Beyond an explanation that supports itself in the rationality of capital reproduction, this article objectifies to discuss the persistence of slavery for debt in republican Brazil as the result of our political culture, which destitute the rural worker of social rights and fails to acknowledge him the statute of citizen. Analyzing the forms of compulsory work dominants in the extractive industry of Brazilian tea in Mato Grosso in the first half of the 20th century, one can realize that the slavery for debt acts as a strategy for maintenance of labor power in insalubrious working conditions which offers awful life conditions. At the same time, the choice to analyze the history of herbals in south Mato Grosso presents the reader to how invisible slavery for debt has been all over the country.
slavery for debt; Mato Grosso; extractive industry