Global Courant
He is Chilean and suffers from a maturational delay. He was rescued along with dozens of people who lived on the property next to the pigs.
A pig farm in Río Gallegos, Santa Cruz province, was denounced for precarious working conditions. Justice ordered a series of raids and rescued 19 people. Among them was Juan Mansilla Alvarado, a Chilean who had been missing for 20 years. They investigate whether he was subjected to slave labor.
It all began after a young Venezuelan filed a complaint last November against the owners of a property located on Provincial Route 53 where a pig’s shop operates. She went to the Second Police Station and told the officers that she was working as a manager at the farm, where she lived together with the pigs that were slaughtered.
The Federal Court ordered a search and rescued 19 workers who fulfilled different functions. The owners presented themselves and set an address for the cause that continued its course, reported La Opinión Austral. The investigation was carried out by the Federal Court of Río Gallegos, in charge of Eduardo Vázquez and the secretary Carlos Cerezoli.
Sources cited by the southern media indicated that the workers, including Mansilla Alvarador, “in some cases had a bin to make their depositions, meager salaries and mistreatment, they were conditions of semi-slavery.” They fulfilled different functions both in that property and in one of the bakeries owned by a couple.
The Chilean citizen continued to work in recent months on the farm under the supervision of an administrator appointed by the federal court in Río Gallegos. But the cause was reactivated last week with the arrest of the owners for hindering the investigation by trying to communicate with Mansilla to offer him new tasks.
Police rescued last Wednesday the worker who lived in a room inside the premises. He suffers from a developmental delay and had developed a “Stockholm Syndrome”-like relationship with the owners. They told him that he was his “confidential man” and they used him to tell them information about everything that was happening inside about possible exits for the other workers.
Mansilla was rescued after a raid carried out by the Human Trafficking division of the Santa Cruz Police, at the request of the Federal Court, and thanks to the efforts of the Chilean Consul, he returned to his country by bus with a family member.
A judicial official told TN that the victim’s relatives “had no news of him and thought he had died.”
Justice was able to establish that Mansilla had arrived in Río Gallegos 20 years ago. Since then, he had lost contact with his family, from the island of Chiloé, in southern Chile. The Chilean consulate managed to contact his relatives and the man returned to his country over the weekend.
