Boycott of Gaucho wine is comfortable relief for guilty consciences – 03/03/2023 – Cozinha Bruta

People who don’t even drink national wine are boycotting Salton, Aurora and Garibaldi.

This is not at all about defending the companies that outsource workers in conditions analogous to slavery in Bento Gonçalves, in the Serra Gaúcha. Let them deal with their lawyers.

What causes some astonishment is the intensity of the repercussions of this particular case. And, in particular, how it reverberates in a certain half-intellectualized, half-engaged middle class.

The liberation of workers in the vineyards of Rio Grande do Sul is far from being something exceptional in the minds of the Brazilian business community.

From 1995 to 2022, Brazilian authorities found 60,251 people in a slave or similar regime, points out the federal government’s Labor Inspection Portal. Companies the size of JBS, Cosan and Cutrale got screwed up badly, tangled up with suppliers of medieval labor notions.

None of these occurrences so provoked the indignation of the urban literate elite. After all, the misdeeds took place in the carnauba groves of Ceará, in the bowels of Minas Gerais, in the old west of the deforested Amazon.

Nothing to identify with, nothing at all. The case of vineyards is different.

Wine, pardon the commonplace, symbolizes status. It is almost irresistible to make a scandal out of the discrepancy between the Tuscan presumption of the “gringos” of the Serra Gaúcha and their monoculture of plantation houses and slave quarters.

Removing the stain of slave labor from consumer habits is a very difficult, if not impossible, mission. Do you know how steak, coffee, orange juice, chocolate, garlic, Iranian pistachios, shirts sewn in Bangladesh or Maranhão were produced? Do you really want to know?

Folha conducted a poll with readers about the effectiveness of boycotting articles contaminated by lack of ethics. I write before the result comes out and, frankly, I ignore how such actions impact companies that do not have labor justice in their necks.

Now, it works like a beauty for those who boycott. It’s too easy to stop buying Salton and put a Chilean in the bag. A great sign of virtue, as nothing is worth boycotting in silence – even more so if you are a supermarket chain wanting to look good in the portrait.

The boycott is a convenient way to alleviate the guilty consciences of the Brazilian urban elites.

The identification with the winegrowers from Rio Grande do Sul is greater than we would like to admit, hence the unprecedented commotion.

They are white, descendants of immigrants committed to building a small Europe with the whip singing on the shoulders of Bahians. Does anyone see any resemblance to São Paulo?

Just like the Italian settlers from the South, we still haven’t let go of the prerogatives of Sinhozinho. We have a service elevator, swarms of bikers on hand and servants who, depending on the house, cannot use the boss’s dishes.

Confronting all this ugliness hurts, but we’ll need to if we really want to start fixing things. It would help with the task if each one carried the weight of their own conscience.

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