As an anti-sexual-exploitation advocate for women and children in the Latino community for over 25 years, as a person who has written about Mexico to U.S. trafficking, and also as someone who is avidly following the debate about the Minuteman Project, here are my perspectives on the controversy surrounding the issue of citizen border patrols and U.S. American backlash against Latin American immigration in the context of the dynamics of sexual exploitation.

Some background...

1. The Minuteman Project is interested, they say, in stopping "illegal immigration" - which they perceive as being tolerated by the George W. Bush administration.

3. Although the Minutemen are careful no to publicly ally themselves with white supremacist groups, they are supported explicitly by such groups.  While they are careful to declare their movement non-racist, there is no question but that their goals are highly compatible with those expressed by a number of overtly racist organizations.

4. Therefore, their politics are, just under the surface, linked (at the very least at the level of the beliefs of many of their supporters) as much to keeping non-whites (dark-skinned, indigenous and mestizo Mexicans) out of the U.S. as anything else.

5. U.S. blue collar workforce anger about job losses to Latino immigrants (especially in construction trades) also heavily fuels popular support for the Minuteman Project.

6. In April of 2005 the Minuteman Project conducted a one month 'patrol' of the Arizona border with Mexico, drawing widespread publicity to their cause.  The Minuteman Project plans to begin border patrols in southern California in July or August, 2005.  This is causing a rising level of anger among the region's huge Latino population.

7. On May 26, 2005, a Minuteman presentation to a women's group in southern California sparked a near riot by Latino activists.  One Minuteman ran over a Latino protester and was arrested.  Five Latino protesters were arrested for breaking windows, etc.  This event was thoroughly covered by CNN's The Lou Dobbs Show.

8. The Lou Dobbs Show actively supports the Minuteman Project, thus bolstering their popularity, legitimacy and overall effectiveness.

9.  The Minuteman Project is not 'authorized' by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.), and President George W. Bush has declared that the April project to patrol the U.S. border in Arizona was a bad idea.  These sentiments did not impact the plans of the Minuteman Project, and they proceeded with their 'patrol' of the Arizona-Mexico border.  U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded by sending 500 new border patrol agents to reinforce the Arizona border.

10. As U.S. citizens and residents, Minuteman Project members can go where they please and do what they please, within the law.  Therefore, they do not need I.C.E. 'permission' to patrol the U.S. - Mexico Border.  Some members legally carried firearms on patrols.

11. The Minuteman Project exploits an undeniable fact, that the U.S. Government under President George W. Bush has not effectively patrolled the Mexican Border.  Severe economic conditions in Mexico have caused entire villages to migrate to the U.S.  Over 500,000 low-wage factory jobs in Mexico have recently been lost to Chinese competition.  I have seen a notable increase in the Mexican population in the Washington, DC region recently.

12. The public declarations of some Mexican American activists, expressing a desire to create an independent Latino homeland (known as Aztlan) from the (formerly Mexican) states of California (and specifically southern California), Arizona and New Mexico; and a further expression of a desire on the part of some activists to kick all non-Latinos out of 'Aztlan' has become a powerful catalyst, uniting diverse groups of non-Latino U.S. Americans.  This evolving coalition seeks to prevent a Latino majority from forming in the U.S. Southwest.  Such a majority is perceived by these groups as making the creation of 'Aztlan' possible in the not too distant future.

**

Dealing with undocumented migration (or "illegal immigration" as many phrase the issue) is going to be a complex process.  The rescue of immigrant women and girls from sexual exploitation with impunity in the U.S. is an issue that will be heavily impacted by how the politics of immigration reform and anti-immigrant hostility play out.

**

Analysis of this issue in the context of the dynamics of modern sexual exploitation and trafficking...

1. Women have apparently been trafficked into the U.S. from Mexico for 20 or 30 years. 

2. Only the huge wave of Former Soviet Union/Eastern Europe based trafficking after the fall of the Soviets sparked the development of today's modern anti-trafficking movement (I do not recall an anti-trafficking movement growing after Asian trafficking became a major problem, for example, before the fall of the Soviet Union).  The logical conclusion is that the U.S. and European feminist movements found motivation to address the issue only when large numbers of European women started to become sex slavery victims. 

3. Mexican border cities such as Tijuana, adjacent to San Diego, California, and (femicide burdened) Ciudad Juarez have been centers for U.S. American sex tourists for many decades.  In the case of Tijuana, the 1920's U.S. Prohibition against alcohol consumption kicked-off the wave of U.S. men seeking legal liquor to drink... and prostitutes, across the border in Mexico.

4. Tijuana and Juarez are today major centers for adult and child sex tourism.  The English term 'Warez' - derived from Juarez, has apparently been a code word for child sexual exploitation for decades. 

