Comprodo Chattel Slavery and Colonialism: How Brazil Still Buys and Sells Its People

By Direct Democratic Communist Confederation 

We are told that slavery ended in Brazil in 1888. We are told that citizenship, the vote, and the right to quit a job make us free. We are told that Carnival is culture, remittances are development, and migration is opportunity.

All of this is a lie.

What ended in 1888 was private slaveholding—one person owning another directly. What began was something larger, more efficient, and more profitable: Comprodo Chattel Slavery and Colonialism. In this system, the state itself treats its inhabitants as movable assets, openly bought and sold across borders and within the nation, for the profit of capital and the stability of the state. The vote does not challenge this market. Quitting a job does not escape it. We are still chattel. The only difference is the paperwork.

1. What Is Comprodo Chattel Slavery?

Before 1888, Brazil had private slaveholding. A plantation owner bought a human being with a bill of sale. That human was chattel—movable property, like a farm animal or a wagon. They could be sold, whipped, bred, moved, and discarded at will. The state enforced this system but did not typically own the slaves itself.

After 1888, formal ownership ended. But the commodification of human beings did not. Instead, the state took over as the indirect owner. How? By controlling the conditions under which a person must sell their labor, their body, or their cultural performance to survive. No land. No welfare. No jobs except those that turn you into a product. The state arranges the market. The state takes its cut. And the state calls you a citizen.

But citizenship under these conditions is just indirect formal ownership. You are still an asset. You are still movable. You are still sold.

2. Voting and Quitting Do Not Free You

The common objection is: "But you can vote! You can quit your job and find another!"

This objection misses the point entirely.

l   Voting does not change the market structure. You vote for a candidate who promises jobs, then that candidate signs a labor treaty with Portugal or the United States, formalizing the export of Brazilian workers under semi-servile conditions. You vote again. Nothing changes. The vote is a pressure release valve, not an emancipation.

l  Quitting does not remove you from the chattel pool. A Brazilian domestic worker in Lisbon who quits an abusive employer does not become free. She returns to Brazil—back into the inventory of movable assets waiting for the next buyer. Freedom to change buyers is not freedom from being a chattel.

A farm animal cannot vote. Neither could a 19th-century slave. But a modern Carnival worker can vote. That does not stop her body from being priced and sold to foreign tourists. The vote is a management tool. The chattel structure remains. 

3. The Market Is Open and Visible

This is not a "virtual" market or a "figurative" comparison. The buying and selling of Brazilian human beings happens openly, in plain sight. You just have to know where to look.

Remittances: Revenue from Exported Humans

Brazil's central bank reports remittance inflows—money sent home by Brazilians working abroad. In recent years, this has reached billions of dollars annually. This is not aid. This is not charity. This is revenue from exported human assets. The state facilitates the export through visa agreements, labor treaties, and deliberate policies of landlessness and unemployment at home. Then it counts the money as foreign exchange.

Carnival: The Internal Auction Block

Carnival is advertised globally as "authentic Brazil"—rhythm, sensuality, near-naked bodies. The tourism industry packages Black and mixed-race Brazilians as exotic spectacles. Hotels and samba schools pay performers poverty wages while corporations pocket the tourist dollars. The state licenses and promotes this system. The foreign tourist buys an experience priced around the Brazilian body. That is an auction. That is chattel commerce.

Labor Recruitment: Open Catalogs of Human Inventory

Travel to any European labor recruitment website. Search for "Brazilian caregivers" or "Brazilian domestic workers." You will find listings with photos, ages, marital status, and sometimes even weight and skin color. This is not different in structure from a 19th-century slave auction advertisement. The language has changed. The transaction has not.

International Dating and Sex Tourism

Brazilian women are marketed globally as a category: "Brazilian brides." Dating sites offer tiered memberships. Travel agencies package "romance tours." In Fortaleza, Rio, and Salvador, sex tourism operates openly, with Brazilian bodies priced by nationality, race, and age. The state looks away. Sometimes it facilitates. The market is open.

4. The State as Market Maker

In pre-1888 Brazil, the state was the enforcer of private slaveholding. It protected the property rights of the slave owner. It did not typically own the slaves itself.

In Comprodo Chattel Slavery, the state has become the market maker. Compare:

The state decides who can migrate, who can work, who can be displayed. It decides who gets land and who does not. It decides which labor agreements to sign. It decides how to promote tourism. In doing so, it arranges the market in human beings. It does not need to own you directly. It only needs to control the terms under which you must sell yourself.

That is indirect ownership. That is chattel slavery by another name.

5. Why "Comprodo"?

The term Comprodo comes from the Latin comprōdō—to buy and sell as a unified act. It captures the essence of the system: humans are simultaneously purchased (by employers, tourists, recruiters) and sold (by the state, by families, by the workers themselves under duress). The transaction is the same. The commodity is the same. Only the legal fiction has changed.

Comprodo Chattel Slavery names the internal relation: the state to its inhabitants as movable assets.  

Comprodo Colonialism names the external relation: Brazil selling its people to the Global North, just as a colony once sold raw materials to the metropole.

Together, they describe a complete system of human commodification—open, visible, and denied.

6. The Difference Between Then and Now Is Degree, Not Kind

A critic will say: "But a 19th-century slave could be killed without legal consequence. A 19th-century slave could be separated from their children forever. A 19th-century slave had no legal personhood at all. You cannot compare that to a Carnival dancer or a migrant domestic worker."

This objection confuses severity with structure. The structure is the same: human beings as movable assets, priced and traded in an open market, with the state as the ultimate arranger. The degree of violence may have changed. The whip has been replaced by debt. The auction block has been replaced by a recruitment website. The plantation has been replaced by a foreign employer's apartment. But the underlying relation—human as chattel—remains intact.

If you doubt this, ask yourself: Would a Brazilian domestic worker in Lisbon be able to stop being a Brazilian domestic worker in Lisbon without returning to poverty, landlessness, and the same system that sent her there in the first place? If the answer is no, then she is not free. She is managed chattel.

7. What Is to Be Done?

Naming the system is the first step. Comprodo Chattel Slavery and Colonialism operates in plain sight because we have no language to describe it. We call remittances "development." We call Carnival "culture." We call labor migration "opportunity." These are euphemisms for the same old commerce in human flesh.

The second step is to refuse the euphemisms. When you see a tourism advertisement featuring Brazilian bodies, recognize it as an invitation to purchase chattel. When you read remittance statistics, recognize them as revenue from exported humans. When you hear a politician celebrate labor agreements with Europe or the United States, ask: Who is being sold? And who is collecting the price?

The third step—the only step that ends the system—is to break the state's ability to treat inhabitants as movable assets. That means land commons. That means democratic participatory communism. That means the abolition of labor export as a national economic strategy. That means the end of tourism as the commodification of bodies.

Until then, we remain what we have always been: chattel. The vote does not free us. Quitting does not free us. Only the destruction of the market in human beings will do that.

Conclusion

Comprodo Chattel Slavery and Colonialism is not a metaphor. It is a description of reality. Brazil—and much of Latin America—continues to sell its people openly, just as it once sold its land and resources. The state is the market maker. Citizenship is indirect ownership. The vote is a management tool. The open market in human beings has never closed. It has only changed its signage.

We called it emancipation. We called it abolition. We called it development.

We were wrong.