ARGENTINA: BUENOS AIRES CRACKS DOWN ON "SLAVE-LABOR" SHOPS AFTER FIRE KILLS SIX BOLIVIAN IMMIGRANTS.
A deadly March 30 fire in a Buenos Aires sweatshop threw public light on the thousands of Bolivian immigrants living clandestinely in Argentina who work under slave-labor conditions. When the government conducted a crackdown on illegal operations in April, many Bolivians protested that they wanted to keep working, but with legalized status and humane conditions. In the following weeks, the government began efforts to normalize the immigration status of undocumented people living in Argentina.
The March 30 fire in the outlying Buenos Aires neighborhood of Caballito killed six people inside a textile factory. Four children were among the dead, two of whom were three years old, another was 10, and the fourth was 15, according to Federal Police. The other two victims were Bolivian women between the ages of 25 and 45.
More than 4,000 Bolivians work in slave conditions
The blaze illuminated a large network of illegal factories where thousands of undocumented workers toil in conditions that federal officials characterized as "virtual slavery." In the week following the fire, the government investigated 86 shops and shut down 41 of them for hygiene or safety violations.
Officials estimated that 160 of the 1,600 shops that employ Bolivians are clandestine textile factories, in which some 4,000 people labor in semi-slavery conditions, according to Enrique Rodriguez, the Buenos Aires government officer in charge of production activities. Another 11,000 of their compatriots, according to Rodriguez's estimates, work under irregular labor conditions.
Workers' wages do not go above 400 pesos (US$133) per month and work days are as long as 15 hours, but often workers do not see their pay because the bosses threaten to turn them in to the authorities or promise to pay them all the money at once, according to Argentine newspaper Pagina 12. Many workers are contracted in Bolivia with false promises, and, once they are in Argentina, the employers subject them to extortion, using their illegal status as leverage against them.
An April 4 story in the newspaper Clarin reported that the government had, at that time, closed 18 shops where 45 families had been living. In one location, 60 people were living in 1.5 sq meter cubicles, divided only by cardboard, according to a city official. "And all were using a nauseating bathroom," she said.
Responding to reporters' questions, the official said, "What impacted me most? The fear they had of us. They are panicked that...
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