Latin America -- 1999 -- "UNICEF, in support of the United Nations’ campaign for the eradication of violence against women, calls on society in Latin America and the Caribbean to eradicate violence against women and children. Violence is a problem that still remains largely hidden from the public eye..."

"Society’s silence is the main accomplice in allowing widespread impunity... The region will have to bring out into the open this increasingly disturbing reality; and it will have to struggle against the high degree to which society tolerates or practices inconceivable forms of aggression against the most vulnerable individuals in society. 

In commemorating International Women’s Day, Executive Director of UNICEF Carol Bellamy said that "it is everywhere, among rich and poor -- at home, in school, in the workplace and in the community. Yet on the eve of the 21st century, the vast scale of this outrage is still not widely acknowledged, nor even truly understood".

...Sexual harassment, maltreatment, child labor, violence in the home and sexual exploitation occur with such frequency that they can be considered a daily phenomenon. All violence leaves physical and psychological scars on their victims which are to a great extent irreversible. 

• More than 185 million children and adolescents live in Latin America and the Caribbean.

• It is believed that the great majority of these may be exposed to the perils of violence of which sexual harassment, maltreatment and rape are the most common forms.

UNICEF - Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean: "Stop the Violence Against Women and Girls!"  Women's Day 1999 Speech 

From: Selected U.S. Agency for International Development Anti-Trafficking Efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Latin America -- 2001

"Latin America is estimated to have up to 40 million women and children in prostitution."

"An estimated 500,000 girls younger than 16 are in Prostitution in the northeast states of Argentina."

"According to a Brazilian Congressional Inquiry [1993], Brazil has 500,000 children in prostitution."

"Experts also estimate that there are 5,000 Colombian women in the Netherlands alone who are forced into prostitution."

"The U.S. Department of State conservatively estimates that 50,000 women and children are trafficked [illegally and against their will] into the United States annually."  "...1/3 [are] from Central and South America."

From: The Protection Project, Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC

Central America and Mexico -- 2001 -- "Maria’s story is hardly an isolated event. For the past three years, Casa Alianza has been tracing the trafficking of thousands of Central American children – mostly girls between the age of 12 and 16 or 17 – to be exploited in the growing international trade of child sex..."

"...We can go home after this meeting and be safe. Our children are safe. But how would we feel if it was our daughter or grandchild in the brothel today in Tapachula [Mexico] instead of Maria? We would go to the end of the earth to protect our child. We must do nothing less for Maria…"

From: "SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME... - THE TRAFFICKING OF CHILDREN IN CENTRAL AMERICA" - A Report to the International Bar Association 2001 Annual Conference in Cancun, Mexico, by Covenant House-Latin America (Casa Alianza) Regional Director Sir Bruce Harris.

Harris said it took a multi-disciplinary team of 56 experts 10 months to prepare the organization's first ''region-wide investigation of child trafficking, prostitution, pornography and sex tourism in Mexico and Central America.'' The probe was carried out in high-risk conditions in which the experts infiltrated rings of traffickers in minors, pedophiles and producers of child pornography, he underlined.

Psychologist Viviana Retana, [a] member of the team of investigators, told IPS that the trafficking of children as sexual merchandise was a constant phenomenon in Central America and Mexico, as well as other countries in Latin America. ''The rings of pedophiles and procurers are very well organized, operate with advanced technology and handle large amounts of money,'' she explained. The authors reported that procurers in Mexico buy 12 to 15-year- old girls from Central America - mainly Salvadorans and Hondurans - for 100 to 200 dollars.

From: CENTRAL AMERICA: Activists Infiltrate Child Sex Rings - April 5, 2002, Inter Press Service

Mexico -- 2002 -- Child Kidnappings - "While the recent kidnappings of children in California have horrified Americans, an extraordinarily high rate of child disappearances in Mexico has alarmed authorities and citizens there. Child advocacy groups say as many as 135,000 children have been kidnapped in the past three years. It is feared that  many of the children are being sold into the sex and pornography industries. NPR's Gerry Hadden reports from Mexico City. (4:00)"

From All Things Considered, National Public Radio News. (Get Real Player)

- Latina activist from Veracruz, Mexico

...Women's groups estimate that perhaps 1 percent of rapes are ever punished...

...But in the country that made the term "machismo" famous, where women were given the right to vote only in 1953, women's rights advocates said rape and other violence against women are still not treated as serious crimes. And they said police, prosecutors and judges often show indifference or hostility toward women who claim rape...