5. Both Tijuana and Juarez in Mexico have enormous U.S. military facilities very close by, adding to the problem of U.S. sex tourism. 

6. The U.S. - Mexico border region constitutes a "zone of impunity" where Latina and indigenous women have been sexually exploited without effective defense from sex crimes... for literally hundreds of years.  The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics show that U.S. indigenous women face a rate of rape 3.5 times the rate for other U.S. women, and that in 82% of rape cases the assailant is a white American man.  These crimes are centered in the U.S. Southwest region.  These facts point directly to a 'gender hostile living environment' of race-based, anti-indigenous sexual oppression.

In combination with the well-established, centuries-old 'traditions' of the exploitation of women in machismo driven Mexican culture, these facts point to the existence of an environment of toleration and acceptance of the rape and sex trafficking of women of color by (often politically conservative) U.S. American men and also by Latino farm laborers and other immigrant men in the U.S. Southwest.

It must be noted that if the above observation by a medical doctor working with child sex trafficking victims in San Diego County, California is correct, some of the same cultural elements in the U.S. that agitate against undocumented migration may also be involved in the sexual exploitation of undocumented immigrant women.  By extension, the 82% of indigenous sexual assault cases in the U.S. that are perpetrated by white U.S. American men also points to the same cultural elements in U.S. society as targeting women of color for rape in the western U.S., while traditional cultural 'codes of silence' are exploited by these sexual predators to cover their criminal dirty work...

7. The overt criminal sexual aggression with impunity that some men learn and practice as 'normal' behavior in Mexico and Central America has literally resulted in the mass-rape of women and underage girls within Latin immigrant communities in the U.S.  This dynamic pushes many abused young women and girls towards being at risk of falling victim to human trafficking.  Traffickers exploit immigrant victims in the U.S. with little fear of reprisal from law enforcement (as of yet).

8. The same sexual aggression with impunity that is tolerated or even encouraged by the sexist philosophy of 'negative' machismo within Latin America has also resulted in a wave of severe sexual harassment and criminal sexual assault perpetrated by some Latino immigrant men against non-Latin women and underage girls in the U.S. See: U.S. Rape Cases.

In one notable case from late 1999 in Washington, DC, a white U.S. American woman, a colleague and activist for Latin American human rights issues, related to the author that in the Mount Pleasant section of the city, large numbers of middle class white women in the area's unique middle class enclave had been raped by Latino male perpetrators from the adjoining, very poor Latino Barrio of Mount Pleasant.  This informant, who lived in the neighborhood, had a personal friend, also a white U.S. woman in her 20's, who was subjected to an attempted sexual assault.  The police arrested the Latino assailant and later let him go.  He was, as the informant stated, "back out on Mount Pleasant Street drinking beer on the corner."

In response, the informant walked around the white middle class enclave of Mount Pleasant, and informally talked to other white women in the area.  She found from these interviews that significant numbers of these women had been raped by local Latino men, and they chose to remain silent about the issue and not report it to police.

9. The Minuteman movement is responding in part (together with several other mostly white supremacist based movements) to the wave of sexual harassment and assault that many (especially undocumented) Latin immigrant men perpetrate in the U.S. 

10. White supremacist groups and others have organized several web sites in addition to Original Dissent noted above, that specifically address the issue of Latino acts of sexual assault and harassment targeting non-Latin U.S. American women and especially underage girl children.

The most aggressive white supremacist web site addressing this issue is: http://www.newnation.org/NNN-spanic-sexcrimes.html.  New nation does not hide its hatred of Latinos and African Americans.

11. An old and traditional argument presented in the past by Latin American immigrant community leaders, that the community should remain silent (per tradition) about sexual exploitation issues so as not to present itself as a target for criticism by U.S. Americans has become a moot point.  The crimes committed are obvious to anyone who sees them, and the federal government's I.C.E. program, which specifically targets alien sexual violators (legal and undocumented) has begun to aggressively deport convicted immigrant offenders.

The urgent task for the public, the leadership and the activists within the Latin American immigrant community in the U.S. now becomes one of addressing the issue of sexual exploitation head on, and finally ending the code of silence.  We must follow the advice of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF's) executive director, who stated the problem's Latin American context this way in a 1999 speech:

The stark conditions described by Carol Bellamy in regard to Latin America now exist across the U.S. in thousands of communities.  The responses and actions of the political and criminal justice institutions of the U.S. lag far behind this growing trend.  The fact that 'child rape camps' have existed in San Diego County, California for over ten years with very little effective law enforcement response is one symptom of the fact that government and especially law enforcement have not yet caught up to these problems.

