Modern slavery
Remember Me, Rescue Me
By Matt Roper
Authentic Lifestyle Press, 2004, £5-99
Reviewed by
Derek McMillan
"I STORMED over to the blue police cabin and entered without
knocking. Inside, an inspector was lounging, watching football on a portable TV.
"‘Have you any idea what is going on out there? A
ten-year-old child is being sold to the tourists!’
"He waved me towards the door, not unkindly. ‘There’s
nothing I can do, you see, senhor. My job here is to protect the tourists’."
Matt Roper dropped out of a journalism course... in order to
become a first class journalist recording the lives of street girls in Brazil.
The book accurately records the grinding poverty which
drives these girls into prostitution and the attitude of the authorities.
‘Protecting the tourists’ includes those tourists who have come to Brazil for
the sole purpose of picking up underage girls. This is a pattern which emerges
in one country after another. As the authorities crack down in Thailand the ‘sex
tourism’ trade moves to other areas where the police will ‘protect the
tourists’.
The result is that ‘working girls’ will go to great lengths
to appear younger. The economics are simple: the gringos come to Brazil for
underage sex which is illegal in their own countries... and the gringos will pay
the highest prices. The prices are still much lower than in their own countries
and they do not risk prosecution.
The very real risk of AIDS is the price these children pay.
Many also end up addicted to drugs as a matter of deliberate policy on the part
of the rich men who control them.
In cases which he documents girls are enticed from Brazil
with promises of marriage only to find they are virtually imprisoned in European
countries and forced to work as prostitutes there – never seeing the money which
changes hands. About 75,000 girls are estimated to be ‘imprisoned’ in this way
in Europe.
All too often books and TV programs about child prostitution
are either voyeurism or they attempt to patronise the victims. Matt Roper’s book
does neither of these things. He places the blame clearly enough: "Once Recife
was the centre of the Brazilian slave trade. More than one hundred years after
the abolition of slavery very little seems to have changed. At Boa Viagem
dark-skinned girls are bought and sold on the marketplace, taken from their
homes and locked up in foreign countries. And the people who are operating this
immensely profitable trade are white Europeans".
As a journalist, Matt Roper is not required to provide a
political solution to the evils which he brilliantly exposes in this book.
However, he does make clear in the book that he believes the answer is Christian
charity.
Socialists believe in freedom of religion but recognise the
role of the church in the past in defending slavery. This is exemplified by
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America "[Slavery]
was established by decree of Almighty God... it is sanctioned in the Bible, in
both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation... it has existed in all ages, has
been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the
highest proficiency in the arts".
Likewise the Christian church remains an important
ideological pillar for capitalism, supporting the very system of exploitation
which Matt Roper is exposing. Far from rescuing the victims of exploitation its
main role has been to add to their burdens a further burden of guilt for their
‘sins’. The Catholic church has also directly assisted in the spread of AIDS by
banning condoms.
Indeed Matt Roper himself recognises the fact that for every
child who is saved from prostitution by charity – another one or two are
recruited by iron economic necessity. He instances a rural village where people
can either work in a factory producing farinha or by selling their bodies at the
border post.
The wages at the factory are so low that when there is a
drought a day’s wages will not buy a litre of water. The dangerous and degrading
‘work’ of prostitution is better paid.
He concludes: "It is always children who bear the brunt of
Brazil’s unjust society. Girls like Adeidiane, with her scarred and roughened
hands and troubling chest pains, are forced to choose between twelve hours of
backbreaking work in a sweatshop, and selling her young body in the street. It
is a choice no eleven year-old should ever have to make".
Remember Me, Rescue Me is compelling reading and the reader
is certain to remember these smallest victims of exploitation. It is a tribute
to those who, often at considerable personal risk, are trying to stem the tide
in Brazil and around the world. In the end the victims will only be rescued when
the working class take power into their own hands... we can build a better
world.
Remember Me, Rescue Me is available from
Socialist Books
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