Mexico - "...Furthermore, violence against women and children is pervasive at all social and educational levels. Violence is perpetrated through physical, psychological, and sexual abuse (including rape by a stranger). After women, children constitute the second group of victims of domestic violence, in which case the parents are the most common aggressors. Mexican women are also repeatedly victims of sexual harassment in the workplace." 

From: The Canadian Agency for International Development:

 "INC - Gender Profile in Mexico (March, 2002)."

The presence of sex tourism from Europe, North America, and Australia has significantly contributed to the trafficking of women and children. A growing number of sex tourists are going to Latin America, partly as a result of recent restrictions placed on sex tourism in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and other Asian countries.(19) Favored sex tourism destinations are Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Argentina.

Brazil has one of the worst child prostitution problems in the world.(20) More than 50,000 women from the Dominican Republic reportedly have been trafficked abroad.

Victims from Latin America and the Caribbean are trafficked to Western Europe and the United States. The Central American countries and Mexico are also transit countries for trafficking to the United States.

Congressional Research Service Report 98-649 C

Trafficking in Women and Children:
The U.S. and International Response

May 10, 2000 - by Francis T. Miko
Specialist in International Relations
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

With the Assistance of Grace (Jea-Hyun) Park
Research Associate, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division

Colombia -- 1999 -- "Child prostitution rings working in sex shops throughout Colombia were raided in September 1998, freeing 370 minors aged 12-16. Twenty-nine adults were arrested. The children where being held in slavery-like conditions, were abused and forced into prostitution. At least 145 of the children where found in [the major city of] Cartegena, a busy sex-tourist destination."  

From: "Colombia launches crackdown on child prostitution," Reuters,  September 26, 1998

Colombia -- 1999 -- Like a nightmarish fairy tale in which young girls are spirited away by monsters, five were abducted from this three-block stretch of 125th Street in Bogota's Miguelito neighborhood from November 1995 to July 1997. Not one has been found.

What does she think happened to her daughter [kidnapped at age 11], who would have turned 15 this week? "Oh God," she sobbed. "They tell me she's been sold as a prostitute. No, no, no. My baby."  

From a 1999 Washington Post story on the open kidnapping of young girls in Colombia by sex traffickers.

The Christian Science Monitor - "Sex slavery racket a growing concern in Latin America" - January 11, 2001

UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America & the Caribbean

Latin America -- 

TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN FOR SEXUAL EXPLOITATION IN THE AMERICAS

An Introduction to Trafficking in the Americas

Written by Alison Phinney for the Inter-American Commission of Women (Organization of American States) and the Women, Health and Development Program (Pan American Health Organization)

From: Making the Harm Visible - Report from Latin America - by Zoraida Ramirez Rodriguez (Coalition Against Trafficking in Women-Latin America and the Caribbean).

Latin America -- "Sexual abuse and rape, important causes of HIV/AIDS infection among adolescent girls, has increased and now affects girls at younger ages worldwide (UNAIDS, 1999). In many countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, the age of sexual abuse and rape predominates in girls younger than 10 years old. A follow-up study done by the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network in five countries demonstrated that this has been happening in Nicaragua, Peru and Colombia."

- Dr. Mabel Bianco, MD, 1998 -www.BodyPositive.com

Jack Epstein, Christian Science Monitor - 1996

  The recently released Protection Project Report takes note of Brazil’s frontier mining town of Fortaleza  and  June Kane's book, Sold of Sex, which notes that an estimated 2,000 child prostitutes are exploited in Fortaleza.  Their ages are:   

Latin America - 1996 -- UNITED NATIONS (© 1996 Reuters) - Excerpt.  A popular Spanish-language talk show host told the United Nations Monday that Latin American men denied AIDS existed and hid behind a "machismo" tradition that ignored sexual realities.

"I am the lady who fights AIDS in Spanish," said Christina Saralegui, whose U.S.-based television show is broadcast to 100 million viewers in 18 countries.

She said countries like Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and even Puerto Rico went into "complete denial" about AIDS, believing "it is simply a lifestyle problem the United States has."

She spoke to a U.N. General Assembly session on AIDS along with Elizabeth Taylor, who urged the United Nations and the United States to lead a worldwide campaign to treat and cure AIDS victims, particularly the poor.

..."The doctors, the health professionals are not educated about AIDS prevention, about how to take care of people with aids," Saralegui said.

..."Neither [boys nor girls] received any proper sexual education in the home or in schools because it would be equated "with permission to have sex."

..."The most important thing is to get AIDS out of the closet. Let's get out of denial. It needs first to be faced if it is to be beaten," she said.  - Full Article

Honduras -- "Experts believe that in San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city, the infection rate may be as high as 240,000 - nearly half the residents. Those are staggering figures for a country where 80 percent of the people live in poverty." Miami Herald