting was to change the term white slavery to trafficking in women and children (LEAGUE OF NATIONS 1921, 432-462).

The LoN approached Slavery more generally in 1922 following a New Zealand petition to pass a resolution to investigate the African situation in general, supported by the Haitian delegation. The petition was due to the British navy capturing an Ethiopian boat carrying slaves, which was considered an affront to the international community (MIERS 2003a: 73-74).

In 1922 and 1923, the League held further consultations on Slavery at this time, including indigenous labor. The reception was not reasonable, given that many countries did not even answer the questions or gave ambiguous answers. Based on this lack of engagement, the LoN leadership decided to create a commission called "Temporary Commission on Slavery" to take measures that would lead to the definitive abolition. In 1923 Nepal and Ethiopia abolished slavery and were the last two countries with legalized practice (MIERS, 2003a, 188-189). For Ethiopia, it meant joining the LON, despite the opposition from Great Britain. (3) The exciting thing is that there was still no consensual definition of what slavery was.

The Temporary Slavery Commission was recently installed in 1924 and was made up of the central colonial countries of the period: Great Britain, France, Italy, Portugal, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Along with them was an extraordinary member: ILO. (4) The members were to control each...

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