The exhibit “Haratin, the mask of the modern slavery” by Luca Catalano Gonzaga, has been presented at the “Marenostrum” International Festival of Mediterranean Photography, in Mazara del Vallo (Sicily) from 14th September to 7th October 2018. Mauritania is the country with the highest rate of slave population in the world: 140-160 thousand people out of a total of less than 4 million inhabitants. “Haratin” means literally “those who have been freed”, but these women and men still live in slavery, generation after generation, treated by everyone else as ‘property’: something only worth buying, selling, trading or destroying. Living in villages in the countryside, they work a land which is not theirs and don’t receive a salary or any form of compensation.