Similarly, only a couple of hundred victims of sex trafficking are assisted annually in the U.S., while an estimated 17,000 enslaved persons are brought across international borders each year.  None of those child, youth and adult victims of ongoing violent rape with impunity (in slave prostitution) are being rescued by anyone.

Although the federal law enforcement official mentioned directly above expressed astonishment to the author that this brothel network could make the kind of money that he noted was typical only in large illegal drug distribution operations, we have never seen any public description of prosecutions associated with this 'Latina rape factory' located exactly ten miles directly north of the U.S. Capitol building.

12. As an advocate and as a member of the Latino community, I strongly advocate for not only women and children, but also for the interests of our men.  But I cannot condone the attempt by many men to impose 'traditional' Latin American machismo-based sexual harassment and rape on either Latina immigrant women and girls, nor on non-Latina women and girls.  It is unacceptable.

13. CNN's The Lou Dobbs Show's aggressive inspection of the issue of 'illegal immigration' 5 nights a week is usually couched in the context of the loss of U.S. jobs, the burden of providing medical and social services to immigrants, and the high rate of general criminal activity that undocumented immigrant men seem to be involved in.  However, the widely-known and widely-experienced issue of immigrant men harassing and assaulting non-Latina U.S. women and girls is a sub-text to the fervor that the Lou Dobbs Show expresses, and rallies public support in regard to.  Lou Dobbs has debated this point with Latino leaders on his show.  The Latino community must address the issue openly and work to end the impact of 'negative' machismo.

14. Until the Latin American immigrant community and our allies are able to effectively change the ugly reality that many immigrant men come into the U.S. and harass and sexually assault women and underage girls with impunity, non-Latino U.S. Americans will continue to organize to restrict illegal border crossings, and to force even more undocumented Latino workers out of their jobs and out of the U.S.  The Latin American immigrant community must begin to openly and effectively denounce the negative aspects of machismo, and its terrible, violent impact on the lives of women and children.

15. Every time a new draconian measure is taken to restrict the access of undocumented immigrants to work, social benefits and even drivers licenses, thousands of women (and even many underage girls who came here alone and support themselves alone) are thrown over the edge of the cliff.  That is, their tenuous lifeline to survival in the U.S. is put in danger when they can't get or keep a job (even with false ID papers), when they can't get welfare benefits so their children can eat (and I helped write the Washington DC government’s online benefits web software application - undocumented persons are not eligible), and when they cannot get a drivers license to get to a job or drive their children to the hospital... we in the U.S. are forcing those women and youth into prostitution as the only means of survival.

16. Therefore, we cannot stop modern human slavery in the U.S. while simultaneously acting to further oppress undocumented women and children through the use of punitive immigration controls.  The two projects are very much at cross purposes.

Latina women and girls come to the U.S. for better economic prospects.  Most importantly, they come here to escape what is literally a "gender hostile living environment" in their countries of origin.  As an indigenous woman told me recently... It is now impossible to live in Peru as a woman or girl." 

We especially applaud the pioneering women and children's advocacy work of Dr. Laura Bozzo, a human rights lawyer, social services agency director and NBC/Telemundo international talk show star from Peru.  Thanks to "Laura's" prime time show Laura en America (Laura in the Americas) - women and children across Latin America and within U.S. immigrant communities now feel empowered and given permission to break the centuries-old traditions of a cultural code of silence that has hidden this violence.  The days of silence are GONE!

**

We at LibertadLatina recognize the need to limit immigration and control crime from persons who migrate here. While those issues are addressed, the pressing need of indigenous and other Latin American immigrant women and children (and men) to find effective refuge from the 'gender hostile living environments' of their homelands needs to be made a key factor in policy-making related to these issues.

In addition, U.S. society will have to confront the reality that government institutions and some non-Latino U.S. citizens and immigrants (be they white, black or Asian) routinely take advantage of the oppressed state of Latina immigrant and indigenous women and girls, subjecting them to anti-immigrant hostility, a lack of equal protection under the law, and in the case of non-Latino sexual exploiters and predators, rape with impunity by exploiting slaves trapped in brothels, and by subjecting quiet, submissive 'little Miss Latina' to severe sexual harassment and rape on the street.

When the issue of sexual exploitation is examined in detail, neither Latino immigrant men nor non-Latino men (nor institutions) in the U.S. can claim to be innocent, as a group, of the charge of condoning or engaging-in the criminal sexual exploitation of immigrant women and girls in their communities, schools and workplaces.

All of us need to keep these factors in mind as the U.S. federal government engages in an ever-more heated debate on immigration reform while at the same time focusing increasing attention on providing an effective response to global human sex trafficking.

 

- Chuck Goolsby
  Founder and Coordinator
  LibertadLatina.org

  www.LibertadLatina.org
Chuck@LibertadLatina.org

May 30-31, 2005