Article URL: https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-07-10/woman-rescued-in-brazil-after-being-enslaved-for-55-years-by-three-generations-of-the-same-family.html Comments URL…

The domestic worker, who entered the household at the age of seven and never received wages or vacations, is set to be compensated by her employers We’ll call her Maria, the most common female name in Brazil, because authorities have not disclosed her real name in order to protect her identity. Maria, who was sent to work as a live-in domestic servant for a family at the age of seven, has just been rescued at 62 in the northeastern city of Fortaleza by Brazil’s Labor Prosecutor’s Office after spending more than half a century in slave-like conditions — with no pay, no vacation and never having learned to read or write. The domestic worker was exploited by three generations of the same family, an unusual but not unique case. She was still waking up at 4:30 a.m. to prepare breakfast and get children ready for school. Although the family has agreed to compensate her, Maria, who lived in near-total isolation and without contact with her relatives, will remain with her employers, while authorities try to locate her family. Statistics suggest that Maria was undoubtedly poor and, most likely, Black. That is the profile of the more than six million Brazilian women who care for children, cook, wash, iron, and clean in households other than their own. They only won full labor rights a little more than a decade ago. Maria did not handle money, had no bank account, and no friends. She had never gone to the beach by herself. “She lived in a kind of prison,” Maria Neuzeli, a prosecutor specializing in the eradication of domestic slave labor, told local media. “She didn’t know how to get around the city, she was afraid of the violence outside. And because she was given clothes, food, and shelter, she felt she was being paid for her work.” Specialists explain that because the exploitation begins in childhood, victims are often unaware of the seriousness of the abuse. Moreover, they know no world beyond that household. Maria’s mother had also worked for the same family. The family accused of keeping her in conditions of slavery is white and has the surname Brasil — a detail loaded with symbolism for a form of exploitation that specialists regard as a legacy of slavery, which was abolished in Brazil in 1888. The current employers, the third generation of the Brasil family, have reached an agreement with labor prosecutors under which they will purchase an apartment worth $30,000 for the victim, “fully furnished and equipped with household appliances,” according to a statement from the Labor Prosecutor’s Office. They will also pay her an additional $10,000 in compensation.