My Family's Slave

Slavery was abolished in the United States 153 years ago,  December 6, 1865. By law at least. Decades past this date families kept owning slaves, and many still do today all over the world. In the shape of sex trafficking, where women, men and children are forced into commercial sex. Also forced labor, which keeps people as property exploited for factory work. Bonded labor, where individuals are compelled to work in order to repay a debt, unable to leave until this debt is repaid. Forced marriage and domestic servitude, where people are forced or coerced into the household. A story of domestic servitude is the one that Alex Tizon, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, told to The Atlantic.

Eudocia Tomas Pulido, or Lola, as they called her, was given as a present from his father to his mother when they still lived in the Philippines. She earned no salary whatsoever, and she worked all day long, every single day for 56 years until her death.

‘’After my mother died of leukemia, in 1999, Lola came to live with me in a small town north of Seattle. I had a family, a career, a house in the suburbs—the American dream. And then I had a slave.’’

To many United Staters, forced labor is something that's thought to take place in other countries. Human trafficking in the USA is largely assumed to be an issue related to prostitution and sexual abuse, and yes it is. Yet over 20% of the calls received by the National Human Trafficking Resource Center since 2007 have been related to non-sexual labor.

This is a story without happy ending, we realize this from the very beginning; however, it is still a story that has to be told and, most of all, must be heard.